The Conditions for Redemption

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you.”
— Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership

Every few years, the business world latches onto a new way to manage performance.

We redesign review systems. We introduce new frameworks. We rename competencies. We create new software to make feedback more frequent, more measurable, more actionable. Lately, we have outsourced the gathering and debriefing of feedback to an AI, making it more efficient and, by definition, less natural, less human. Then, inevitably, we conclude that the process isn’t working and start the search for a better process all over again.

I’ve participated in more than a few of such conversations over the last three decades, first as a board member and then, later, as a coach. I’ve completed and delivered dozens of performance reviews. All along, I’ve watched organizations abandon one system only to replace it with another that promised to solve the very problems the first had created. It can feel like an amusement park merry-go-round.

Recently, I sat down with my colleague Angela McKenna for a conversation about the performance management ride. Angela has spent much of her career helping organizations develop leaders and cultures capable of sustaining both excellence and humanity. We began by talking about reviews, goals, and accountability, and we ended somewhere entirely different.

At one point, Angela observed that organizations often become preoccupied with fixing the performance management process because they’ve given up on the harder work of shaping the culture.

That sentence struck me because it revealed something I’d missed. We often speak as though performance management is a discrete organizational function, but the truth is every performance conversation is an expression of culture. It reflects what an organization believes about people, about power, about accountability, about failure, about growth, and ultimately about human nature itself.

In other words, a review is never just a review.

It’s a window into what the organization believes is possible for the people inside it. It’s a glimpse into the possibility of redemption.

For years, I’ve said that leadership is about creating the conditions where some of the smartest people in the world can do the best work of their lives. I still believe that. But as many of you know, I also believe work presents us with the chance to be a better person and, as I say repeatedly, better humans make better leaders (who then create and lead better, more humane organizations).

The best work of our lives isn’t simply what we produce. It is the work we do on ourselves while we are producing it. It is how we redeem ourselves and others.

A company ships products. It serves customers. It creates value. Those things matter. But every day, whether intentionally or not, it is also shaping human beings. Every meeting, every difficult conversation, every decision about accountability teaches people something about who they need to become to belong.

Can I admit I made a mistake here? Can I ask for help? Can I disagree with someone more powerful than I am? Can I tell the truth when the truth is uncomfortable? Can I recover after I fail? Can I rise after I fall?

These aren’t questions for HR; they are questions about the conditions that enable people to grow.

It’s tempting to think of culture as something abstract—as values written on conference room walls or principles recited during company meetings. But culture is much more concrete than that. It is experienced in a thousand ordinary interactions. It is revealed in what gets rewarded, what gets ignored, what gets forgiven, and what gets punished.

Culture is what we repeatedly, intentionally, and consciously create.

I’ve spent much of my career inviting leaders into radical self-inquiry. The questions have become familiar: What am I not saying that needs to be said? What am I avoiding? How have I become complicit in the very dynamics I claim to dislike?

Those questions remain essential because every organization eventually reflects the inner lives of the people entrusted to lead it. Fear creates fearful cultures. Scarcity creates scarcity cultures. Leaders who cannot acknowledge mistakes teach everyone else to hide theirs.

But there are other questions that emerge for me: What conditions am I creating that either invite or inhibit another person’s growth? What are the conditions for redemption?

That question feels especially important today because so much of modern organizational life has become transactional. We measure performance, evaluate results, distribute compensation, and move on to the next quarter. Those things are necessary. Organizations exist to accomplish work.

But if the only question we ask is whether someone performed, we miss the more important question: Who is this person becoming because they work here?

Every leader is already answering that question. The only uncertainty is whether they are doing so consciously. When I think about redemption, I don’t primarily think about forgiveness. Nor do I think about rescuing people from the consequences of their actions. Redemption is more demanding than that.

Redemption is the work of restoring something to its intended purpose.

A redemptive leader does not lower standards. A redemptive leader refuses to reduce another human being to their worst moment. Accountability remains. Expectations remain. Difficult conversations remain.

What changes is the purpose of those conversations. They are no longer about proving who deserves to stay and who deserves to go. They become opportunities to reclaim what fear, shame, confusion, or power have distorted. They become acts of stewardship.

I’ve come to believe that one of leadership’s central tasks is not merely to evaluate performance, but to redeem the conditions under which performance becomes possible.

That means creating cultures where people can tell the truth before a mistake becomes a crisis. Where accountability is experienced as respect rather than humiliation. Where feedback is offered because someone’s growth matters, not because a process requires it. Where people are challenged to become more capable without wondering whether they still belong.

That kind of culture does not emerge because we install a better system or a sophisticated AI.

It emerges because leaders are willing to do the slower, harder work of examining themselves. They ask how their own fears, ambitions, assumptions, and habits shape the emotional climate around them. They recognize that every organization becomes a reflection of what those with power are willing—and unwilling—to confront within themselves.

This is why radical self-inquiry remains at the heart of leadership. Self-awareness is the destination. It is the doorway to creating conditions in which other people can flourish.

When Angela and I began our conversation, we thought we were talking about performance management. Looking back, I don’t think we were. We were talking about redemption.

Because every performance system, every culture, and every leader eventually answers the same enduring question: Will people leave this place having merely done good work—or having become more fully themselves because of the work they did here?

I have come to believe that the answer to that question is one of the most meaningful measures of leadership we possess. It defines who we are and who we are becoming, as leaders and as people.