Performance management questions.
89 performance managementquestions from the bank — open to read. Pick one and practice it out loud; a coach note comes back in seconds.
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Walk me through how you'd start documenting concerns about a team member who's been underperforming for a quarter.Walk me through how you decide whether your concerns about a team member's performance are real or just calibration drift.Walk me through how you'd deliver tough performance feedback to a team member who's been performing well historically.Walk me through how you'd design a 60-day improvement plan for a struggling team member that's actually winnable.Walk me through how you'd transition out a team member with care for both them and the team.Walk me through how you'd handle a team member whose work output is fine but whose behavior with peers is causing friction.Walk me through how you'd handle peer calibration when one of your team members is rated higher than you think they should be.Walk me through how you'd deliver feedback to a team member who's been told 'good job' by everyone else for a year.Walk me through how you'd build a development plan for someone whose role has evolved beyond what they were hired for.Walk me through how you'd communicate a team member's exit to the rest of the team.Walk me through how you'd verify a manager's complaint about a team member when you've not seen the behavior firsthand.Walk me through how you'd respond when your team is calibrated lower than other teams of similar quality.Walk me through how you'd address a team member who interprets every piece of feedback as a personal attack.Walk me through how you'd assess whether a PIP should be terminated early — either successfully or not.Walk me through how you'd handle a transition conversation when the team member has financial pressures you know about.Walk me through how you'd document a pattern of small misses rather than one big issue.Walk me through how you'd handle calibration when you suspect another manager is over-rating their team for promotion.Walk me through how you'd give feedback to a team member who's about to go on extended leave.Walk me through how you'd handle a team member who's improving on the metrics but the team's morale around them isn't.Walk me through what you'd do after a transition is final, to learn from the experience.Walk me through how you'd handle a team member whose performance dropped after a difficult life event.Walk me through how you'd advocate for a team member who's underrated by their peers.Walk me through how you'd separate developmental feedback from evaluative feedback in the same conversation.Walk me through how you'd respond when HR pushes for a PIP but you don't think it's the right move yet.Walk me through how you'd handle the offboarding of a long-tenured team member who's leaving on poor terms.Walk me through how you'd build a record on a team member who's a top performer when watched but coasting otherwise.Walk me through how you'd handle calibration when forced rankings are imposed but you don't have a clear bottom.Walk me through how you'd give your manager feedback about how they're managing you.Walk me through how you'd structure a no-PIP intervention for an early-stage problem.Walk me through how you'd handle a team member's request for a strong reference after a poor performance period.Walk me through how you'd collect evidence about a team member's missed deadlines without micromanaging them.Walk me through how you'd prepare for a calibration meeting when you're unfamiliar with other teams' work quality.Walk me through how you'd deliver feedback to a team member who consistently submits work that needs multiple rounds of revision.Walk me through how you'd set measurable milestones for a PIP focused on communication skills.Walk me through how you'd support a departing team member in updating their resume and portfolio.Walk me through how you'd track performance concerns when you only meet with your team member once a week.Walk me through how you'd explain your team member's rating when a peer manager questions it during calibration.Walk me through how you'd structure a feedback conversation about a team member's inconsistent responsiveness to messages.Walk me through how you'd decide what support resources to include in a PIP for a technical skill gap.Walk me through how you'd handle a team member's questions about severance or benefits during a transition conversation.Walk me through how you'd gather input from cross-functional partners about a team member's collaboration skills.Walk me through how you'd respond in calibration when you realize you've been rating your team more leniently than peers.How do you assess an individual's actual contribution when most of their output is produced with heavy AI assistance?How do you run calibration fairly when one team has adopted AI tooling aggressively and another hasn't — and raw output numbers no longer mean the same thing?Walk me through giving feedback to someone whose AI-assisted volume is high but whose judgment calls — the part you actually need — are getting worse.Your company's activity dashboard flags a remote team member as 'low activity,' but the work they deliver is solid. What do you do with that signal?How do you set performance expectations for a role that AI tooling is reshaping faster than your review cycle can keep up with?Walk me through managing someone out when the honest reason is that AI has shrunk the need for their role — their performance was never the problem.How do you address a respected senior team member who refuses to adopt the team's AI tooling and has become the bottleneck in every review