Managing Performance When You Can’t See the Work

Photo by Marielle Ursua on Unsplash

Performance Conversations Have Always Been Challenging

Even when everyone shared the same office space, objectively assessing performance, addressing gaps, and providing meaningful feedback demanded preparation, clarity, and a touch of courage.

Today, with hybrid and remote work becoming the norm, things have grown even more complex.

When team members aren’t physically present day-to-day, we only witness fragments of their work. We see them. We read their emails. We receive their work. We might spend a few hours interacting with them in a week.

Yet, from these glimpses, it’s easy to start forming a judgment about their overall performance.

Leaders need to handle this carefully.

Visibility is not Performance

One of the biggest pitfalls in remote management is mistaking visibility for performance.

The person who talks a lot during meetings, replies instantly to messages, or is always online might seem highly engaged. Meanwhile, someone quieter and less visible could be consistently delivering great results.

In an office, managers naturally gather hundreds of subtle cues each week, remote work removes much of this context.

As a result, our judgments can become overly influenced by just the visible fragments.

Strong leadership means acknowledging this limitation instead of filling in the gaps with assumptions.

Start by Questioning Your Own Assumptions

Before discussing someone’s performance, take a moment to reflect on your own evaluation.

What exactly are you assessing?

What evidence backs it up?

Are you comparing results to clear, communicated expectations or to ones that only exist in your mind?

This difference is crucial.

Remote work heightens ambiguity. Issues that might have been fixed quickly with a casual office chat can drag on for weeks simply because no one realizes expectations have drifted apart.

That’s why leaders must set crystal-clear goals: the clearer the expectations, the easier it is for both manager and employee to see if things are on track.

Setting clear goals isn’t micromanaging. Quite the opposite — it gives people freedom by knowing what success looks like without prescribing every move.

Make Performance Conversations Continuous, Not Occasional

Treating performance discussions as one-off events is a common mistake, instead, performance management should be ongoing.

If your only in-depth talk about someone’s work happens during quarterly or annual reviews, you’re both at a disadvantage.

This is even more true in remote or hybrid settings.

Short, regular check-ins help spot small issues before they grow and prevent feedback from feeling sudden or unfair.

No one should learn in a review that their manager has been unhappy for months.

Feedback that arrives six months late isn’t very helpful.

Keep Feedback Clear and Concrete

Remote feedback needs to be specific.

Phrases like “you need to communicate better” or “you should be more proactive” often leave too much open to interpretation:

What does “better” communication mean?

What would “more proactive” actually look like?

Instead, point to particular situations, behaviors, results, and expectations.

This small shift transforms the conversation.

Instead of jumping to blame, you explore the process together. You see where expectations didn’t align and understand why.

Sometimes the issue is performance.

Sometimes it’s unclear instructions.

Sometimes it’s a broken system.

Or maybe missing info, resources, or support.

Good leaders know the difference.

Feedback Flows Both Ways

It’s easy to forget: feedback is a two-way street.

If you want others to openly hear what they could improve, you also need to be willing to hear what you can do differently to help them excel.

Remote work makes this vital because managers may miss challenges obvious in a shared workplace.

Ask.

Listen.

Be ready to hear things you might not like.

Also, don’t build your judgment solely on your own interactions. When appropriate, gather views from colleagues and stakeholders who regularly collaborate with the person.

Not to start a popularity contest or gossip behind their back, but to form a fuller, fairer picture of their contributions.

Performance Management Is About Support

Maybe it’s time to rethink the phrase performance management.

Leadership isn’t just about measuring output. It’s about creating the environment where people can do their best work.

That means setting clear goals, observing results carefully, questioning your biases, giving timely feedback, listening actively, and stepping in when support is needed.

Technology has changed where and how we work, but leadership’s core responsibility remains the same.

If anything, distance makes it more important.

When you can’t see the work directly, you need to get better at seeing the person, their outcomes, and the context behind them.