The Best Employees Are Not Always Underperforming, Sometimes They Are Mispositioned

(What Dembele’s career reveals about performance, expectations and the overlooked role of organisational environment.)

There is a question organisations rarely ask, even though millions of careers may depend on it:

When people underperform, are we measuring capability or are we measuring context?

Across workplaces, industries and even nations, performance is still treated as though it exists in isolation. Targets are missed and conclusions are drawn. An employee becomes quieter than usual and assumptions begin. Someone’s output declines and labels quietly appear: disengaged, difficult, average, inconsistent, not leadership material.

But perhaps one of the most overlooked questions in organisational life is this:

What if some people are not underperforming?

What if they are under-positioned?

To understand the question, strangely enough, it helps for us to leave the boardroom and visit football.

Even for those who do not follow the sport closely, the story of Ousmane Dembélé offers an interesting case study in performance.

Dembélé arrived at FC Barcelona as one of the most expensive and exciting football talents in the world. Expectations were enormous. His talent was unquestioned, yet his years there became associated with inconsistency, interruptions and unrealised expectations. Critics questioned whether he had fulfilled his promise.

Years later, his move to Paris Saint-Germain F.C. changed the conversation. Under a different system, different expectations and a different environment, observers began talking less about wasted potential and more about renewed performance and impact. Analysts increasingly pointed not only to improved execution but to role clarity, trust, structure and alignment.

The easy conclusion is to say he became better but perhaps that is too convenient.

The more interesting question is this: Did the player change or did the conditions that shaped performance change?

But perhaps there is another possibility organisations rarely discuss.

Could it also be that sometimes people do not enter organisations carrying only their skills?

Sometimes, they arrive carrying expectations.  They are recruited to fix years of underperformance, to replace someone exceptional, to revive declining numbers, to become the breakthrough hire, to justify investment, to prove they deserve the opportunity and without realising it, organisations quietly communicate a dangerous message:

You were hired to rescue us.

Performance then becomes something heavier than work; It becomes identity.

Every meeting becomes an assessment.

Every comparison becomes evidence.

Every mistake becomes confirmation that perhaps they were never ready.

This pressure becomes even more intense when people enter environments where everyone appears more experienced, more established, more accomplished or more visible than they are.

The result is rarely laziness, often, it is performance anxiety.

Psychologists sometimes describe this as evaluation apprehension or fear of negative judgement – a state where attention shifts from execution to self-protection.

People begin managing impressions instead of creating impact.

They speak less, take fewer risks, seek perfection, overprepare, overthink and underperform. This is not because capability disappeared but because confidence became occupied.

This is why onboarding is not administration, it is communication.

Performance management is not scorekeeping, it is communication.

Leadership is not expectation-setting alone, it is expectation-calibrating.

We must note that not every employee enters with the same starting line.

Two employees may hold the same title and possess similar capability yet respond completely differently to pressure, ambiguity, visibility and comparison.

Human beings are not standardised operating systems.

Some thrive under stretch goals, others require psychological safety before confidence emerges, some gain energy from competition and others gain confidence from trust.

Perhaps organisations should stop asking: “How quickly can they perform?” and begin asking: “What conditions help this person perform sustainably?”

Sometimes employees are not failing under the weight of work, sometimes they are failing under the weight of expectation.

No amount of talent consistently survives an environment where fear becomes louder than possibility.

Organisations evaluate people as though performance is entirely personal and rarely organisational.

Yet decades of workplace research suggest otherwise.

Gallup’s research has consistently shown that engagement and performance are deeply influenced by management quality, communication, clarity and environment. In one of its most cited findings, managers account for as much as 70% of the variation in team engagement.

Think about that for a moment.

Seventy percent.

That means performance is not only an employee story. It is also a communication story, a leadership story and an environment story.

Gallup’s broader workplace findings also show that highly engaged business units experience stronger productivity, profitability, customer outcomes and retention than less engaged teams.

In other words: performance rarely happens alone.

The philosopher Peter Drucker famously observed that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

What if, in today’s organisations, culture also eats talent for breakfast? This is because talent without clarity becomes frustration.

Capability without communication becomes confusion and potential without alignment becomes disappointment.

This is where communication enters the conversation.

Communication is often misunderstood as messaging but organisational communication is infrastructure.

It determines whether people understand expectations, whether strategy becomes action, whether employees know what success looks like, whether feedback becomes development and whether trust survives pressure.

Organisations do not only communicate through town halls, emails and presentations.

They communicate through manager behaviour, through performance conversations, through recognition, through role design, through silence, through what gets rewarded and through what gets ignored.

The uncomfortable truth is that some of the employees organisations quietly describe as low performers may actually be experiencing low alignment.

The problem may not always be motivation.

Sometimes it is positioning.

The question leaders should ask is no longer:

“Why are they not performing?”

But:

“Have we created the conditions where performance can emerge?”

And the question professionals should ask themselves is not always:

“Am I good enough?”

But:

“Am I in an environment that recognises how I create value?”

This is not an argument against accountability.

Performance still matters.

Standards still matter.

Execution still matters.

But performance is rarely produced by talent alone.

Performance is what happens when capability meets communication, expectations meet trust and potential meets environment.

Perhaps that is the lesson hidden in more careers than we realise.

The best employees are not always underperforming.

Sometimes, they are simply waiting to be understood, trusted and positioned where their strengths can finally become visible.

About the Author

Esther Adeyanju is a Corporate Communications Executive and thought leader with over ten years of experience in strategic communication, stakeholder engagement, reputation management and organisational leadership. As Head of Corporate Communications at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), she is passionate about exploring the intersection of communication, leadership, people management and the future of work. Her writing focuses on workplace trends, talent development, organisational culture and business resilience.