Leaders often look at the individual first when performance slips, deadlines are missed or standards decline. Does the person care enough? Are they capable? Why are they not taking ownership?
Sometimes the concern is justified. An employee may lack the necessary skills, demonstrate an unhelpful attitude or repeatedly choose an ineffective way of working. However, individual behaviour does not occur in isolation. Performance is shaped by the interaction between the person, the role, the leader and the wider working environment.
Research into person, environment fit has consistently linked the alignment between people and their work environments with important outcomes, including performance, satisfaction, commitment and retention (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). Research on job demands and resources also demonstrates that workload, autonomy, support and access to resources can influence both engagement and performance (Demerouti et al., 2001; Tummers & Bakker, 2021).
This creates an important leadership question:
Is the individual causing the performance issue, or is the environment making effective performance unnecessarily difficult?
The most accurate answer is often: some combination of both.
The leadership responsibility is to diagnose that combination before deciding what to do.
The danger of diagnosing too quickly
Imagine a team member who repeatedly misses deadlines.
It may be tempting to conclude that they lack urgency, discipline or accountability. But further investigation could reveal:
- conflicting priorities from different stakeholders;
- unclear decision-making authority;
- limited access to essential information;
- an approval process that creates avoidable delays;
- insufficient capability for a newly expanded role; or
- a reluctance to raise concerns because previous challenges were dismissed.
The missed deadline is real. The first explanation may not be.
When leaders attribute every problem to the individual, they risk trying to coach people around broken systems. When they attribute every problem to the environment, they can avoid necessary conversations about capability, choices and accountability.
Neither extreme is useful.
Effective leadership requires leaders to examine both sides of the performance equation.
Three steps to determine where the issue sits
1. Define the observable performance gap
Begin with what can be seen, heard, measured or verified.
Avoid starting with interpretation:
“They are not committed.”
Start with the observable gap:
“Three client reports were submitted after the agreed deadline during the past six weeks.”
Then clarify:
- What was expected?
- What actually happened?
- How frequently has it happened?
- What impact has it created?
- Has the expected standard been clearly communicated?
This separates evidence from assumption. It also gives the employee a fair opportunity to understand and discuss the issue.
A useful diagnostic question is:
What behaviour or outcome would need to change for us to know the issue had been resolved?
If the answer remains vague, the problem has not yet been defined clearly enough.
2. Test the environment before blaming the individual
Examine whether the Enabling Four are sufficiently in place.
Does the employee understand the relevant rules and expectations? Is their role clear? Are responsibilities agreed across the team? Do they have access to the resources needed to deliver?
Speak with the employee, but do not rely on one perspective alone. Review workflows, approvals, handovers, competing priorities and patterns across the team.
Consider whether:
- other employees are experiencing the same problem;
- the issue appeared after a structural or process change;
- expectations vary between leaders;
- responsibilities overlap or contain gaps;
- information arrives too late;
- excessive workload is compromising quality; or
- the person has authority in name but not in practice.
When several capable people struggle with the same activity, the system deserves close attention.
This does not automatically remove individual accountability. It ensures that accountability is applied to conditions the individual can reasonably influence.
3. Assess the individual contribution and choose the right response
Once the environmental conditions have been tested, examine the individual contribution through the Triple A lens.
Is this primarily an issue of attitude, aptitude or approach? The distinction determines the intervention.
In many cases, leaders will identify a combined issue. For example, the organisation may need to clarify decision rights while the individual develops the assertiveness to escalate risks earlier.
That is not an inconclusive diagnosis. It is a more accurate one.
The goal is not to decide whether the person or the system is entirely at fault. The goal is to identify what needs to change, who has influence over it and how progress will be observed.
Leadership means creating the conditions for accountability
Accountability is weakened when leaders expect outcomes without establishing the conditions needed to deliver them.
It is equally weakened when employees use system imperfections to avoid responsibility for choices they can make.
Strong leadership holds both realities at once.
Leaders must create clarity, establish appropriate systems and provide the necessary resources. Individuals must then apply the required attitude, aptitude and approach within those conditions.
This balance sits at the heart of the flowprofiler® Leadershipflow® Pathway. Leadershipflow® combines behavioural assessment, facilitated learning, applied SkillSprints™ and outcome reporting to help organisations connect leadership behaviour with execution, culture and measurable performance. Rather than treating leadership development as an isolated training event, the pathway helps leaders examine behaviour in real workplace contexts and translate insight into action.
The central principle is simple:
Do not try to fix the person before checking the environment. Do not redesign the environment to avoid an honest conversation with the person.
Diagnose both. Then act where the evidence leads.
Because when leaders correctly identify where the issue sits, they stop treating symptoms and start improving performance.
❝Leadershipflow helped me develop my leadership behaviours, apply clearer
expectations with my team, and deliver measurable outcomes for the Club.❞– John King, Customer Relationship Manager, North Ryde RSL, NSW, Australis
References
Abramis, D. J. (1994). Work role ambiguity, job satisfaction, and job performance: Meta-analyses and review. Psychological Reports, 75(3_suppl), 1411–1433.
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands–resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 499–512.
flowprofiler®. (2026). Leadershipflow® Pathways: Measurable leadership development that connects behaviour, execution and business outcomes.
Kristof-Brown, A. L., Zimmerman, R. D., & Johnson, E. C. (2005). Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person–job, person–organisation, person–group, and person–supervisor fit. Personnel Psychology, 58(2), 281–342.
Tummers, L. G., & Bakker, A. B. (2021). Leadership and job demands–resources theory: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 722080.
