Coaching practices for Diagnosing Performance Gaps
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Diagnosing Performance Gaps, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep assuming this person just didn’t try hard enough and pushing them to care more, and nothing changes
- Some weeks everything just clicks and I’m killing it, and I have no idea why
- I’ve plateaued — I keep working hard but I’m not getting closer to the people I admire in this field, and I can’t even pinpoint what they’re doing that I’m not, which is exactly the part I want to be able to finally see.
- I genuinely can’t tell if what I produced is any good
- I’m putting in the work but I honestly can’t tell if I’m getting better or just spinning my wheels
Practices that may help
- Explore before you prescribe: diagnose why the gap happened
The solution to a missed commitment depends entirely on what caused the miss — and you usually don’t know until you ask.
Crucial Accountability: Holding People to Commitments That Matter - Analyze your best days — not just your failures — to identify what drives success
When performance is above target, investigate what made it so: replicating peaks is as important as preventing troughs.
Feedback Loops and Behavior Change - Study what separates you from the best in the field
Identify the two or three things that the top performers do that you do not — yet.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Understood Clearly - Structured reflection on performance
Systematically compare your performance to an expert model to build accurate self-assessment.
Cognitive Apprenticeship: Learning by Making Thinking Visible - Track performance goals with quantitative metrics
Measure progress toward performance goals with numbers you collect, not impressions.
Process Goals, Made Practical - Use a challenge-calibration partner or coach
Have a more skilled observer set the challenge level — your own assessment is biased.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - Study the gap between prediction and result with honesty
Compare what you expected to what happened, and resist the urge to explain the gap away.
Plan–Do–Study–Act: Deming’s Loop for Personal Improvement - Agree in advance on what good performance looks like
Performance conversations go badly because the standard was never made explicit — the reprimand is the first time it is stated.
The One Minute Manager: Three Practices That Still Work - Close the gap between where you are and the next level through daily invisible work
The distance between average and above-average is usually many small daily disciplines, not one large talent gap.
The Slight Edge: Jeff Olson’s Philosophy of Consistent Small Actions - Assess readiness task by task, not person by person
Rate competence and commitment for the specific task in front of them, not the person overall.
Situational Leadership, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Competence Vs Performance
A result below your standard does not retroactively prove you are incompetent — learn to hold these as distinct.
Separate competence from performance
- When The Hedgehog Concept Best At Reality Check
Ask credible people who have seen your work directly whether you have genuine advantage — not people who love you.
Reality-check the best-at circle with outside input
- When The Slight Edge Turn Average Into Above Average
The distance between average and above-average is usually many small daily disciplines, not one large talent gap.
Close the gap between where you are and the next level through daily invisible work
- Comparing Yourself To Experts
Choose who you regularly compare yourself to — peers at a similar stage, not outliers at the peak.
Curate your comparison pool deliberately
- Competence Self Assessment
Have a more skilled observer set the challenge level — your own assessment is biased.
Use a challenge-calibration partner or coach
- How To Improve My Job Performance
Know what your manager is measured on and being pressured about — your work lands differently when it connects to that.
Map your manager’s top three priorities
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.