Why Developing People Isn't the Same as Managing Performance

Your team is hitting its targets. Everyone's doing their job. No major problems.

Brilliant.

But does that mean you're developing your people?

I'm not convinced it does.

Throughout my career, I've worked with some fantastic people and seen what can happen when they're given the opportunity, confidence and support to develop.

But I've also seen how easy it is for development to become something we talk about rather than something we actually make time for.

When someone's performing well, we often assume everything is fine. They're delivering, they're reliable, and there's no immediate reason to intervene.

So we focus our attention elsewhere.

And sometimes, without meaning to, we overlook the very people who have the potential to do so much more.

Performance tells us what's happening. Development explores what's possible.

Of course, performance matters. People need to understand expectations, take responsibility and deliver what they're there to do.

But managing performance and developing people aren't the same thing.

One focuses largely on what someone is achieving now.

The other asks what they might be capable of achieving next.

And that isn't always about promotion, qualifications or taking on more responsibility.

Sometimes it's about confidence. Sometimes it's about understanding how someone thinks and works best. And sometimes it's about questioning whether the processes we've put in place are actually helping people succeed.

I remember working with a colleague who had taken on a new leadership responsibility.

She was incredibly capable, but she lacked confidence in her ability to deliver what was expected of her. One particular task, developing a new module from scratch, was proving difficult.

Initially, it might have been easy to assume she needed more guidance, clearer instructions or additional support with the existing process.

Through our coaching conversations, she began to identify what was really getting in her way.

It wasn't that she didn't understand the task or lacked the ideas to complete it. The existing templates simply didn't work for her. She found them clunky and illogical, and trying to organise her thinking around them was restricting her creativity rather than supporting it.

That was an important realisation, and it came from her.

Recognising what was holding her back was the first step. The next was finding a way of working that suited her.

So we put the templates aside.

I took her into a room full of whiteboards and showed her a different way to get started. Rather than beginning with everything that should go into the plan, we started by exploring what definitely shouldn't.

It gave her a starting point, and from there she began to make connections, explore ideas and organise her thinking in a way that suited her.

Two hours later, the whiteboards were full of ideas and a clear plan ready to develop.

And what we'd discovered had implications beyond that one piece of work.

Together, we designed new templates that were more flexible and inclusive, while still meeting all the necessary regulations and expectations. These were subsequently adapted for use by other colleagues too.

What had started as supporting one person's confidence became an opportunity to improve how we worked more widely.

And that's what has stayed with me.

The problem wasn't her capability or willingness to deliver. It was that the established way of working didn't allow her to make the best use of her strengths.

We hadn't needed to change her. We'd needed to change the approach.

Development starts with how we see people

I think there's an important responsibility that comes with leading others.

It's not simply about making sure people do their jobs well.

It's about being curious about what motivates them, understanding how they work best and being prepared to question our own assumptions about what good performance should look like.

Sometimes that means providing encouragement or challenging someone's thinking.

Sometimes it means recognising that a process which works perfectly well for one person might create unnecessary barriers for another.

And sometimes it means being willing to change the way we've always done things.

Of course, organisations need consistency, accountability and standards. But that doesn't mean everyone has to think, learn or approach a challenge in exactly the same way.

People need to feel trusted enough to try something different, ask questions and admit when something isn't working.

That doesn't happen simply because we've scheduled a development conversation into someone's appraisal.

It happens through relationships, everyday conversations and a genuine willingness to listen.

We can't manufacture someone's confidence or ambition for them.

But we can create the conditions that help them discover it.

And sometimes, developing people means being willing to develop the way we work, too.