Who to talk to first, and why it is not who you think
Think about the last month. Who got the most of your attention?
Originally published January 2017. Rewritten August 2026.
It was almost certainly the person causing you the most trouble. The one you rehearsed conversations about in the car. The one whose name came up in three separate meetings.
Now think about your best person. How much time did they get?
The arithmetic nobody runs
Most leaders spend the bulk of their discretionary attention on the bottom of their team and almost none on the top. Not because they decided to. Because the bottom generates the noise, and noise is what gets answered.
Which means the person who most repays your attention receives the least of it, and the person least likely to change receives the most.
Quint Studer's reversal
I first met this idea in a workshop and it changed what I believed about performance conversations. It comes from Quint Studer, a former hospital executive who founded Studer Group, and it appears in his book Results That Last.
His model sorts a team into high, middle and low performers, and then does something most leaders find uncomfortable.
You start at the top.
You have the conversation with your high performers first. Then the middle. The low performer conversation happens last.
Why the order does the work
Because moving your high performers opens a gap.
When the top of your team moves forward, the distance between them and the middle becomes visible. The middle, who are mostly capable and mostly willing, move into that space. And when the middle moves, the distance between them and the bottom stops being a matter of opinion and becomes something everybody can see, including the person at the bottom.
Studer's argument is that this does more than any amount of talking to the bottom ever will.
I would put it differently. You are not applying pressure. You are removing the cover. A low performer in a team where the standard is unclear can tell themselves they are fine. A low performer in a team that has visibly moved cannot.
Three conversations, not one conversation three times
With a high performer, tell them where the organisation is going, tell them what they are doing that you value, and ask what would make their job better. Then act on the answer, because they will notice whether you did.
With a middle performer, start by taking the fear out. Their job is not in question and they need to hear you say so. Then thank them specifically, name what they do well, and spend the bulk of the conversation on what they want to develop. Finish where you started, on what they contribute.
With a low performer, do not open with reassurance, because it is not true and they will hear it as evasion. Describe the specific behaviour, state the specific standard, name what has to change and by when, and say plainly what happens if it does not. Then put it in writing.
The mistake most leaders make is running the third conversation in the tone of the second. It helps nobody, least of all the person on the other side of it.
Where this needs care, and 2017 did not say so
Two things about this model deserve more caution than they get.
Sorting is a judgement, not a measurement. Once you have privately labelled somebody a low performer, you will notice the evidence that confirms it and discount the evidence that does not. So run the diagnosis before you run the model. Is this a strength under pressure, an empty tank, or a genuine won't? Those are three different problems and only one of them belongs in a low performer conversation.
And the gap is a tool, not a strategy. Studer's chapter is titled up or out, and the model does rely on discomfort to prompt a decision. In an Australian workplace in 2026, engineering discomfort and calling it management is a psychosocial hazard question. The difference is whether the person has been told clearly what is required and given a genuine chance to meet it. If they have, the discomfort is a consequence. If they have not, it is something else.
The order matters more than the words
Start with the people who will do something with your attention. Let the middle follow. And by the time you reach the bottom of your team, the standard will be doing most of the explaining for you.
One thing has gone from the original title. It's not personal, business is a team sport. It is a comforting thing to tell yourself before a difficult conversation, and it is not true. It is personal to the person receiving it, and pretending otherwise is how leaders end up sounding like they are reading from a script.
LEADERSHIP COACHING
The third conversation is the one people practise least.
And the one they get most wrong.
One to one coaching on the conversations you have been putting off: what to say, in what order, and how to hold the line when it gets uncomfortable.
We will practise the difficult one, out loud, before you have it for real.
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For students, and anyone who wants the evidence
The model in this article is not mine. Here is where it comes from.
Studer, Q. (2007) Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN 9780471757290. High, middle and low is Chapter 1.
Studer, Q. (2003) Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference. Gulf Breeze, FL: Fire Starter Publishing. ISBN 9780974998602.
A note on the source. Studer came to this as a hospital executive, and the model was built in healthcare before it travelled. His own chapter title is blunter than the version people usually repeat: it is called up or out. I have used the sequencing, because that is the useful part, but the article should not leave you thinking his model is gentler than it is. Everything here about diagnosing before sorting, and about where the discomfort becomes a hazard rather than a consequence, is mine.
Cite this article
Reference list
Satterthwaite, M-J. (2017) You are having these conversations in the wrong order. Revised August 2026. Scope Vision. Available at: https://scopevision.com.au/blog/holding-performance-conversations-its-not-personal-business-is-a-team-sport-1 (Accessed: [insert date]).
In text
(Satterthwaite, 2017)
Keep reading
Your Best Person Is Ramping Down
Why the first conversation matters most, and what it costs when your high performer never gets one.
Why do we tolerate porcupines in the workplace?
The diagnosis before the sorting. Strength under pressure, empty tank, or genuine won't.
Feedback: An Elephant or a Gift?
Whose weight is this? The question to run before any of these three conversations.
Align your Team's Vision, Behaviour and Consequences
Because none of this works if the standard was never agreed in the first place.
You already know
whose name came up three times.
The like button just below is how I know this landed.
And if someone came to mind while you were reading, send it to them. That is the better compliment.
