As a leader, each year you’re probably spending several weeks deep in the performance management process, assessing the performance of your team and calibrating ratings with your peers.

There have been endless debates about the value of performance management, but at ProjectNext Leadership, we’ve always been most interested in what comes AFTER the performance management cycle.

In many organizations, the process primarily serves the function of determining how to allocate rewards, a tool for compensation decisions.

And yes, your people care about their comp, but whatever news you share with them about rewards, even if it’s terrific news, will wear off faster than you can say “direct deposit.”

They care about their growth.

They care about what you’re doing to invest in them getting better, stronger, and becoming the best leaders they can be for you…or for someone else if you’re not careful.

And chances are, in your calibration meetings, you talked about who you want to retain, who you want to grow and who you want to promote. But many times we’ve seen that that’s the end of the conversation instead of the beginning of action.

From our experience working with senior leaders, here are some suggestions to move from assessing your talent to actually advancing it:

1. Shore up key leaders – Executive coaching is a powerful way to not only provide high-touch support for development, but to signal a deep investment in a leader's future. However, coaching at the most senior levels is different. As we’ve explored in our thinking on Coaching for Senior Executives, the focus often shifts from basic skill-building to navigating the isolation and complexity of more senior, high-impact roles. The most effective coaching starts with a clear assessment of where they are today, a manager check-in to align on the path forward, and a steady cadence of one-on-one touchpoints to ensure they feel supported in their most critical goals.

   
   

2. Provide scaffolding for those you promote – We often celebrate a promotion on Friday and expect the leader to be fully effective on Monday. However, the fastest way to accelerate speed to impact is actually to give that leader the intentional space to step back and recalibrate. Without this, even the most talented leaders can get caught in the weeds of tactical execution because that is what made them successful in their previous role.

   
   

   We have found that providing this kind of scaffolding is critical, especially during complex transitions and promotions. In our work supporting the transition of top senior leaders during a global restructure, we saw the value of moving away from a ‘figure it out as you go approach.’ Instead, we focused on helping leaders craft comprehensive plans for their first six months–identifying stakeholder strategies, planning intentional listening tours, and practicing their leadership introductions to their new teams.

   
   

   Taking this strategic pause allows a leader to shift from a reactive state to a more strategic and intentional way of leading in their new role. When you invest in this support early on, you ensure your newly promoted leaders don’t just fill a seat, but truly own the role with the confidence and clarity needed to deliver results quickly.

   
   

3. Don’t forget about the impact of changes to teams - If you’re promoting leaders or moving resources around at this time of year, keep in mind that even one change on a leadership team essentially changes the chemistry of the whole. Pulling the team together to get clear on the new current state, paint a collective picture of the future ahead of them and establish productive working agreements will accelerate the team’s performance and ability to collaborate most effectively.

   
   

4. Build your Bench: From our research on Succession Planning, we know that one of the biggest reasons succession planning efforts fail is the gap between identification and readiness. It is common for organizations to spend months identifying high-potential talent, only for those names to sit on a static list that is rarely revisited. The time immediately following performance management is the most critical window to move those leaders from a spreadsheet into an active development experience.

   
   

   We have found that the most effective way to bridge this readiness gap is by moving away from isolated training and toward cohort-based development. When you bring your future leaders together, you build more than just individual capabilities: you build a community of peers who have the relationships to more effectively lead across the organization. This approach provides the transparency these leaders crave and creates a living, breathing pipeline of talent that is actually prepared to step up when the organization needs them most.

So, yes, focus on getting through the performance management cycle with deep alignment and accuracy, but start thinking now about what comes after performance management.