“When I care about someone, I’m going to be tough on them, and kind to them.”
Joe Dicianno, Director of Organizational Development and Talent Management at UPMC, uses that idea to describe how he thinks about leadership. For him, performance and relationship are not in tension. They are connected. The expectation is clear. The support is real. And both show up in the same conversation.
Christa Gochenaur, Managing Director of HR at Simplex Trading, sees the same dynamic from another angle. “If you don’t have a strong relationship with your manager,” she said, “it can be difficult to establish and maintain a strong relationship with the company.”
Over the last several months, we interviewed CHROs and People & Culture leaders from organizations ranging from about one hundred employees to several thousand. Across those conversations, leaders repeatedly described a version of management that looks different from how the role was traditionally practiced.
Managers are still responsible for performance. That hasn’t changed. But how they drive performance has fundamentally shifted.
The Instinct That Undermines Management Effectiveness
One of the clearest patterns leaders described shows up in a moment most managers experience regularly.
An employee brings a challenge to their manager. Many managers instinctively start solving the problem. They offer direction. They explain what the employee should do next. The issue gets resolved quickly.
Jessica Adams, Chief People and Culture Officer at The Krazy Koupon Lady says that’s a mistake.
Strong managers, she explained, often pause before offering a solution. They ask questions instead. What have you tried? What do you think might work? What’s getting in the way?
The goal is not simply to resolve the problem. It is to help the employee think through it and arrive at the solution themselves. That shift changes the nature of the conversation. Instead of solving the issue for someone, the manager coaches the employee so they learn how to handle similar challenges in the future.
Over time, those small moments compound. Employees become more confident, more capable, and more accountable for their own work. What feels slower in the moment produces stronger performance over time.
Empathy Is Becoming a Performance Management Skill
Leaders consistently pointed to a growing expectation that managers really understand the people they lead.
Mike Ferone, EVP Global Human Resources & Enterprise Operations, put it this way: “Managers have to understand what’s going on with their people, not just what work is getting done.”
Today’s managers navigate far more than tasks and deadlines. They must understand what motivates individuals, how employees prefer to receive feedback, and what obstacles may be affecting performance. That awareness often determines whether a performance conversation actually helps someone improve.
For example, an employee struggling to meet expectations may not simply lack ability. They may be unclear on priorities, overwhelmed by personal challenges, or unsure how their work fits into the larger picture. Managers who understand that context are better equipped to respond productively.
They ask better questions. They adjust how they communicate. And they tailor their guidance to what will help that particular employee succeed.
Care Doesn’t Replace Accountability
If coaching and empathy are becoming more important, it might sound like expectations are becoming softer. They aren’t. The leaders in these interviews described the opposite.
That’s where Dicianno’s idea of being both tough and kind becomes important. Care without standards quickly becomes avoidance. Managers hesitate to address problems because they want to preserve the relationship.
But standards without care create a different problem. Employees receive criticism without trust, which often leads to defensiveness rather than improvement. Effective managers learn to hold both, at the same time.
They invest in the relationship so feedback can land productively. And they reinforce expectations clearly so performance continues to improve.
Manager as Coach
Taken together, these patterns point to a clear shift in how effective management works. The role hasn’t become easier—it’s become more human, and more demanding.
Managers still set direction and enforce standards. But the best ones increasingly do it through conversation, not control.
They ask more questions. They listen more carefully. They challenge people while supporting them.
In other words, they manage like coaches.
Organizations that want stronger performance will need to rethink how they develop managers accordingly.
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