"Exceeds Expectations" Used to Mean Something

Between 60 and 80% of employees receive "exceeds expectations" on their performance reviews. That's the rating designed for exceptional performance. It's now the norm. And it's leaving people completely unprepared for the moment reality catches up. Managers inflate ratings to avoid difficult conversations. Employees walk away with false confidence about where they actually stand. When they eventually move to an organization with an honest feedback culture, the gap between what they were told and what's true hits hard. Researchers call it competence shock. The people I've coached through it call it something closer to betrayal. This isn't just about ratings. It's about a systemic failure in how we select, train, and hold accountable the people we put in management roles. We promote the brilliant engineer into engineering manager and expect them to figure out people leadership on their own. No training. No accountability. And the cycle repeats across generations of leadership. In this episode, Ginny traces how performance rating systems broke down, why inflated feedback is conflict avoidance dressed up as kindness, and what honest feedback actually looks like in practice. ➔ How compensation tied to ratings broke the meaning of "meets expectations" ➔ Why the self-esteem movement created a generation unprepared for honest assessment ➔ The real reason managers inflate ratings — and what it costs the people they manage ➔ What giving an honest 3 to a team member who cried taught me about real leadership ➔ What organizations need to change about how they select, train, and evaluate managers Honest feedback is an act of care. Inflated ratings are conflict avoidance. Your people deserve the truth about their performance because that's the only way they can actually grow. Have you ever received feedback that turned out to be more generous than accurate? What happened when reality caught up? Drop your experience in the comments. 🔔 Subscribe for honest conversations a