The One Thing You Should Never Use Artificial Intelligence For: Performance Management

Even in this exciting age of AI, talent and performance management should remain the domain of real intelligence (RI). This article covers the reasons why leaders need to invest time in performance reviews—and resist delegating this critical People function to AI.

• • Never, ever use AI technology to generate a job performance review.
  • Like performance reviews, other key people and talent tools still need to be led by real intelligence (RI).
  • A Players will leave managers using AI instead of offering real insights to drive performance.
  • Purpose-built AI agents and AI bots can be used responsibly to keep the format and content of your key people, performance, and talent tools consistent and to audit quality.
  • Be on the lookout for AI’s “prompt parroting”: hollow, surface-level noise dressed up in polished grammar. AI can turn an opportunity to provide inspiring feedback into a cold recitation of performance data.
  • Seriously consider free agency for managers who cannot coach quality people, monitor performance, and provide human insight using talent documents and RI. They are abdicating and not cultivating development and performance.

Recently, I had a conversation with the CEO of a chronically underperforming business. With a certain haughty pride, he told me he had started using artificial intelligence to write performance reviews for his team. He genuinely thought he was being clever. I couldn’t suppress my shock—not just at the use of AI in this context, but at the complete abdication of leadership and human oversight it represented. This was about the most blatant case of business malpractice I’d ever encountered!

Let’s be clear: If you’re outsourcing the management of your people to AI systems, you’ve already surrendered your most essential job as a leader. If generative AI tools can truly handle that role for you… then yes, you really can be replaced on the org chart with an AI bot. If you’re a CEO, you’re abdicating one of your most important roles as a leader—fielding and developing the best team you can. 

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s a cautionary tale. And it speaks to the growing misuse of AI in the one area where human accountability, judgment, and empathy are non-negotiable—talent.

We are responsible users of AI systems at A Player Advantage. We use AI as an engineer uses a calculator, or a scientist uses a research assistant. It’s so helpful that we use it continually during the course of a day—for research, idea generation, content editing, and data analysis. Other leading companies are using generative AI to summarize case law, automate workflows, write code, accelerate sales, model financial scenarios, and streamline customer service—augmenting, not replacing, human excellence and performance management systems.

Focus on responsible AI adoption while maintaining human insight:

• • AI agents for customer service? Great.

  • AI tools to automate software deployment? Excellent.

  • AI systems to summarize massive market trend data? Essential.

  • AI-generated employee performance evaluations? Not a chance.

In fact, AI agents are already part of the org chart in areas like DevOps, digital marketing, and operations analytics. These are smart ways to use AI. Used well, AI can multiply the output of A Players by taking grunt work off their plates.

But when it comes to people, performance, and culture, AI is not the manager. You are.

Managing performance isn’t paperwork. It’s not a checklist. It’s not “just a review.” It’s the sacred performance relationship between a leader and their people.

• • It’s observing someone’s work, coaching in real time, and giving direct, clear feedback.
  • It’s seeing more in your team members than they see in themselves and challenging them to reach toward your vision for them.
  • It’s having the courage to remove B Players so your A Player team can thrive.

This work can’t be automated with AI because it’s the work of leadership itself.

If you’re not doing this work personally and consistently, you’re not leading. 

Let’s unpack what happens if you dare to use AI tools to generate performance reviews:

• 1. You signal disconnection. The employee knows AI wrote it. They feel disposable.
  2. You lose credibility. The AI review reads like a draft from a LinkedIn ghostwriter. Generic. Safe. Fluff. Devoid of real insight or value.
  3. You fail to coach. The AI review provides no feedback loop. No growth plan. No real commitment from either you or the employee.
  4. You get more mediocrity. A Players check out. B Players don’t improve. The C Players… stay.

And all of this spirals downward. As we teach in the A Player Performance System (APPS), the true bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle. Leadership sets the tone. Or fails to.

