Calibration theatre is a meeting that looks rigorous but changes nothing: managers present, everyone nods, and the grades that walked in are the grades that walk out. This is Week 4 of the 7-week series on performance hurdles, written by Ash Taherian from the Performance Management Playbook. Here is how to tell if your calibration is theatre, and what a working one checks.
Signs you are watching theatre
- Grades rarely change in the room.
- One team rates far more people as top performers than others, and nobody asks why.
- Missing scorecards are “filled in later”.
- A sudden big jump in someone’s score is accepted without evidence.
The three checks that make it real
The playbook gives calibration three jobs: correct overly generous reviews, chase missing data or thin justifications, and investigate outliers. Its own examples: if half of a team is graded as top performers, ask the manager to identify the strongest of that group; if a support team’s scorecards are missing, follow up straight away so the cycle is not delayed; if a junior colleague jumps to “Exceptional” in one area, check the improvement is genuine and not a grading mistake.
What to record
For every changed grade: the original, the final, the reason and who agreed. Leadership then approves the final set and looks for patterns such as a consistently underperforming team. The full running order is in how to run a calibration meeting.
Bands are a prompt, not a quota
The playbook suggests the top grade covers roughly 15–25% of people. Treat that as a playbook guideline that prompts questions, not a hard cap; small teams make percentages noisy. See the caveats in the performance management framework.
Method source: the Performance Management Playbook (QuantumLight), summarised and applied by Ash Taherian. Examples are illustrative, not benchmarks. Ash works at Revolut People, which sells performance software.
Next: see all alternatives to annual performance reviews.
Get the full method: download the free Performance Management Playbook PDF (name + work email).
Free tools: estimate what your review cycle costs with the performance review cost calculator, or see if your HRIS is holding performance back with the HRIS switch checker.
FAQ
What is calibration theatre?
A calibration meeting that looks rigorous but does not change grades or fix evidence gaps, so it adds time without adding fairness.
How long should calibration take?
In the playbook, grade calculation, calibration and leadership review take about a week at most per quarterly cycle.