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Stop Fixating On Flaws During Employee Reviews

When you review your employees’ performance, what do you highlight? Many managers choose to only to focus on the negative, leading to bad employee reviews. As it turns out, this practice isn’t a good idea.

Read on to learn why fixating on employee flaws during assessments doesn’t work, and what you should do instead.

Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative
In the 1940s, Bing Crosby sang about accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. He was on to something, although it took researchers a few decades to figure it out.

A study published in 1996 showed that job appraisals generally improved performance, unless they focused on the individual carrying out the job, rather than the person’s performance of his or her role.

Over a decade later, researchers at Kansas State University discovered that employees don’t respond well to negative feedback. In fact, receiving a bad employee review can affect that person’s commitment, motivation and job performance.

What Kind of Feedback Should Managers Give?
Marcus Buckingham, performance management expert and author, believes that the problem with providing negative feedback at employee performance reviews is that this type of criticism is completely ineffective. He points out that neuroscience shows humans grow new synapses in the areas of our brain where we have the most pre-existing synapses. Those areas represent our strengths. Conversely, the areas with the fewest synapses are our weaknesses, and it is significantly more difficult to grow new synapses in those spots.

By focusing on an employee’s weaknesses, managers aren’t helping that person improve or grow at all. And continuing to provide negative feedback in the hope that employees will take it to heart and perform better is counterproductive.

Furthermore, a bad employee review that focuses solely on a person’s faults doesn’t provide insight into how they can develop. Professor Satoris Culbertson, who led the aforementioned Kansas State University study, argues that constructive feedback – criticism that advises the person on how he or she can change for the better – is more effective than negative criticism. She adds that it helps when the comments show that the supervisor has the employee’s best interests at heart, they’re better received.

Give the Right Feedback on Employee Performance Reviews
Make sure that your employee assessments provide workers with the feedback that will help them succeed. Grapevine Evaluations’ 360 degree performance reviews enable employees to receive evaluations from their peers, supervisors, subordinates and customers.

Grapevine Evaluations 360 degree evaluation software tools are trusted by such companies as Pandora, Macy’s, and Thomson Reuters.

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