The Leadership Tension Between Performance and People
February 11, 2026
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Most leaders I work with carry a tension they rarely say out loud.
They know they are responsible for their team delivering great results. So they want better execution, stronger ownership, fewer excuses, and higher quality output. At the same time, they genuinely care about their people. They want to be supportive, human, and development-focused, not harsh or mechanical.
So they feel stuck between two instincts. Push harder or lean back. Hold the line or show grace.
What I see over and over is that when leaders feel this tension, they often drift to one side without realizing it. Some push so hard on performance that people comply for a while, then quietly disengage or burn out. Others lean so far into support and friendship that standards slowly soften, and accountability is removed.
Neither path produces what the leader actually wants, which is strong performance and strong people. There is a better way to think about the tension, don’t lower the bar. Raise the person.
Don't lower the bar. Raise the Person
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is trying to solve a performance problem with surface-level engagement tactics.
When results dip or energy feels off, the instinct is to add something. They think, “If we just add a new perk, a new initiative around culture or well-being, then people will be more engaged, and performance will improve. The hope is that if people feel better, performance will rise with it.
Sometimes it gives a short lift. Almost like a shot of espresso. Then things settle right back where they were because you can’t maintain it forever.
Gallup’s data confirms the gap. Only 20 percent of employees strongly agree that the way their organization manages performance helps them do outstanding work. What employees say they want is:
What it tell me is employees don’t more extras, they just want better leadership.
In my recent podcast conversation with Jacob Morgan, the author of The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, he drew a sharp distinction between employee engagement and employee experience. Engagement is often treated like a quick boost. Experience is about the core conditions people work in every day.
He said it simply. “Many organizations are offering short-term solutions to long-term problems.”
That shows up when leaders avoid hard conversations when they need to be had, but act like everything is alright. It shows up when standards are quietly lowered in the name of empathy. It shows up when friendship replaces coaching.
On the other side, some leaders go the opposite direction. They drive metrics, dashboards, and pressure, but invest very little in coaching or development. They assume that the authority that comes with their title, will get the best out of their people. Which couldn’t be more arong.
In my podcast conversation with Jacob Morgan, he gave language to the two extremes that leaders fall into that I see all the time. He called them the “Performance treadmill” and “Coddled mediocrity.”
One burns people out through constant pressure and rising demands. The other protects people so much that standards quietly fall and mediocrity gets reinforced.
That framing led me to sketch a simple matrix I often see play out in real teams.
On one axis is performance. On the other is people. Every leader, whether they realize it or not, is operating somewhere inside these four boxes.
If you drive performance but invest very little in developing people, you create the performance treadmill. Results may show up for a season, but energy drops and turnover follows.
If you invest heavily in people but avoid standards and accountability, you drift into coddled mediocrity. The culture feels supportive, but the bar keeps moving lower.
If you neglect both, you land in the drift zone. Low standards, low development, and very little forward progress.
But when a leader is deeply committed to people and equally serious about performance, you get coached excellence. The standard stays high, and the leader actively helps people grow enough to reach it.
This is the tension resolved, not by choosing a side, but by holding both.
Holding a high standard and developing people at the same time isn’t easy, but it is possible.
It starts with clarity around what great looks like and who owns the outcome. People cannot consistently meet a bar they don’t know exists. The hard truth is most performance problems are really just clarity problems in disguise.
Most performance problems are clarity problems in disguise.
From there, it becomes a coaching responsibility, not a control exercise. The kind of coaching that isn’t only focused on short-term performance but long-term development.
I think of the Jack Mullaney quote often, “Good coaching might be teaching you to perform when the lights are on, but great coaching is teaching you how to live when the lights go out.”
Coaching is how you develop the person while keeping the standard where it is supposed to be.
The tension between performance and developing people never goes away as a leader. Results and people will always pull on you at the same time. But the best leaders stop trying to choose between them.
They keep the bar where it belongs and help people grow enough to reach and exceed it, the rest of their life.
Don’t lower the bar. Raise the person.
How to Develop Leaders in 2026: It reflects what I’m seeing most in real leadership conversations right now. If you’re in HR, an executive, or responsible for developing leaders. It’s worth your time (and it’s free.)
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About the Author: John Eades is the CEO of LearnLoft and The Sales Infrastructure. He was named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices. John is also the author of Building the Best and the Optimistic Outlook.
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