Originally published on LinkedIn on 17 September 2026.
This is the first in a new series. For the past six weeks, we looked at the situations where the gap between how a leader reads things and how their team experiences them quietly costs the firm money. This series looks at the conversations that sit inside those gaps, the ones most leaders know they should have, and don’t.
This week: the performance conversation.
The blind spot
You think you’re supporting them through the problem, when the support itself is what’s preventing the conversation that would actually fix it.
The fee earner’s work isn’t where it needs to be. You know it, and privately, they probably know it too. So you step in. You review more closely, you redirect the harder work elsewhere, you offer more guidance, you pick up the slack in ways that feel generous and fair. From where you’re standing, this is support, exactly what a good leader does.
Kim Scott, who managed teams at Google and Apple before developing the Radical Candor framework, gave this pattern a name: Ruinous Empathy. It’s what happens when a leader cares personally but doesn’t challenge directly, when feedback gets softened so much that the person walks away without understanding what needs to change. Scott found it to be the single most common form of ineffective feedback at nearly every company she worked with, more common than harsh feedback, more common than no feedback at all.
The blind spot isn’t that you’re doing nothing. It’s that you’re doing everything except the one thing that would actually help: telling them plainly what isn’t working.
Why this conversation gets avoided
A Leadership IQ survey of 689 HR directors and executives found that 67% of managers regularly avoid or delay giving critical feedback. Separately, research cited by organisational psychologist Dr. Michael Burchell puts the figure for managers who feel uncomfortable communicating directly with employees about performance at 69%.
That discomfort isn’t random. In a law firm, three things tend to make it worse. First, the person was usually promoted because of their technical ability, not because anyone taught them how to have this kind of conversation. Second, the relationship is close, in a firm of 25 to 250 people, you know the person, you’ve worked alongside them, and directness feels personal in a way it wouldn’t at a larger organisation. Third, the workaround is always available, it’s easier to redistribute, review more heavily, or compensate quietly than to sit someone down and say plainly that their work isn’t at the required standard.
Each of those makes the conversation feel riskier than staying quiet, even though staying quiet is what’s actually costing more.
What avoidance actually costs
This shows up in two places. First, utilisation. The workaround itself consumes time, yours and other fee earners’, that should be going toward billable, productive work rather than quietly compensating for someone else’s output. Second, the team notices. High performers see that standards aren’t being upheld and draw their own conclusions. The same Leadership IQ survey found that 68% of high performers are at risk of burnout or disengagement when they’re carrying extra load or covering for underperformance that isn’t being addressed.
The longer the conversation is delayed, the harder it gets to have, and the more expensive the gap becomes, not because the person’s performance is getting worse, but because the cost of compensating for it is compounding every week.
How to have it
The practical challenge is structure, not courage. Most leaders know what needs to be said. What’s missing is a reliable way to say it that’s direct enough to land without becoming personal. Kim Scott’s own diagnostic question is a useful starting point: before the conversation, ask yourself, “Am I about to soften this because it will help the other person, or because it will make me more comfortable?”
Once you’re clear on that, a simple three-part structure works:
Name the specific situation. Not a general pattern, not a character observation, one specific piece of work, one specific moment. “The last two reports came in below the standard we agreed on” is useful. “Your attention to detail has been slipping” is not, because it’s a verdict, not a fact.
Name the impact. What did it actually cost, in time, in rework, in client experience? This is what stops the conversation from feeling like an opinion and makes it something both of you can look at together.
Name what needs to change, specifically. Not “I need you to step up” but “I need the next report to include all the data points we agreed on, before it comes to me.” Specific enough that both of you would recognise whether it happened or not.
The whole conversation can take five minutes. It doesn’t need to be a formal meeting. What it needs is clarity, delivered with enough care that the person hears the standard, not a personal judgement.
One question to ask this week
Think of the person whose work you’re currently compensating for, the one you’re reviewing more closely, redirecting work around, or picking up after. Ask yourself plainly: have I actually told them what isn’t working, or have I just been managing around it?
The performance conversation is one of the most commonly avoided in professional services, and one of the most expensive when it doesn’t happen. If you want to know where these gaps are sitting in your own firm, and what they’re costing, send me a direct message.