How do I give feedback to someone who thinks they are performing well?

Understanding why this gap exists

When someone believes they are performing well and you see evidence otherwise, you are not necessarily dealing with defensiveness or denial. You are often facing a perception gap: a mismatch between their internal sense of how they are doing and the external evidence of their impact.

This is one of the most common conversations I work with in coaching and consulting. The person is not wilfully ignoring reality. They genuinely do not see what you see, and that tells you something important.

The sources of the perception gap

First, understand where the gap is coming from. This shapes how you approach the conversation.

Limited feedback history: If someone has not received clear, specific feedback on their performance before, they are navigating by self-assessment alone. They may base it on effort, good intentions, task completion, or how they feel they are contributing. If no one has told them that their delivery is incomplete, or their impact on colleagues is negative, they will not automatically know. This is especially true for people who are newly promoted, working remotely, or in roles where feedback is informal or rare.

Confirmation bias in self-perception: We all tend to notice evidence that confirms what we already believe about ourselves and overlook or reinterpret evidence that contradicts it. Someone who sees themselves as competent and reliable will filter their experience through that lens: mistakes become anomalies, missed deadlines get reframed as business priorities, and interpersonal friction gets attributed to others’ unreasonableness.

A gap in self-awareness or impact understanding: A person may be excellent at their core technical or functional task but unaware of how their style, pace or communication affects others. They may not realise their impact on team dynamics, decision-making speed, or psychological safety. This is not a performance problem with their core role; it is a blind spot about their influence.

Your own role in creating or missing the gap: Before you reach this conversation, ask yourself hard questions. Have you given them feedback along the way, or have you let things slide and now accumulated frustration? Have you been clear about your expectations and standards, or have you assumed they would infer them? Are your criteria for “performing well” visible to them, or are you judging them against an internal standard you have not shared? If the answer to any of these is no, the perception gap may partly be a feedback gap you have created by not being explicit enough, early enough.

How to navigate this conversation

Once you understand the source of the gap, your approach should move through four connected stages: diagnosing the reality together, making the evidence specific, inviting interpretation, and agreeing on what changes.

Stage one: Diagnose before you prescribe

Start by understanding their perception. Ask them directly what makes them feel they are performing well. What evidence are they using? What are they proud of? Where do they see their strengths? Listen for the patterns: effort, completion of tasks, their own satisfaction, feedback they have received.

This is not you agreeing with them. It is you understanding the story they are telling themselves. This grounds the conversation and shows you exactly where the gap is.

If you are using the CEDAR feedback model, or something similar, this diagnosis phase is essential. In CEDAR, you start with a shared understanding of the context and the desired outcome before you move into the evidence and recommendation. If you skip this and go straight to “here is what I see”, they will be defending their position rather than opening to new information.

Stage two: Surface your evidence with precision

Once you understand their perspective, introduce your evidence. Be specific. Vague feedback like “you are not performing at the level I need” does not land. Specific feedback does.

The BOOST model is particularly useful here. BOOST asks you to ground feedback in behaviour (what actually happened), outcome (what resulted), and observations (what you or others noticed). When you stick to observable facts, you move away from interpretation and closer to something they can actually see and respond to.

For example, rather than “you are not collaborative”, try: “In the last three project meetings, I noticed you led the discussion for most of the time and there were few moments where you asked others for input. When Sarah offered a suggestion, you moved on without exploring it. I am wondering what that pattern is about.”

This is specific. It is not about their character or their intent. It is about what happened, what you observed, and an open question about it.

Stage three: Invite them to make sense of the evidence

This is the critical move. You surface the evidence, and then you ask them what they make of it. You do not tell them what it means.

People are far more likely to shift their perception when they arrive at the insight themselves than when you try to convince them. If you say “this means you are not collaborative”, they will argue. If you say “here is what happened, what do you make of it?”, you create space for them to reconsider their own story.

This requires patience and genuine curiosity on your part. You need to sit with their initial defensiveness or disagreement without rushing to fix it. Some useful questions:

• What were you thinking in that moment?
• How do you think that landed with the team?
• If I am seeing this pattern, what else might I be missing?
• What would it look like if you approached this differently?

The AID model (Action, Impact, Desired outcome) works well here because it opens with the action (what happened), invites them to see the impact, and then jointly defines what success looks like. It is less about “you did this wrong” and more about “here is what I see, here is what it affects, what do we want instead?”

Stage four: Decide together what needs to change

Once there is some recognition of the gap, even if they do not fully agree, move to what happens next. This is where you shift from feedback to development.

What specifically needs to change? What is the evidence that the change has happened? What support do they need from you? What is in their own control?

If this is a significant performance gap, you may need to be clearer about expectations and timescale. “I need to see a shift in your approach to cross-functional collaboration by the end of the quarter. We will check in fortnightly so you get feedback on how this is landing.” This removes ambiguity and sets them up to succeed.

