Performance and Promo Feedback: These 4 Things Go Wrong Too Often

It’s Performance Review time at many companies. Well, even if it’s not that time at your company, the points are relevant. You’re expected to write feedback about a peer, or asked if a peer is ready for promotion. After running scores of performance calibration sessions, here are my 4 insights about signals a feedback can send that you may not be aware of. Extremely common, but also quite tricky. They’re important to understand because they can have serious consequences. Most times you’re one of a handful of reviewers, so signal from your feedback is quite high. Do the right thing.

1. The ‘Silent Killer’ Feedback

What you do: A feedback on performance or promotion is requested for a peer, but you choose not to write it.

How it’s viewed: It’s often seen as a signal indicating ‘something concerning’ with this relationship or their performance. But it might just be that you are too busy or don’t have enough context about the person.

Possible remedy: If it’s the latter, find a way to make it clear. If it’s the former, also find a way to share what went wrong, if it’s possible to do so without putting yourself at risk, e.g. “I am unable to write feedback because I haven’t worked with this person in 2023”.

2. The ‘Utterly Bland’ Feedback

What you do: A feedback of performance or promotion is requested for a peer, and you write one but it’s not enthusiastic, or it’s purely factual, e.g. “X completed the project on time.”, “Y did decent quality work on this project”, or even the innocuous but unusually brief “Yes I am supportive”.

How it’s viewed: Whether intentional or not, your style of writing will often be seen as certainly not championing their performance or promotion, perhaps even a polite way of indicating ‘something concerning’.

Possible remedy: Use superlatives to describe good work, and highlight problematic areas clearly, e.g. “X was extremely thorough with the work, ensuring that high quality code got shipped. One challenge was that it was delayed by 2 months.”, or. “I am strongly supportive of X’s promotion because (a) … (b) …”

3. The ‘Everyone is Awesome’ Feedback

What you do: A feedback of performance or promotion is requested for multiple peers, and you write similarly worded super-enthusiastic support statements for everyone!

How it’s viewed: It’s possible that they are all equally awesome this time, but considering relative distribution across all your opinions, it does put doubt in the mind of decision makers; Are you just playing it safe or nice or both? Or you simply dislike the performance review process at your company, and are protesting in this manner?

Possible remedy: If it happens every cycle, it’s hard to justify, and you should calibrate yourself better and/or check for biases. But if you notice such a pattern emerging one-off , communicate proactively that you’re aware but you stand firmly behind your ratings, and can justify each one separately.

p.s. The opposite, ‘Everyone is Terrible’, does happen but much more rarely in my experience. Similar advice prevails for that situation as well.

4. The ‘Motion from Emotion’ Feedback

What you do: A feedback of performance or promotion is requested for a peer, and your feedback is heavily biased by your emotions, often unconsciously, and not fully objectively, e.g. you are super supportive of close friends, and not supportive of one with negative personal history.

How it’s viewed: Especially if your opinion doesn’t match the others, your note may be dismissed as biased. What’s worse, it might damage your credibility for the future, which is a heavy invisible price to pay.

Possible remedy: Pay extra attention to your own biases and see if you can correct for them and come across as less biased. If not, opt out of writing the review citing conflict of interest.

Keep these 4 things in mind as you write those reviews and share those opinions about your peers. They can sometimes make or break careers. So, be brave and do the right thing.