The Demand

Before your next performance conversation, you decide your frame before you decide your words. If you walk in with “this person is the problem” already concluded, the conversation is a verdict delivery no matter how you phrase it — and you will never find the system fix, the training gap, or the context problem that a diagnostic frame would have surfaced.

The Work

  1. Before your next performance gap conversation, write down the frame you’re currently running: verdict (“this person is the problem”) or diagnostic (“there is a gap and I need to understand what produced it”).
  2. If the frame is verdict, stop and rewrite it as diagnostic before the conversation happens.
  3. In the conversation itself, ask at least two questions aimed at understanding the cause of the gap before you state any conclusion.
  4. Apply the same frame check to your next hiring interview: are you asking “can this person do the job” or “does this person have the character to grow into the standard”? Use both, not just one.
  5. Apply the same frame check to your next accountability conversation: are you framing accountability as consequence or as ownership? Choose ownership and word the conversation accordingly.

Before your next difficult conversation of any kind this week, you name your frame in writing first, and you run the diagnostic version, not the verdict version.