Why Annual Reviews Are the Wrong Trigger for Executive Coaching

In these conversations, one recurring theme consistently surfaces:

“Once we complete annual performance reviews, we’ll know who needs executive coaching.”

While understandable, this mindset fundamentally misunderstands both the purpose of executive coaching and the intent of performance reviews. In fact, using annual reviews as the primary trigger for coaching is not only ineffective—it can actively undermine leadership growth, trust, and organizational culture.

A strategic investment in leadership capability, maturity, and long-term impact.

When coaching is tied to annual review outcomes, it sends a subtle but powerful message:

• Coaching is for underperformers
• Coaching is reactive
• Coaching is a consequence

High-performing leaders—often those with the greatest potential and organizational impact—quickly disengage from anything positioned this way.

I’ll be direct: I have a deep and longstanding professional disdain for how annual performance reviews are still used in most organizations today. They were never meant to be a surprise, a verdict, or a once-a-year trigger for development or coaching. When done well, an annual review should do one thing—and one thing only: summarize a year’s worth of ongoing conversations, real-time feedback, coaching moments, course corrections, and leadership growth. If a leader learns something new about their performance in an annual review, the process has failed. Full stop.

And when that already broken process is compounded by the use of in-house “assessments” administered or interpreted by individuals who are not properly trained or qualified, it becomes not just ineffective—but reckless. Too often, unvalidated tools and misinterpreted data are treated as objective truth and fed directly into performance reviews. That is grossly inept and should never, under any circumstances, influence a leader’s performance narrative, development decisions, or readiness assessment. Assessments demand expertise, context, and ethical application. Without that, they don’t develop leaders—they damage them.

What concerns me even more than the flawed use of annual performance reviews is when they are skipped altogether—treated as an afterthought, rushed through, or weaponized as a last-minute “gotcha” conversation. In those moments, reviews become neither developmental nor meaningful; they become avoidant, performative, or punitive. That abdication of leadership responsibility is just as damaging as a poorly executed review. A performance review should never be optional, rushed, or surprising. It exists for one reason only: to formally summarize a year of consistent dialogue, growth, coaching, and course correction that has already taken place. Anything less is not leadership development—it’s leadership negligence.

If an annual performance review reveals that a leader is “behind the mark,” the organization has already failed that leader.

Performance reviews should not be:

• A revelation
• A diagnosis
• A moment of reckoning

Instead, they should be a synthesis—a structured summary of:

• Ongoing performance conversations
• Real-time feedback
• Development discussions
• Coaching insights accumulated throughout the year

When leaders hear critical feedback for the first time in an annual review, trust erodes, defensiveness rises, and meaningful growth stops.

Executive coaching is most powerful when it is embedded into the leadership lifecycle—not bolted on at year-end.

Forward-thinking HR organizations use coaching to:

• Accelerate leadership readiness
• Support leaders through complexity, scale, and change
• Strengthen self-awareness, judgment, and decision-making
• Reinforce leadership behaviors that shape culture

This work happens before performance issues surface—not as a response to them.

The most effective organizations we work with take a fundamentally different approach:

In these environments, performance reviews confirm progress already discussed. Coaching is normalized, respected, and sought after—not feared.

Instead of asking:

“Who needs coaching based on this year’s review?”

A more powerful question is:

“Which leaders—and future leaders—would benefit from deeper insight, greater leadership maturity, and stronger impact right now?”

That shift changes everything.

Executive coaching is not a reaction to underperformance. It is a catalyst for excellence. When HR leaders reposition coaching as an ongoing strategic lever, annual reviews transform from stressful events into meaningful reflections—and leaders feel supported rather than judged. 

If your organization is rethinking how coaching, performance management, and leadership development intersect, now is the time to have a different conversation. John Mattone Global partners with organizations worldwide to embed executive coaching as a strategic driver of leadership effectiveness, culture, and long-term success. I invite you to reach out and explore how a proactive coaching model can elevate your leaders—before performance gaps appear.

That is how cultures strengthen. That is how leaders grow. And that is how HR truly leads.

Rich Baron is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Global Coaching Projects at John Mattone Global (JMG) and a Master Certified Intelligent Leadership® Executive Coach. He partners with C-level leaders and high-potential executives around the world to strengthen trust, elevate culture, and drive sustainable transformation.

Rich leads large-scale coaching and cultural initiatives across multiple regions and industries and serves as a strategic bridge between executive teams, HR, and global coaching networks. He is also the co-host of the Mainline Executive Coaching ACT podcast, recognized as one of the top executive coaching podcasts globally, where he explores the real-world challenges and opportunities facing today’s leaders.

Through his work, Rich is dedicated to CHANGING THE WORLD One Leader, One Organization at a Time® by helping leaders move beyond performance and build the inner architecture required to become world-class executives.