Given the time of the year, many of us are currently working on performance reviews for our team members.
In the HBR article “Let’s Not Kill Performance Evaluations Yet,” Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, and Adam Grant write that, “People want to know where they stand, and performance evaluations offer transparency.”
For me, “knowing where they stand” is a multifaceted concept. It’s not just about the performance rating—it’s more emotional. It’s about Am I safe? and Do I have a future here? And I’d argue that how a manager frames the feedback is more instructive to those questions than the feedback itself.
It’s possible to have a competent performance review that catalogs what happened over the performance period and that leverages facts and specific observations to demonstrate the key points. Surely, that would surely pass muster with HR.
But that approach also risks being heard as a judgment—You executed the dive, and here are the scores.
It’s like a weak handshake. Technically, it happened, but it doesn’t communicate what was intended. And as Kim Scott reminds us in Radical Candor, “the clarity of your guidance gets measured at the listener’s ear, not at your mouth.”
In my experience, the slight change in tone that completes feedback—making it deliver the intended emotional impact—is future-focused feedback.
Borrowing an example from a post I wrote about inclusive leadership:
Backward-focused feedback: “John, here are two good things and two not-so-good things you did during that presentation.”
Future-focused feedback: “John, given your goal to be promoted at the end of the year, here are two things that show you’re meeting the bar and here are two things you could do to improve for next time.”
What that small change in phrasing does is signal that the manager cares about the employee’s future and success. I am taking the time to show how you can improve because I believe you can do so.
This is even more true when the manager uses the employee’s own career aspirations as the basis for the feedback. It’s very easy for backward-focused feedback to implicitly place the company (and the manager) at the center of the feedback. Here’s what you can do to make my life easier and make the company more money.
On the other hand, when the future-focused feedback integrates what authentically matters to the employee, it puts them at the center of the conversation. Based on what you told me that you want to achieve in life, let’s discuss where your effort is likely to make the most impact.
With a small change in mindset and perhaps a couple of additional paragraphs in the performance review, managers can have a big impact on how teammates feel—both about where they stand with the company and where they stand with the boss.