Your Performance Worry Might Not Actually Be A Performance Problem
Most leaders I meet are not ignoring performance. They’re working hard. They care. They want their teams to succeed in a fast-moving world.
And yet… results feel inconsistent.
The same issues keep circling back: missed deadlines, friction between teams, low energy, 'that’s not my job' behaviours, quiet resentment, or a creeping sense that people are doing the minimum.
When that happens, it’s tempting to reach for the obvious fixes: restructure, hire better, set tougher targets, add more process, run more training.
Sometimes those help.
But very often, the real issue is simpler (and harder): the way people are experiencing leadership and culture day-to-day is shaping the output you’re getting.
Culture isn’t a handbook or values on a wall. It’s the ‘this is how we do things around here’ that people absorb - especially under pressure.
And when culture isn’t working, performance always pays the price.
Culture and performance - in a nutshell
If the same problems keep repeating, it’s rarely about effort. It’s about conditions.
Leadership behaviour is a performance system: what leaders reinforce, tolerate, and role-model becomes the norm.
Culture shows up in small moments - meetings, feedback, decisions, handovers, conflict.
When people don’t feel safe, seen or trusted, their best work becomes harder to access.
You can’t process your way out of a culture issue. Clarity and accountability matter - but so do trust and psychological safety.
Improving culture improves performance.
The signs your issue is really leadership and culture (not capability)
There are a few patterns I see all the time - especially in creative, high-output environments.
Talented people are underperforming inconsistently
When someone is brilliant one week and ‘checked out’ the next, leaders often assume motivation is the problem.
But inconsistency is frequently a signal of:
Unclear priorities (what matters most this week?)
Unpredictable feedback (silence… then criticism)
Lack of autonomy (being second-guessed)
Low psychological safety (fear of getting it wrong)
In other words: the environment isn’t helping them do their best work consistently.
You have more ‘tension’ than you think (it just isn’t spoken)
In healthy cultures, issues surface early. In less healthy cultures, people go quiet and cope around each other.
That looks like:
Side conversations after the meeting
Surface agreement but private frustration
Decisions revisited quietly
A lot of “fine” - but very little honesty
It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that speaking up doesn’t feel safe.
Things feel harder than they should
Even when workflows are technically fine, things can feel unnecessarily difficult. That’s often because people are carrying an invisible load:
Emotional uncertainty (where do I stand?)
Role ambiguity (who owns this?)
Lack of trust (will I be blamed if it fails?)
Disconnection (no one’s got my back)
This is where performance starts to dip even if capability is strong.
Why leadership behaviour drives performance (whether you mean it or not)
The renowned organisational psychologist and former MIT Sloan Professor, Edgar Schein, said: "The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture".
This might sound bold. But in practice, it’s simple.
Every day, leaders teach people what’s ‘normal’ through:
What they pay attention to
What they reward
What they ignore
What they tolerate when stressed
And people adapt quickly, because humans are pattern-spotters. Over time, those patterns become culture. And culture becomes the operating system that produces your results.
The ‘culture layer’ under performance problems (a simple diagnostic)
When a client tells me "we have a performance problem", I usually explore five questions before we talk solutions.
Is success clear? Do people know what 'good' looks like - not just targets, but behaviours and standards?
Is trust present? Do people feel trusted to do their work, or managed through control?
Is it safe to speak up? Can people challenge, disagree, admit mistakes, and ask for help without penalty?
Do people feel seen and valued? Not in a fluffy way - in a 'my contribution matters' way. When people feel invisible, confidence and performance drop.
Are roles and ownership clear? Does accountability live in the team, or bounce between functions?
If you’re seeing gaps in any of those, your ‘performance issue’ is very likely a leadership-and-culture issue in disguise.
What to do
Here are three things that create clarity fast without turning everything into a massive programme:
Step 1 - Name the real issue without blame
Try: “We’ve got talented people, so if results are inconsistent, the question is: what conditions are getting in the way?”
That shifts the conversation from ‘Who’s underperforming?’ to ‘What needs adjusting?’
Step 2 - Make expectations visible
Pick one recurring friction point (meeting ownership, feedback avoidance, quality standards) and ask:
What does ‘good’ look like here - specifically?
What behaviours would we see if we were doing this well?
What are we currently tolerating that undermines it?
That’s culture work. And it’s performance work.
Step 3 - Start with leaders, not the whole company
Culture shifts fastest when leaders:
Align on the same standards
Role-model the behaviours
Reinforce consistently
If leaders are misaligned, teams will feel it immediately - especially in hybrid and high-pressure contexts.
Culture isn’t accidental. It’s shaped every day - in small moments, under pressure, in what leaders reinforce and what they let slide.
As Edgar Schein put it:
“The culture of a group can be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions… taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel.”
And those assumptions are what ultimately drive performance.
——-
PS. Culture problems rarely announce themselves as culture problems. They show up as missed targets, friction, turnover, or low energy. The earlier you spot them, the easier they are to shift.
PPS. Leadership behaviour sets the tone - whether you intend it to or not. Often the solution isn’t working harder. It’s creating the conditions where people can do their best work more easily.