Today's WSJ piece about making performance "feedback" language more positive to account for the feelings of employees to whom performance management is directed sends the wrong message to managers about the point of performance evaluations. I wrote about this topic recently and suggested that an effective performance evaluation should be a little bit like talk therapy. If performance evaluations are designed only to make employees feel better, then it seems to me this defeats the evaluation's core purpose. Watering down constructive criticism to make it nice, or to make someone feel better, misses the point. Understanding the individual ways employees learn could be useful in honing performance feedback for some employers if it can be practically and properly applied.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 13, 2023 21:06 UTC