There is a question organisations rarely ask, even though entire careers may depend on the answer: When people underperform, are we measuring capability or are we measuring context?
Across workplaces, performance is often treated as though it exists in isolation. Targets are missed and conclusions are quickly formed. Output declines and labels emerge with surprising speed: disengaged, inconsistent, average, difficult, not leadership material.
Somewhere along the way, performance becomes treated as a verdict rather than a signal.
But perhaps one of the most overlooked truths in organisational life is this: not every person who appears to be failing is lacking ability.
Sometimes, they are simply operating in conditions that do not allow their strengths to surface.
To explore this idea, it helps to briefly leave the boardroom and visit football.
For years, Ousmane Dembélé represented one of modern football’s most fascinating contradictions. Few questioned his talent, yet his time at one of the world’s biggest clubs became associated with inconsistency and unrealised expectations. Having invested heavily in his arrival and anticipated transformational impact, expectations understandably remained high.
As performances failed to consistently reflect the promise attached to the investment, questions began to emerge about whether potential alone was enough. Eventually, the chapter closed and a move followed.
Then circumstances changed. The environment changed, the system changed, and expectations shifted and suddenly the conversation changed as well. People spoke less about wasted potential and more about impact.
The easy conclusion is to assume the player became better.
But perhaps the more interesting question is whether the player changed at all, or whether the environment finally created the conditions for his strengths to become visible.
Organisations rarely ask themselves this same question.
Employees do not arrive carrying skills alone; they often arrive carrying invisible expectations. The pressure to justify recruitment decisions, the expectation to replace exceptional predecessors, the responsibility to transform outcomes and the silent burden of proving they belong.
Without intending to, organisations sometimes communicate a message more powerful than any onboarding presentation: “You were hired to rescue us.”
From that moment, work becomes more than work. Every presentation begins to feel like judgement, every comparison becomes evidence and every mistake feels larger than it truly is.
What follows is often mistaken for poor performance when in reality it may be pressure disguised as underperformance.
People become cautious, they contribute less, they pursue perfection instead of progress and gradually begin protecting themselves instead of creating value.
Capability remains. Confidence becomes occupied.
This is why onboarding is not administration; it is communication. Performance management is not measurement; it is interpretation. Leadership is not simply about setting expectations; it is about creating conditions where expectations remain achievable.
We must note that people are not standardised systems.
Two employees may possess equal capability and produce entirely different outcomes depending on clarity, trust, visibility, support and timing.
Some thrive under pressure while others require psychological safety before excellence emerges. Neither response reflects weakness; both reflect human variation.
Perhaps organisations should ask less often, “Why aren’t they performing?” and ask more frequently, “What conditions make performance possible?”
Research increasingly points in this direction. Gallup’s workplace findings continue to show that management quality, communication and environment significantly influence engagement and performance.
Performance, in other words, is rarely an individual event, It is often an organisational outcome.
Peter Drucker famously said culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Perhaps today’s workplace teaches another lesson: culture can also consume talent.
Because talent without clarity becomes frustration, capability without alignment becomes confusion and potential without trust becomes unrealised promise.
Organisations communicate more than they realise, not only through speeches and strategy sessions but through feedback, recognition, manager behaviour, role design, what gets rewarded and what gets ignored.
The uncomfortable truth is that some employees described as low performers may not be experiencing low capability, they may be experiencing low alignment.
This is not an argument against standards. Standards matter, execution matters and accountability matters but talent alone rarely sustains performance.
Performance happens when capability meets communication, expectations meet trust and potential meets environment.
The best employees are not always underperforming, sometimes, they are simply waiting to be seen in the right place.
Esther Adeyanju is the Head of Corporate Communications at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM)

Ngozi Ekugo is a Senior Correspondent at BusinessDay. She holds a Masters in management from the University of Lagos, an undergraduate from University of Lagos, and is in an alumni of Queen's College. Shes currently an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM). She has a brief experience at Goldman sachs, London in its Human Capital Management division. She is interested in human capital development and is leveraging her varied experience across sectors to report labour and global mobility trends for stakeholders to make informed decisions.

Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date

Open In Whatsapp