What should a manager do when they believe an employee’s performance rating was unfair? This leadership dilemma happens more often than people admit, and how a manager responds can either build trust or quietly weaken their leadership.
“Honestly, I think it was unfair to him.”
That’s how a manager I’ll call Roger started a coaching conversation with me recently.
Roger had recently taken over a new team. A few months later, performance evaluations came around. One of his senior team members — a meticulous, hardworking quality assurance lead — received a “meets expectations” rating.
Roger believed the employee deserved “exceeds expectations.”
What struck me during the conversation wasn’t Roger’s mistake — it was how seriously he was taking the responsibility of being fair to his team. But the final rating wasn’t fully his decision. Other managers and prior feedback influenced the evaluation. In the end, the rating was locked. Now Roger faced the aftermath.
The employee was discouraged, frustrated, and asking tough questions:
- Why didn’t I get the higher rating?
- What do I need to do differently?
- Can you provide specific examples?
Roger felt stuck. He couldn’t promise a raise. He couldn’t change the rating. But he still had to lead this person every day. Underneath everything, Roger admitted something many leaders feel but rarely say out loud:
“Honestly, I think it was unfair to him but I cannot tell him that. And now I feel like I’m carrying that burden.”
If you’ve managed people before, this situation probably feels familiar.
The Leadership Trap: Carrying Guilt You Can’t Fix
One of the hardest parts of leadership is this: you are responsible for people, but you don’t control everything that affects them.
- Promotions may depend on budgets.
- Ratings may involve multiple managers.
- Compensation decisions may be locked by policy.
- Yet employees experience the outcome through you.
So when something feels unfair, many managers quietly absorb the guilt. Roger was doing exactly that. He felt responsible for explaining a decision he didn’t fully agree with.
But guilt creates another problem: it keeps you mentally stuck in the past. Leadership, however, always happens in the present and the future.
The real question becomes: How do you lead forward when you can’t change what already happened?
The Coaching Question That Changed the Conversation
At one point I asked Roger something simple:
“What would you do if you let go of the guilt and focused only on the future? If you had full say on his performance going forward, what criteria would you to evaluate if his performance ‘exceeds expectation’?”
He paused. Suddenly the situation looked different. Instead of trying to justify the past rating, he could focus on what success would look like going forward.
Roger had a clear view of what “exceeds expectations” meant for this role:
- Strong QA performance metrics
- Low production defects
- Efficient use of team resources
- Training and scaling offshore team members
- Driving test automation
- Introducing innovation in mobile testing
When I asked him directly what he believed “exceeding expectations” looked like, his answer was thoughtful and specific.
The Agency Gap Many New Managers Don’t See
The real challenge wasn’t a lack of clarity. It was that, like many newer managers, Roger was deferring to his superiors even for the next rating cycle.
Instead of starting from his own definition of excellence in the role, he asked upward for the answer. He then found himself in the uncomfortable position of relaying that answer back to his employee — even when parts of it didn’t fully resonate with him, especially when vague factors like tenure seemed to carry more weight than actual performance.
This is a common place where newer managers unintentionally limit their own leadership voice. They think deferring upward is the responsible thing to do. But over time, it can leave managers sounding more like they are relaying the answer rather than shaping it.
Employees can feel the difference. They can sense when a manager is speaking from conviction versus simply repeating the party line.
Leadership requires more agency than that.
A manager should absolutely gather input and align with their boss. But they also need to develop and articulate their own point of view. They need to be able to say:
“Based on what I’ve seen, here is what exceeding expectations looks like in this role.”
That kind of clarity does two things at once. It demonstrates leadership to the boss because the manager is no longer just waiting for direction — they are showing judgment. And it creates trust with the employee because the manager can now offer a more authentic and specific path forward.
Agency Doesn’t Mean Rigidity
Leadership agency doesn’t mean ignoring your boss. Conviction and agency are not the same as rigidity.
Once Roger defined what he believed “exceeding expectations” looked like, he could still bring that perspective to his boss and say:
“Here’s how I’m thinking about what exceeding expectations means for this role. What do you think?”
Now the conversation changes. Instead of asking his boss to supply the answer, Roger is initiating the answer and inviting feedback.
That subtle shift is powerful. His boss now sees him thinking like a leader. The criteria can be refined and aligned together. And when Roger communicates it back to his employee, it carries both conviction and organizational alignment.
Leadership often looks like this in practice: not waiting for clarity to arrive from above, but stepping forward, offering a thoughtful point of view, and helping everyone arrive at shared understanding.
The Psychological Safety Test: T.E.R.A.
During our conversation, we also discussed a framework called T.E.R.A., which helps explain whether people feel safe engaging with you.
- Tribe – Are you on my side or against me?
- Expectation – Do I understand what success looks like?
- Rank – Is this a conversation, or are you talking down to me?
- Autonomy – Do I have agency in shaping my future?
In Roger’s situation, the employee likely felt shaky on several of these.
- Tribe – Did his manager really support him?
- Expectation – Was success clearly defined?
- Autonomy – Did the employee have any control over his own future?
By clarifying expectations and inviting partnership, Roger could strengthen all four.
That doesn’t guarantee a promotion.
But it restores something equally important: hope and agency.
Leadership Isn’t About Fixing Everything
Roger couldn’t change the past rating, but he could still do something meaningful as a leader.
He could be honest about what he could and couldn’t control, define what great performance looks like going forward, and stand behind the standards he believes matter.
When leaders do that consistently, employees may still be disappointed in the moment — but they won’t feel abandoned.
And that difference matters more than most managers realize.
Reflection Questions for Managers
- Have you ever disagreed with a performance rating given to someone on your team?
- Do you find yourself relaying answers from above, or defining what great performance looks like yourself?
- Where might you need to show more leadership agency in how you guide your team?
Final Thought
Many new managers believe their job is to get the answer from their boss and deliver it to the team. But leadership often begins when you stop waiting for the answer and start articulating what you believe.
Not perfectly. Not with total certainty. But with honesty and conviction.
Because leadership is not about having the final answer. It’s about having the courage to initiate one.
Lei