Leading people

Performance & Calibration

5 lessons · ~34 min total

What calibration is actually for

~6 min

Understand calibration as the mechanism that keeps a rating meaning the same thing across every team, anchor your case to the leveling bar rather than your advocacy for the person, and recognize that a manager who rates too harshly has drifted just as far as one who rates too generously.

Key takeaways

Calibration exists so a rating means the same thing across every team, not just within one manager’s head.
In the room, argue from evidence to the leveling bar: arguing for the person is advocacy, and advocacy loses.
Rating too harshly is the same drift as rating too generously, and it is the one nobody escalates.

Rate impact, not activity

~7 min

Distinguish evidence of real impact from effort, output volume, tenure, and visibility so your ratings reward outcomes rather than motion, and account for the scope you handed each person before you read their delta as their ceiling.

Key takeaways

“Sounds like meets, rated exceeds” usually means someone counted activity (hours, volume, availability) as impact.
Impact is the delta the work created and who it moved; effort and output are inputs, not evidence.
A small delta on a scope you never widened is an assignment gap of yours, not evidence about their ceiling.

The biases that distort ratings

~7 min

Recognize the recency, halo, visibility, and similarity biases that skew ratings, counter each one with full-period evidence and rubric anchoring, and catch the biased rating while it is still a draft review.

Key takeaways

Recency, halo, visibility, and similarity are the four biases that quietly distort ratings.
You don’t will bias away: you counter each one by deliberately changing which evidence you look at.
A review written in personality language can’t be defended against a leveling guide, so comparable work ends up unequally rated.

Advocating in the room: challenge and defend

~8 min

Challenge a peer’s rating and defend your own by anchoring to the leveling bar, and spend your limited credibility on the cases that actually matter.

Key takeaways

Challenge a rating by asking it to meet the rubric line, not by questioning the manager’s judgment: the gap does the work.
Calibration credibility is finite; spend it on the biggest evidence-to-bar gaps, not on every disagreement.
Defend judgment work by naming what turned on the decision, or the room hears manager confidence and discounts it.

Delivering the rating

~6 min

Turn a calibration outcome into a conversation the person can act on, whichever way it went.

Key takeaways

The rating may be news; the feedback inside it must never be.
Own the verdict in first person against the bar; blaming calibration turns feedback into weather.
End every rating conversation on a path: the gap, the scope to close it, and a review date.

Try a sample check

A sample from the Team Health & Morale track. The real checks unlock with an account.

Team Health & Morale

A usually vocal teammate has gone quiet in meetings for two weeks, and their camera stays off. In your next 1:1, what is your opening move?

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