How I Learned to Write Objective Performance Reviews
It wasn’t until 20 years into my career that I learned about unconscious gender bias in performance reviews. I had never really thought about it until I attended a conference where this was one of the topics.
During a panel, I was listening to the speaker share data on common words used to describe women in the workplace, and a light bulb went off in my head as I recognized many of the same words from my own performance reviews. Too harsh, too straightforward, needs to improve executive presence. When the speaker asked who in the audience had heard those phrases in performance reviews almost every woman in the room raised their hand. In fact, multiple studies have proven this very concept. Here’s a chart from one in particular by the Harvard Business Review.
Another Harvard Business Review study revealed women were 1.4 times more likely to receive critical subjective feedback as opposed to either positive feedback or critical objective feedback. The problem with that is if you’re giving men objective feedback and women subjective feedback, men will continue to improve, and women will be more likely to stagnate.
Even when men and women have the same qualifications, research has shown that men are rated higher than women in performance reviews. If women are constantly rated below men due to unconscious bias, their raises will be lower, and over time their careers are stunted, making it even more difficult for women to advance to leadership positions.
Something that’s talked about a lot in the unconscious bias world is this concept of a double bind. If women are gentle and soft-spoken, they’re not taken seriously. But if women are firm and passionate, then they’re considered abrasive. Essentially, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Thinking back to my reviews where I was told I was too harsh, or needed to improve “executive presence,” I wasn’t given clear guidance on how to act on that feedback, but I tried. I tried to reduce my harshness by speaking softly, and actively toning down my passion. I made most of my decisions data driven so it was harder to judge them subjectively. I had to think about how I work, what I say, and what my face looks like when I say it (and even when I wasn’t speaking). It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but all I knew was that I had to make a change or fall behind in my career. This isn’t the way it should be. I hope we, as a society, can get away from that, because I want people to be able to come to work and be themselves. After all, that’s when we do our best work.
As managers, we need to understand the profound weight on our shoulders of affecting someone’s career.
So, how can we make the workplace a more fair and inclusive space where people can be themselves? I think it starts with educating people about unconscious bias.
What, exactly, is unconscious bias?
We all have unconscious bias. It’s a biological mechanism that humans have developed over hundreds of years to quickly react to threats. It’s a mechanism that we need, but sometimes it can lead us down a bad path when we make unconscious assumptions and decisions based on our biases. It’s important to note that bias itself isn’t good or bad — it’s what we do with that bias that can be problematic.
Raising Awareness of Unconscious Bias
After I learned how unconscious gender bias tends to manifest itself in performance reviews, I started talking to people about it. I’d ask them, “Would you call Jim (who I think is way harsher than me) harsh? Or would you call him passionate?” And people would say, “Oh yeah, I guess I would say he’s passionate.” (Keep in mind, it takes people being open to the conversation; I wouldn’t have that conversation with everyone.)
We all have to look for advocates and sponsors who are open to hearing and talking about how unconscious bias affects women in the business world. Ultimately, companies need to train managers to recognize and confront their own unconscious biases. If managers address their own biases, they can take steps toward making performance reviews more objective.
How I Changed the Way I Write Performance Reviews
1. Focus on outcomes and behaviors
Before writing the reviews, identify four positive outcomes that each person produced and two negative outcomes. Think about behaviors that your company cares about (e.g., leadership behaviors, teamwork behaviors, etc.) and the criteria that are important for each behavior.
Look at each person against those behaviors and identify concrete examples where they embodied that behavior and examples where they could’ve improved. Then, make your assessment based on those outcomes and behaviors.
2. Provide actionable feedback
For each area where they could improve, give guidance on how they can do that. Observe their challenge, find out what the trigger is that causes the behavior, and identify what they can do differently when that trigger happens.
For example, I’m someone who just wants to get down to business when I sit down in a meeting. I don’t have to talk about the weather or sports. Not everyone is like that, so I had a mentor who told me to look at my watch and wait five minutes before I start any meeting. The first time I did it, it was an extremely brutal five minutes, and I couldn’t even do it the first couple of times. But after a while, it trained me to check in with people and observe what their comfort levels are — even if I only wait two minutes now instead of five.
3. Keep an eye out for biased language
After you write the reviews, go back and read through all of them. Pay special attention to the descriptions you used, especially for your female associates (use the chart above to examine your reviews for common biased language). If you find heavy use of these words, consider using more objective criteria in your assessment. And finally, check if you attributed their performance to characteristics or luck (rather than their behaviors and accomplishments).
In order to combat unconscious bias, managers need to consciously come up with a plan to assess their associates based on objective criteria. Otherwise, we’ll default to what’s natural, which is where unconscious bias creeps in. It’s not that managers intend to do harm, but we need to purposely intend to do the right thing.
