Body of Knowledge · Glossary
Calibration
Aligning evaluation standards across interviewers, managers or organisations so that the same capability or performance earns the same judgment. Evidence counts over advocacy, and assessors who disagree review the case together.
Where the standard develops it
- PL-3Hiring and onboardingStructured evaluation, calibrated standards, assessing capability rather than tool access.
- PL-4Performance managementExpectations, support, honest consequences, and fair process.
- PL-5Career development and growth pathsOne-on-ones, promotions, the Staff+ track, and the IC/manager choice.
Related terms
- Managerial leverage
- Grove's framing that a manager's output is the output of the organisation under them, and that activities differ in how much output they produce per hour spent.
- Accountability without fear
- Clear ownership and honest consequences for patterns of unaccountability, combined with real safety for honest error.
- Affinity bias
- Favouring people who resemble oneself in evaluation.
- Brilliant jerk
- A high performer whose behaviour breaches the team's values.
- Conditions gap
- Underperformance caused by what the person was not given (clear requirements, access, time, a functioning team) rather than by a lack of skill or will.
- Disengagement signals
- Withdrawal, cynicism and ideas that stop coming.
- Fair process
- A decision people accept even when it goes against them, because they were heard, the reasoning was explained, and what is expected next is unambiguous.
- First ninety days
- Treating a new role as a transition with its own work (learning, an early real contribution, the relationships the role depends on), with explicit outcomes at thirty, sixty and ninety days.
Cite this definition
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Calibration. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, GLO.calibration). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/glossary/calibration