High Expectations + High Support = Magical Outcomes

A manager I was working with wanted to fire someone on his team. He was done. The employee—let’s call him Mark—just wasn’t performing. Missed deadlines, sloppy work, seemed disengaged. The manager had tried everything, he told me. Nothing was working.

I asked him a simple question: What are the expectations for Mark’s role?

He gave me a vague answer.

I asked another: Does Mark know what success looks like? Specifically?

Silence.

I asked a third: What support have you given him to close the gap between where he is and where he needs to be?

More silence. Then, a little defensively: “I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do. He should be able to figure this out.”

This is where most of these stories end. The manager convinces themselves the employee isn’t right for the role. HR gets involved. The employee is let go, often confused about what exactly went wrong. Everyone moves on. The manager hires someone new and hopes for better luck.

But this time, something different happened. I suggested we put Mark on a performance improvement plan (PIP). The manager resisted—he saw it as a formality before the inevitable.

He wasn’t wrong to be skeptical. Most of the time, a PIP is an ineffective tool. It’s not really a plan for improvement—it’s a paper trail. A formalized version of “here’s why we fired you.” Everyone knows the decision has already been made. The employee feels it. The manager knows it. HR just needs the documentation.

But that’s not how we used it.

Instead of having the manager write the PIP alone, we built it collaboratively. I kept asking questions he hadn’t considered: What exactly should Mark be delivering? Does he know that? What’s the gap between where he is and where he needs to be? What would it take to close that gap? Can you actually provide that support—do you have the time, the skill, the willingness?

By the time we finished, the manager realized something uncomfortable. He hadn’t been clear on his expectations and had not provided support.

We sat down with Mark together. The manager walked through the expectations—clear, specific, no ambiguity. Then he asked Mark something he’d never asked before: “What do you need from me to get there?”

Mark looked stunned. He’d spent months feeling like he was failing without understanding exactly why or what he was supposed to be doing differently. Now, for the first time, he knew what the target was. And someone was asking how to help him hit it.

Mark started performing. Not gradually. Almost immediately. The work got sharper. He hit deadlines. He started asking better questions. Within two months, he was one of the strongest people on the team.

High Expectations + High Support = Magical Outcomes

When someone transforms—really changes what they’re capable of—this is almost always the structure underneath.

High expectations. Not impossible, not comfortable. Just beyond current reach. High enough that they have to stretch. Low enough that stretching might actually work. Set them too low and you get boredom. Too high and you get burnout.

High support. Not cheerleading. Not “let me know if you need anything.” Actual investment of time, attention, and skill in helping someone close the gap between where they are and where they need to be.

Miss either side and the formula breaks. High expectations without high support is cruelty. High support without high expectations is coddling. You need both.

The skill gap is where most people fail. They sense someone isn’t meeting expectations, but they never do the real work: What specifically is the gap? What would it actually take to close it? Do I know how to help with that?

And even if they answer those questions, there’s a harder one: Given my real constraints—my time, my capacity, my competing priorities—can I actually provide that support?

I’ve known many managers who genuinely wanted to help their people grow. They could see the gap. They knew what it would take. But they couldn’t carve out the hours, and they weren’t honest with themselves about that. So they set high expectations without the high support to match, and watched good people fail for reasons that had nothing to do with ability.

Get this formula right, and something close to magic happens. The person doesn’t just hit the target—they become someone who can hit targets like that. Get it wrong, and you get burnout, self-doubt, or a quiet erosion of confidence that can take years to rebuild.

This formula isn’t just for managers. It shows up anywhere one person is trying to help another person grow—in classrooms, in coaching, in therapy. The context changes, but the structure doesn’t.

Here’s a simple framework for doing this well. Whether you’re managing someone, teaching them, or helping them grow in any capacity:

1. What are the expectations of the role?

2. Does the person in the role understand these expectations?

3. What is the skill gap between the role and the person performing the role?

4. Given the skill delta, how do you support this person (ignoring constraints)?

5. Considering your constraints as a manager/leader, what is realistic for you to support?

6. Is the support you can provide going to be enough to fill that delta between expectations and skills?

If the answer to that last question is no, something has to change—the expectations, the support, or the fit.

If you manage people, teach, coach, or care for someone—this is the work. Set high expectations. Provide high support. Be honest about whether you can actually do both.