Archives week 6 of 2014

It’s here. A month filled with mountains of paperwork, hours of introspection and far too many awkward conversations. Review season.

A joint study out of Kansas State University, Eastern Kentucky University and Texas A&M confirms what we’ve all been feeling: everyone hates performance reviews. Managers don’t like giving them. Employees don’t like getting them. And even employees most interested in learning and improving — presumably the most valuable employees — are equally discouraged by the negative feedback.

So what’s the problem? In part, it’s procedural - when feedback is one-sided (e.g., from peers to employee), it ...