Feedback Meeting

Performance Review: Harsh Scrutiny or Human Connection?

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

I don’t know anyone who looks forward to performance reviews at work. It is a process that generates anxiety because it almost always ends badly, since the focus of the conversation is nearly always on what is lacking.

Leaders rarely seize this opportunity to reinforce workers’ character strengths, virtues, or the unique way they do things that could only come from them and no one else.

I spent the week revolving around this topic to prepare for a conversation about performance reviews, and I came across a clip from The Office. In it, Angela, while heading into a feedback session with Michael — the clueless boss who personifies so many leaders — states that she has nothing against performance reviews and believes she stands up well to even the harshest scrutiny.

The character’s words represent the behavior expected of workers: that they bear it well, that they remain numb to suffering, and that they do not show, speak of, question, or even reflect on the workplace violence that accumulates into various forms of pain.

We cannot leave for work with the mindset that we will suffer that day and that this is normal, or that nothing can be done about it. When we reach this point, we are very close to mental illness, even if we haven’t realized it yet.

The performance review is often a source of suffering. Since it happens once, or at most twice, a year, it ends up being the final nail in the coffin, burying hope once and for all.

Or, even worse, like that final twist of a screw when there was nothing left to tighten — which breaks the wood, damaging the object, sometimes irreversibly.

I don’t want to be dramatic, but we must think about workplace violence with a certain degree of exaggeration so that we can act upon it and go back to believing that no, things don’t just have to be this way.

It is possible to imagine another form of relationship at work, one where workers have their dignity respected.

The review should not be an instrument of intimidation and domination. It should be an opportunity for connection between two souls cooperating.

Cooperation is a premise of work, and every individual is expected to cooperate with others; yet the corporate world and its systems, including performance reviews, drive competition, generating an opposing force.

Christophe Dejours and his psychodynamics of work remind us that:

“If work can bring out the worst in humanity, it can also bring out the best.”

It is up to each of us to think about the relationships between people at work, and to think about the relationships between work and action to renew the very concept of these relations.

We must reimagine the performance review and transform this moment. Instead of a weapon of scrutiny, let it be an instrument of recognition, with more listening and human connection.

The feedback meeting can be an opportunity to value human capacity and encourage cooperation, rather than stimulating unbridled competition that generates suffering.

Thinking about this process before your next feedback meeting can only do good, regardless of which side of the table you are on.

YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/jmyF2TTdemg