A New Generation of Growth and Evaluation

Estimated Reading time: 4- 6 minutes

This year, I am going to tackle re-imagining the systems we use for growth and evaluation in three parts. Part I (this article) is the mindset and belief structures on which the system is built. Part II (October) will be on the central structures in a new system, and Part III (November) will focus on capacity building for leaders who use a new system built with a different core belief structure.

The Mindset and Belief Structure Shift:

From: People Need to be Held Accountable

To: People are Capable: We Need to Hold People Capable

There are so many systemic problems with the concept of holding people accountable, and I have written at length about this in the past if you are interested, but the core reason to move away from this belief structure is because it doesn't work.

As a thought experiment, consider the one or two people that you think are really struggling that you supervise. What are the prevailing thoughts about those people in your mind? Are you holding them as amazing, curious and capable people that are choosing (consciously or unconsciously) to act in ways that are out of alignment with you? Or, are you judging them as "in trouble", "struggling", "resistant", or "difficult"?

The main reason that judging people doesn't work is because you don't know or understand why people do what they do, and our mindset and the underlying belief structure in our systems negotiate this as a point of origin. We start most of our processes under a false pretense that we understand what "good" is or that we are the keepers of the "right" way to proceed. We often cannot be helpful because our understanding of the issue is built on a false narrative that our worldview is correct.

Being a leader has never meant you know all of the answers, but our systems operate as if this is true. No wonder people push back. They know that leaders don't know, so why would they willingly subject themselves to a system that presupposes to know something that it doesn't know.

Holding people capable means that we tackle challenges in a particular order with our first challenge being to understand the issue, not to solve it. A solution may or may not be needed once an agreement is reached, but without an agreement of what is happening or how we might understand a problem or issue, a solution is just a hoop to jump through. Most evaluation and growth systems feel like a series of hoops to jump through because they are operating from a point of origin built on this inaccurate belief structure.

By changing this belief structure and by assuming that people have understandable and complex reasons for doing what they are doing that we may not understand, we can treat moments where we are not aligned as mysteries to be understood, not problems to be fixed. This subtle shift feels completely different.

If I am feeling upset with a colleague who is not doing something I want them to be doing, in this new system, I am more curious about my own perception than their behavior. Why am I interpreting their behavior as such an attack on me? Why am I not trying to understand their point of view and why they are doing what they are doing? What is blocking my curiosity? Chances are, I am projecting worry about my own performance on to their situation, and while this is normal and understandable, it clouds one's ability to problem solve in a helpful way. It is not an employee's job to make me feel secure - that is my job, and if I don't appreciate that my fear and my worry are not actually part of their issue, then I risk projecting it onto them in a way that they feel as pressure. A system built on a belief that people are capable and every behavior has a reason is a much more curious starting point. We all bring needs, emotions and thoughts to our work, and starting from a place of curiosity where nobody is feeling the false pressure to know the right answer when they don't is a much healthier place to start our interrogation of the multiple realities we experience together.

Most conflict is just people trying to work together on a solution without an agreement on what the problem is. You view the problem as me, I disagree. I view the problem as you, you disagree. In order to unlock this type of challenge, both people need to focus on an internal locus of control, and a system that sees people as needing to be held accountable will never maximize for an internal locus of control. Because the system is the source of what is right, and not the people in the system, the system will train people to look for directions, orders or clear guidelines for how to succeed. This is the opposite of growth, creativity or learning. A deep exploration of why we are doing what we are doing will only happen if the precipitating belief structure is open to all the potential answers.

In 2026-2027, L+D is looking to partner with 3-5 schools that would like to re-imagine their evaluation and growth systems. We have been working on a process to help schools do this in a calendar year starting in the spring, working over the summer and designing and communicating by January, so that training and preparation can occur prior to launching your new system in the fall of a new year. If this is something you are interested in exploring further with us, please reach out to us directly.

So, this year, start by examining your internal beliefs about accountability and capability. We invite you to eliminate the phrase "holding people accountable" in service of replacing it with the phrase, "holding people capable."

We wish you the best of starts this year, and we look forward to continuing this investigation in Parts II and III in the coming months.

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