Understanding your own role

Before you leave this conversation, reflect on what you need to do differently. If the perception gap exists because feedback has been sparse or unclear, you need to change that. Regular, specific feedback, both on what is working and what needs to shift, prevents these gaps from becoming entrenched.

If you have been unclear about your standards or expectations, make them visible. Show them what strong performance looks like. Use examples. Reference the Feedback Models Hub if it helps you and them understand different approaches to giving and receiving feedback.

If you have been managing around the issue rather than addressing it, commit to directness. It is kinder and clearer to name a performance gap early than to let it accumulate and then confront it as a crisis.

The bigger pattern

This is not just a management conversation. It is a universal leadership and self-management issue. We all have gaps between how we see ourselves and how others see us. We all benefit from feedback that is specific, compassionate and clear. The discipline is in how you offer that feedback and how you create conditions where someone can actually hear it and do something with it. That is the work.

What does current research suggest?

The research does not offer a script for handling perception gaps, but several strands help explain why they happen and what might help. As with much of the feedback literature, the evidence varies in strength, and I would treat it as a way of thinking about the conversation rather than a set of rules.

Self-perception and feedback gaps are common

Research on 360-degree feedback suggests that gaps between self-assessment and others’ ratings are remarkably common. Brett and Atwater (2001) found that these gaps often reflect differences in what people are attending to: recipients tend to rate themselves on effort and intention, whilst observers rate them on observable impact and outcomes. Both are looking at real things; they are just looking at different things. This gap is not a sign of dishonesty or delusion. It is a sign that the person’s internal sense of how they are doing is built on different evidence than yours.

Confirmation bias affects self-perception powerfully

People tend to seek, interpret and remember information in ways that confirm what they already believe about themselves. Baumeister and Newman (1994) suggest that people have a “self-knowledge bias” that leads them to see their own behaviour and motivation as more reasonable and understandable than others might. Someone who sees themselves as thorough will interpret missed detail as an anomaly; someone who sees themselves as collaborative will interpret a dismissal of another’s idea as a time-management choice rather than a style issue. Knowing this is happening does not make it stop, but it explains why your evidence does not land immediately.

The narrative people tell themselves is powerful

McAdams and McLean (2013) explore the role of narrative identity, the story we tell ourselves about who we are, what we do and why in shaping behaviour and self-perception. A person’s story about themselves as “someone who tries hard and cares about their work” may be entirely sincere and still not capture the impact they have on team dynamics or decision-making speed. The narrative is true from their perspective. You are adding information that changes how the narrative should be understood. That takes time and genuine curiosity, not repetition.

Credibility and clarity matter for change

Fulham, Krueger and Cohen (2022) argue that feedback produces learning only when recipients are both receptive to it and able to discern whether it is true and useful. They note that clarity of evidence and consistency of message over time affect whether people take feedback seriously. A manager who gives sparse feedback and then suddenly surfaces a significant gap in perception faces an uphill task. The earlier and clearer you are, the more likely the gap is to be addressed early.

Four questions to ask yourself before the conversation

1. Where is the gap coming from? Limited feedback history, confirmation bias, blind spots, or your own lack of clarity about expectations.
2. How direct is my evidence? Separate what you have seen for yourself from what you have concluded over time.
3. What do I genuinely need to happen? Shared understanding of the gap, agreement on expectations, changed behaviour, or all three.
4. What is my role in creating this gap? Have I been clear enough, early enough, or have I been managing around it rather than addressing it?

Answer these before you ask them what makes them think they are performing well. The clarity you develop will show in how you navigate the conversation.

Three questions to reflect on

1. Think of someone in your team whose self-perception does not match what you see. What evidence are they basing their perception on? What evidence are you basing yours on?
2. What would it take for you to believe that your perception of their performance was incomplete or based on something they could not see?
3. What feedback have you given them along the way, and what has remained unspoken because it seemed easier to manage around it?

If you would like to explore ways of structuring a difficult feedback conversation, my article on which feedback model to use is a good starting point, and my Feedback Models Hub brings together CEDAR, BOOST, AID and several other approaches. I explore giving feedback and responding to feedback in my Leadership Library resources.

Sources

• Brett, J.F. and Atwater, L.E. (2001) ‘360° feedback: Accuracy, reactions, and perceptions of usefulness’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(5), pp. 930–942. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.5.930 (Accessed: 5 October 2026).
• Fulham, N.M., Krueger, K.L. and Cohen, T.R. (2022) ‘Honest feedback: Barriers to receptivity and discerning the truth in feedback’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 46, 101405. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101405 (Accessed: 5 October 2026).
• McAdams, D.P. and McLean, K.C. (2013) ‘Narrative identity’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), pp. 233–238. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622 (Accessed: 5 October 2026).