It’s not surprising so many people dislike performance appraisals; especially not when you understand why they don’t like them. When we surveyed 48,000 CEOs, managers and employees, only 13% of managers and employees and 6% of CEOs thought their year-end reviews were effective. (Note: that’s really not good). And there were three big reasons why.

The first was a lack of differentiation: reviews aren’t synched to performance so there’s no real recognition for being a high performer (or consequences for being a low performer). It’s like being in a class where everyone gets the same grade, regardless of whether or not they did the work. Think about it: How many employees do you have with really bad attitudes that still get really high performance appraisal scores? Or how often does a manager give someone really high marks and then 6 months later call HR wanting to fire them?

This problem is so big that 96% of employees in our survey said that high performers should get more rewards and recognition than low performers, but only 18% of employees said that actually happens.

And the second reason why people really dislike performance reviews is because the boss’ feedback isn’t relevant. Employees are walking away from performance reviews shaking their heads and wondering if the boss even knows what they did this year. It’s not like people need pages of comments, but they do need something to work from.

No reward, no recognition, and no constructive criticism from which to grow. Who can blame people for dreading performance reviews? Why even bother being there? But there’s more to why this situation exists. One reason is that most employee evaluations lack any real adult interaction. In fact, on a recent webinar we asked about 200 managers this question:

During performance reviews, what percent of your employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher?

Here were the results:


1% of managers said that 0% to 25% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher
14% of managers said that 26% to 50% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher
36% of managers said that 51% to 75% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher
48% of managers said that 76% to 100% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher


This is the third big reason why employees don't like performance reviews. Most managers conduct performance reviews from a student/teacher perspective. They sit across the desk from employees and say “this is your ‘grade’ and this is your pay” and they hope employees don’t have too many questions, because there are another dozen more reviews to conduct.

And all this leaves employees sitting passively, dependent upon the teacher (the boss), waiting to be told what to do (which in this case is basically nothing). There’s zero ownership of self, and that’s an emotionally reactive place to be; and certainly not a place that invites people to assume responsibility for their own growth and development.

The most effective way to move employees out of the student or child role is develop adult-to-adult relationships that include adult-to-adult dialogues. Adult-to-adult dialogue is when performance reviews begin to encourage employees to be logical, independent and self sufficient. And where employees learn how to self evaluate and self correct so they become more accountable, engaged and successful.

This isn’t a passive school setting where these students need a hall pass to use the bathrooms. These are highly paid adults with insights and brains and the untapped capacity to take full responsibility for their own performance. But we need to better differentiate performance, provide truly relevant feedback/coaching, and most importantly, stop making this feel like a student passively waiting to get a grade. When done right, performance reviews will actually become a Performance Dialogue, and that’s a really great place to be.

We’re hosting a webinar next week called Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and we’ll show you all the scripts and tools to make this an adult-to-adult dialogue (and eliminate all that passive student-teacher-grade stuff).

There are still a few seats left, so be sure to check it out.
Wishing you all the best,


Mark Murphy
Founder & CEO
Leadership IQ