A Players are the top 10% of the workforce who are truly exceptional: productive, driven by purpose, values-aligned, and the force multipliers of your organization. They want to grow. They want feedback. Positive performance trends inspire them to achieve even more. And they can smell B Player leadership a mile away. Plus, A Players are adept at spotting AI-generated content!

Giving them AI-generated employee evaluations instead of authentic human coaching? That’s how you lose your best people.

If you want A Players, you have to be an A Player. That includes doing the hard work of people development yourself. You can’t automate your way to greatness.

Just imagine if an employee found out you didn’t care enough to think through their performance review with your own brain and used AI instead. It would be like discovering there was no Santa Claus! Or, they have a Wizard-of-Oz moment and realize that the once all-powerful Oz is just a tiny, manipulative man hiding behind a curtain. Trust me, they will “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” once they realize AI, not a real human being, is attempting to influence their career!

While developing someone’s performance review with AI is probably the most egregious malpractice I have seen in the talent field, there are others. As the late, great Jim Clifton of Gallup pointed out in First, Break All the Rules, many managers are especially weak in the key areas of talent selection, management, and coaching.

Want an easy way to test the quality of your management in this key area? Have them draft one of Scaling Up’s proprietary talent tools like the A Player Agreement™, Personal Performance Promise™, or Job Scorecard. Many of them don’t know the fundamental jobs of their people, can’t think through a development plan, or architect what they need in their next key position. As A Player Amy East of Heritage Hill Capital Partners noted, “Wow, you really need to think through the details, and when you do, the output is very powerful!”

Instead of thoughtful work that follows the design intent of these performance-driving tools, what you are likely to get back from AI is either mutilated rubbish or GPT-gibberish. One of the most exceptional talent leaders I know, Shawn Richard of Palmer-Donavin, discussed with me a few years ago how these are the “managers” you can easily let go, because they don’t have the leadership acumen to develop people. The days of managers as administrators are long gone!

That said, tailored AI agents and AI bots can be very useful in the hands of your talent coach (our significantly operationalized upgrade to the HR professionals’ role) to ensure consistency and quality among these powerful tools in your organization. Use AI systems to edit, refine, and make your performance tools consistent. Don’t use AI to create hollow, surface-level noise dressed up in seemingly polished, grammatically savvy paragraphs. It’s seriously misguided to overestimate the power of AI-generated language to inspire people.

As Verne Harnish emphasizes in the business classic Scaling Up, People are one of the four essential decisions for any business—along with Strategy, Execution, and Cash.  People is the lead domino here, as human beings directly drive the others. 

Topgrading guru Brad Smart reminds us that mishires cost 15x the employee’s salary or more. And culture, as we say at A Player Advantage, is just performance management happening all the time, in every interaction.

You don’t get a great team by “prompt parroting” with AI. You build that team. You coach your people. You hold them accountable, and employee performance becomes non-negotiable.

If you’re not willing to do that, then let’s be honest: you’ve forfeited your seat at the leadership table. A well-trained AI agent might actually do better. It won’t coach—but at least it won’t pretend to.

At A Player Advantage, we believe in using AI systems to multiply your excellence, not replace your responsibility and human oversight. AI is a phenomenal tool. But you are the leader. And some things like leadership, talent tools, and management should never be delegated—especially not to cyborgs.

So here’s the final word about AI in performance reviews:

If AI can truly manage performance better than you…then you can be replaced with a bot. And probably should be.

Choose better. Lead better. Be better. We are here to help.

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Rick Crossland is an internationally known expert and thought leader on A Player talent. A leading certified Scaling Up coach and the author of the acclaimed business book The A Player, Rick’s innovative approach to recruiting, interviewing, validating, and developing high performers—A Players—has been featured in leading business publications such as Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Fortune.com, Recruiter.com, Columbus CEO, and Leadership Insights. With clients around the world, his expertise helps businesses scale by building high-performance teams that drive superior results. Follow Rick on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).