Beyond the Symptom: Closing the Gap and Setting Clear Expectations
You've identified the behavior. You've asked questions instead of making assumptions. Now comes the part of the conversation where real leadership begins.
Because not every performance problem has the same cause.
When we treat every issue the same way, we risk giving the wrong solution to the wrong problem—and both the leader and the team member leave frustrated.
Before you can help someone improve, you have to understand what gap you are actually trying to close.
Look Beyond the Behavior
The information you gathered during the curiosity step will usually point toward one of three gaps.
Skill Gap
The person genuinely does not know how to meet the expectation yet. They may need education, clarification, coaching, practice, or demonstration.
Will Gap
The person knows what to do, but confidence, motivation, competing priorities, burnout, or unresolved frustration is affecting consistent action.
System Gap
The barrier is not the individual. Staffing, workflow, equipment, communication, policies, or resources may be creating the behavior you are seeing.
One visible behavior can have three completely different causes.
That is why effective nurse leaders do not jump straight from observation to correction. They investigate first.
Nurse Leaders Already Know How to Think This Way
This is not a completely new leadership skill. It is the same disciplined thinking nurse leaders already use in clinical care.
Christine Tanner's Clinical Judgment Model
Tanner's model asks clinicians to move through four stages before acting on one piece of information:
- Notice
- Interpret
- Respond
- Reflect
Imagine responding to a patient's abnormal vital signs without first interpreting what they mean within the larger clinical picture.
You would not.
Yet leaders sometimes do exactly that during performance conversations.
We notice that someone is late and respond immediately. Later, we learn that the issue involved childcare, an unclear handoff expectation, or a scheduling process that repeatedly created the same barrier.
When we skip interpretation, we may treat a system problem like a motivation problem—or a confidence problem like a compliance problem. The conversation happens, but the real issue remains.
Leadership deserves the same disciplined thinking we apply to clinical care: interpret first, then respond.
Make the Future Behavior Clear
Identifying the gap is only part of the conversation. The next step is to define what success will look like.
One of the most common feedback mistakes is believing an expectation is clear simply because it was spoken aloud.
“I need you to improve.”
“Please communicate better.”
“You need to be more professional.”
“Beginning tomorrow, I need bedside report completed before 7:15 a.m.”
“During the next team meeting, allow the speaker to finish before responding.”
“We will reconnect next Wednesday to review your progress.”
“I want you to improve” is not a clear expectation. It is a hope—and hopes do not hold up well under the pressure of a busy shift.
Specific Expectations Change Performance
Psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent decades studying how goals affect performance. Across a large body of goal-setting research, their findings consistently supported the value of goals that are specific, challenging, and supported by feedback.
In practical leadership terms, people perform better when they understand:
- What behavior needs to be demonstrated.
- When the behavior should begin or be completed.
- How success will be evaluated.
- What support or resources are available.
The clearer the expectation, the more likely the person can act on it.
Put It Into Practice
Before ending the feedback conversation, make sure you and the team member can answer these four questions:
- Which gap are we addressing? Is it primarily a skill, will, or system gap?
- What behavior will look different? Describe what the person should do—not only what they should stop doing.
- When will we check progress? Choose an actual day rather than saying “soon” or “later.”
- What support is needed? Provide coaching, education, resources, or process correction when the gap is skill- or system-based.
If those questions remain unanswered, the conversation is probably not finished.
The Bottom Line
Great feedback does not end with identifying the problem. It closes the distance between today's behavior and tomorrow's expectation.
Leadership is not only about correcting performance. It is about helping people understand what success looks like and giving them a reasonable opportunity to reach it.
That only happens when expectations are clear enough to act on.
Next in the Proactive Feedback Series
In Part 4, we will explore the step many leaders skip entirely: the follow-up.
Even the strongest feedback conversation can lose its impact when the leader does not return, recognize progress, address what remains, and close the loop.
Continue the Conversation
This article is part of the Proactive Feedback Series from the Sisterly Advice™ Podcast—practical leadership conversations created by nurses who have done the work.
References
- Tanner, C. A. (2006). Thinking like a nurse: A research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(6), 204–211.
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2019). The development of goal setting theory: A half century retrospective. Motivation Science, 5(2), 93–105.