cycle?What's your approach when a skip-level pushes you to rate someone higher because they're visible in the office, not because of their results?You take over a team and inherit zero documentation on a member everyone privately calls 'a problem.' How do you form your own assessment?A team member on a PIP is using AI to hit every written milestone while the underlying capability gap remains. How do you handle the PIP review?A struggling team member wants an internal transfer instead of a PIP — and the receiving manager calls you for the real story. What do you say?How do you give performance feedback when most of what you've observed comes through artifacts — pull requests, documents, dashboards — rather than working beside the person?Your strongest team member's impact is mostly invisible glue work the rating rubric doesn't capture. How do you make their case in calibration?How do you separate a performance problem from a workload problem when a team member says they're drowning, but peers with similar scope are managing?Walk me through how you'd gather evidence when you suspect a team member is missing deadlines but you don't have visibility into their day-to-day work.Walk me through how you'd collect objective performance data for a remote team member whose productivity you're concerned about.Walk me through how you'd verify whether a team member's lack of collaboration is a skills gap or a motivation issue.Walk me through how you'd determine if performance concerns about a junior engineer are due to inadequate onboarding versus actual capability issues.Walk me through how you'd approach calibration when your skip-level reports are consistently rated lower than their peers across other managers.Walk me through how you'd handle calibration when a peer manager insists their struggling team member deserves promotion.Walk me through how you'd calibrate performance ratings when your team operates in a different business context than peer teams.Walk me through how you'd prepare to defend your performance ratings in a calibration meeting where you're the newest manager in the room.Walk me through how you'd structure a difficult performance conversation with a team member who's defensive and tends to deflect feedback.Walk me through how you'd deliver feedback to a high performer who's plateaued and doesn't realize their growth has stalled.Walk me through how you'd structure feedback for a team member whose technical skills are strong but leadership presence is holding them back from promotion.Walk me through how you'd deliver feedback to a senior team member when you're newer to the company than they are.Walk me through how you'd design a performance improvement plan for someone whose work quality is inconsistent rather than uniformly poor.Walk me through how you'd structure a PIP for a team member who meets output targets but consistently misses process requirements.Walk me through how you'd build a PIP that addresses both skill gaps and attitude issues simultaneously.Walk me through how you'd set milestones in a PIP when the performance issues are about judgment rather than measurable outputs.Walk me through how you'd design a PIP for a manager whose team is underperforming but who isn't violating any explicit expectations.Walk me through how you'd manage a team member's exit when they've accepted the decision but the timeline is still two months out.Walk me through how you'd handle the transition when a departing team member wants to tell the team themselves versus following company protocol.Walk me through how you'd structure the final weeks for a team member you're transitioning out who's become disengaged and bitter.Walk me through how you'd transition out a well-liked team member whose performance doesn't meet the bar without demoralizing the rest of the team.Walk me through how you'd support a team member's job search after deciding to transition them out while managing confidentiality.Walk me through how you'd gather input from cross-functional partners when evaluating a team member's performance on collaborative projects.Walk me through how you'd respond in calibration when HR challenges your ratings as systematically too harsh compared to company norms.Walk me through how you'd deliver mid-year feedback that contradicts the positive signals you've been giving in weekly one-on-ones.A manager brings you a PIP draft with milestones no one could hit in the window — it's clearly a paper trail for a decision they've already made. As the HR partner, walk me through your response.A manager tells you they want to fire someone 'for attitude.' Walk me through how you get them from impressions to evidence before anything formal moves forward.You're facilitating the annual calibration session and one department's ratings run a full point above every other group's. Walk me through how you run the session.A first-time manager asks you to deliver their team member's serious performance message for them. Walk me through how you handle the request.Walk me through how you'd plan the termination day for an employee at the end of an unsuccessful PIP — sequencing, who's in the room, systems access, and what the team hears.An employee's performance dipped shortly after they filed an internal complaint, and their manager wants to start a PIP now. Walk me through your analysis as the HR partner.A new manager asks you when a verbal coaching conversation is enough and when an issue needs a formal written warning. Walk me through the distinction and how you'd advise them.Two managers rate equivalent performance very differently, and the gap is about to flow into comp recommendations. Walk me through how you'd surface and correct it before the cycle closes.