At our Bootcamps and other events one of the biggest and most important recommendations we made for getting team engagement was to stop doing annual performance reviews with your team members. I was reminded of this the other day when I saw a FB post from a good friend Michelle Golden in which she announced with deserved pride that the firm she is a Principal at, K-coe Isom, have abandoned doing annual reviews.
Would you believe I just got of the phone talking to a client about the negative impact performance reviews can have on team members. In that conversation I mentioned the work of Dan Pink and his best selling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
And then I picked up today’s (oct 26, 2015) WSJ and read an article written by Chana Schoenberger titled The Risk of Reviews: Research says performance reviews do real harm. Ms. Schoenberger noted that “researches at the Neuroleadership Institute, concluded that the very fact of giving employees a rating jolts them into a “fight or flight” scenario with serious negative consequences.
Before you do your next review you might want to consult the literature on the efficacy of performance reviews.