When conversations don’t change behaviour: a three-part diagnosis
I’ve spent twenty-five years having some version of the same conversation with organizations. They train their managers well. They run performance conversations on a reliable cycle. They can tell you completion rates of ninety, ninety-five, even ninety-nine per cent. And behaviour still doesn’t change.
For a long time, the instinct in the room was always the same: better skills, better models, better forms. I’ve done all of it. Feedback frameworks, structured conversation formats, redesigned appraisal paperwork. None of it, on its own, moved the needle.
That’s because a lack of skill was never really the problem. It’s a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. People need to know how to give feedback well, yes. But that alone doesn’t explain why the conversation still fails to shift behaviour, because the conversation itself is being asked to carry weight it was never built for.
Working through this with clients, and most recently in a live session with a small group of HR and People Directors, I’ve boiled it down to three structural issues. Each shows up in the same thirty-minute meeting, and each needs something changed in how the organization runs the conversation, not just how well the manager performs on the day.
Contamination
Feedback conversations, which are about behaviour, get merged with reward conversations, which are about money. When the two are fused, managers quietly reduce developmental feedback to high performers to avoid contradicting the reward message, and recipients become defensive because critical comment now feels financially threatening.
Value
Most objectives are simply the organization’s strategy, cut into individual pieces. Most people can’t name what they personally gain from hitting theirs, beyond the basic fact of being paid. Without a visible personal payoff, discretionary effort disappears.
Ownership
Who convenes the meeting, sets the agenda and drives the conversation determines whether it happens to someone or is driven by them. Treated as an instruction rather than something managers model themselves, ownership becomes rhetoric that people stop believing.
None of these are fixed by more training in how to have a better conversation. Each needs something structural addressed: separate documentation for reward and development, a visible personal payoff attached to objectives, and managers who treat one-to-ones with the same discipline as a client meeting.
If any part of this is recognisable in your organization, I’d like to talk it through with you properly. Get in touch and let’s start that conversation.
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