Person + Chair + Table = Performance
A simple equation to demystify performance and give us more career agency
We usually think of high performance in a business context as consistently delivering necessary results and impact. From my side, I also look for personal sustainability and joy as byproducts of true high performance.
Unfortunately, when someone struggles in a role at work, the story often gets flattened.
“They aren’t performing.”
But performance isn’t a static trait. It doesn’t live in a person. It emerges from the interaction between the person, the role they have, and the company context they’re operating within.
I use a simple model when I coach people navigating their careers, whether they’re feeling stuck, stepping into something new, or trying to make sense of a role that used to work but doesn’t anymore:
A person walks into a room, pulls out a chair, and takes a seat at the table.
That’s it. Something most of us do every day. But we forget how much is at stake each time we do it; we forget how much agency we have over our performance, simply by zooming out and understanding this action in its distinctive parts.
The person is a whole human being: They’re an amalgamation of skills, values, work preferences, blind spots, life experience, identity, personality, aspirations, motivations, season of life, and so much more.
The chair is a role: Whether it’s COO, Sales Manager, Head of R&D, or People Business Partner, each role has a defined scope, a function, and a set of outcomes it’s expected to deliver for the company, regardless of who sits in the chair.
The table is a company and its unique context: This includes its mission, maturity, strategy, norms, systems, power dynamics, product complexity, leadership culture, funding, and so on.
Performance lives at the intersection of these three.
And all three are subject to change.
Someone might thrive in a given role at one company and flounder in the same role somewhere else. A chair that was a perfect fit last year may not be anymore, because the table has changed, or the person has. Sometimes, the chair itself needs reshaping.
This is where it gets interesting.
High performers often feel a dip before anyone else notices. They start to sense friction. Their confidence wobbles. The work that used to flow feels heavier now. Sometimes, they wonder if something is wrong with them.
But my encouragement in these moments is to use that feeling as a trigger to zoom out and reflect on the person + chair + table equation. Look at the variables as exactly that: Variables. Elements subject to change. (Elements we actually expect to change over time!) If the outcome of this equation isn’t high performance, one or more of the variables has likely shifted, which means another more intentional change is required somewhere else. Not because the person or the role or the table is objectively “wrong.” But because they’re out of alignment with one another, causing unnecessary friction in the system.
If this happens to you, zoom out and ask:
Who am I now? How have I changed and evolved since I first took this chair?
What does the chair I’m in really require me to do/measure? Is the role still a match?
What’s changed in the business? How does that shape what success looks like for the person sitting at this table?
A few possible conclusions & examples
Let me give you three anonymized examples that I’ve witnessed personally.
I’ve outgrown this table.
Example: A leader joined an 8-person scale-up in a role with a senior marketing title. (In those early stages, titles are often cheap. I.e. They don’t accurately represent the same role in a recognizable way across companies/industries.) This leader was bright, curious, highly motivated and ambitious. She brought a grinding international work ethic into a more laid back Norwegian business context and as a result… got results! The founders were deeply grateful for her energy and focus; they relied on her completely to define her own scope, strategy, and targets. But after about 18 months, she found herself feeling increasingly frustrated and even resentful in her position. There was a lot of kudos, but no real feedback or coaching from her manager. The success of her marketing strategy didn’t lead clearly to success for the company, but the management team didn’t seem to connect those dots. And she was learning a lot, but couldn’t translate that into clear, intentional growth for herself.
When we zoomed out, it became clear that her needs as a person (separate from the role or the company) included more mentoring, guidance, and accountability at this stage of her career. The tricky part was actually that her ego had become wrapped up in her high-level title. She’d literally tied it to the chair!
A good next move for herself looked like a chair with a lower title and better defined expectations, seated at a table with more maturity (i.e. structure, leadership, resources). But she needed to untangle her identity from her role in order to make that move.
I’m still the right person for this table, but the chair needs a reset.
Example: A leader in a fast-growing scale-up found he was struggling after the company hit 150. He was a senior engineer and someone who knew the original product architecture like the back of his hand. He enjoyed the challenge of the company’s mission. Over the years, he had taken on increasing team and people leadership responsibilities, including promotions and title changes, almost by default. But at this point, his performance (based on his team’s outcomes) had slipped and he felt demotivated and a little lost.
Zooming out, though, the story was clear. The growth path he could point to was entirely motivated by the company’s need for greater stability in Engineering. None of the steps on the path came as a response to his own needs as a developer or a technical lead. The table was still right (i.e. the company didn’t want to lose what was great about the person in their context, and he was still a true believer in their mission), but he needed a different chair if they wanted him to deliver his best work and highest impact.
The chair is fine, but this table has outgrown me.
Example: In another tech startup, the team had grown slowly and steadily over a period of years to about 80 people. Several veteran employees had become agitated. One of these was a functional leader from the original core team. He wasn’t happy with the goal management system the company had recently adopted (OKRs); he didn’t want to list Key Results under his name. In the last set of employee dialogues between managers and direct reports, he had left all the sections blank in his self-review because he believed his time was more valuably spent on tasks in his backlog. His manager initially raved about this employee’s output, but had to admit that productivity had dropped. There wasn’t a Slack post this person didn’t engage with through the course of the day. He was the king of memes and custom emojis. His colleagues loved his dark sense of humor, and he was constantly in the kitchen chatting with people.
This employee insisted he was the right person in the right chair, but that the table was changing too much around him and in a bad way. “Why do I need a manager at all?” he asked one time. And another: “All this process feels like a waste of time.”
Zooming out, he was right about one thing: there was a clear misalignment between the person and the table. But the table’s needs were legitimate for the current context. Healthy growth requires additional structure. So the truth was that it was probably time for the person in the equation to find a different table. The tricky part was how much he identified with the company. Though the role he had was one that every tech company needs (and many were currently looking for), he had trouble imagining himself taking that familiar chair he enjoyed anywhere else.
A good next move for him looked like the same chair seated at a table in an earlier stage of growth, where he could operate freely and make a more immediate impact in a variety of ways. But he needed to untangle his identity from his company in order to make that move. That’s where this equation came in handy.
Final takeaway
When someone in your team is struggling, the question isn’t just “are they the right person?” It’s:
Is this still the right chair for this person? Have I (as their leader) adequately defined the chair in terms of expectations?
Are they at the right table for them to succeed? Have I (as their leader) adequately explained the table in terms of company needs and context?
This doesn’t mean we excuse poor performance. But it does mean we look for the real story behind it. We deconstruct. We stay human.
Because performance isn’t a verdict. It’s a relationship. And the more fluently we can read that relationship—for ourselves, and for our teams—the more agency we have to shape it, for ourselves, our teams, and our companies.
Looking for a coach?
Great leadership starts with a spark—an unmistakable sense of purpose that drives action and inspires others. When that spark dims, so does your impact. Coaching helps you reconnect with what matters most, so you can lead with clarity, focus, and meaning. Work with me!