Agreed. It's now just a box to check and then is quickly forgotten. My company skipped year-end self-reviews twice now and the impact has been...nothing?
The challenge I see with feedback is it's team and situation dependent. Have a manager who is an "idea person" and they'll tell their reports to "stop getting mired in details". Then those same people work on the same thing with someone who is methodical and organized and that area for development quickly becomes a "strength". Those reports end up just chasing their tail for an ideal that doesn't exist.
Far better to: 1) address work issues early, 2) be flexible in how to fix them [it's not just them, might be you!], 3) accept that some people might not just be a good fit for this particular project with this particular team.
The absolutely best feedback I've gotten is from a boss who was new and terrible. Everyone else criticized her a the lunch table, but when she asked me at a 1-on-1 what feedback I had, I gave her 3 specific areas that were driving me nuts. From that point on the bullshit curtain dropped. If she did something that annoyed me, I told her. She did the same.
I guess that's what the "psychological safe space" flavor-of-the-month is now.
> My company skipped year-end self-reviews twice now and the impact has been...nothing?
I wish this caught on more. Unfortunately, it's all tied up in what HR departments use to justify their existence. I wish that HR execs just f-ing read them and realized it's a huge waste of time and the vast majority of these reviews are people just going through the motions and writing down whatever they can come up with in 20 minutes.
Agreed. It becomes a checkbox exercise for HR - “we developed a performance review process”.
The further along I get in my career the more I realize it doesn’t really matter. Do what you think is right. Take feedback but don’t treat it too seriously unless it impacts team performance.
If I take a step back it seems to me most companies are a thousand monkeys banging at a thousand typewriters.
If you can produce something from that chaos, that’s what matters, not some HR form.
The challenge I see with feedback is it's team and situation dependent. Have a manager who is an "idea person" and they'll tell their reports to "stop getting mired in details". Then those same people work on the same thing with someone who is methodical and organized and that area for development quickly becomes a "strength". Those reports end up just chasing their tail for an ideal that doesn't exist.
Far better to: 1) address work issues early, 2) be flexible in how to fix them [it's not just them, might be you!], 3) accept that some people might not just be a good fit for this particular project with this particular team.
The absolutely best feedback I've gotten is from a boss who was new and terrible. Everyone else criticized her a the lunch table, but when she asked me at a 1-on-1 what feedback I had, I gave her 3 specific areas that were driving me nuts. From that point on the bullshit curtain dropped. If she did something that annoyed me, I told her. She did the same.
I guess that's what the "psychological safe space" flavor-of-the-month is now.