'Tis the Season for Reviews. Bah, Humbug!

Some liken the annual performance appraisal to a root canal, but I think it's much more like Japanese Kabuki theater. The actors in this ritual go through predetermined stylized motions, and it's often hard to find any direct connection to reality.

Managers don't like delivering feedback, especially if it's critical, and employees aren't particularly enamored of receiving it, if less than glowing. But since reviews are prescribed by corporate policy, both dutifully play their roles, adhering more to form than substance.

The problem is that we all act off of our unique versions of reality. When we watch the flow of information through the brain, it becomes clear that our minds don't objectively record our experience of the world. Instead, they create it, as sense data is pulled apart in the brain and put back together with input from our memories, our emotions, and even our desires.

To maintain a positive self-image, employees rationalize or discount any uncomfortable feedback that is dissonant with their view of their performance. Even the most hard-nosed managers are ill at ease delivering a tough message, particularly when they see their employees less than eager to receive it.

So the objective feedback necessary to improving performance either doesn't register or is watered down. That's the reason GE's study of its performance appraisal process over forty years ago found that positive feedback has no effect on performance, while criticism either has no effect or a negative one.

The easiest solution is to make the process more participative. Reviews should start with employees appraising their own performance, because they'll be much more willing to accept their own assessments than that of their managers. Rather than telling employees how they're doing, managers should use questions to help guide an honest self-appraisal.

In my experience, most employees will be harder on themselves than their managers would be. However, for that small percentage of employees that gloss over sub-standard performance, managers should be direct, but only as a last resort. It's best to have the psychological dynamic working for you whenever possible, rather than against you.

And the manager has to be careful that when questioning, they don't come across as a prosecuting attorney conducting an interrogation to establish guilt. Employees are more comfortable and honest with a manager that isn't wielding a rubber hose, literally or figuratively.

Configuring the review as genuinely constructive is easier if it isn't a justification for a salary increase or the absence of one. Separating the salary and performance discussions is one solution, but an even better one is to make the year-end review just a formal summary of discussions that have been on going during the course of the year.

The manager and employee talk regularly about how to improve performance in a non-threatening environment. The managers ask questions and the employees do as well, as they actively seek the feedback that will make them better. The formal review then stops being a game of "I've Got a Secret" or "Gotha."

When employees take the responsibility for appraising their performance and managers assume the role of coaches, appraisals become genuine opportunities for improvement rather than ritual dramas. Then we'll only have last minute shopping and get-togethers with those less than charming relatives to dread during the holiday season.