Feedback not simple for females

Constructive criticism helps in the workplace but women often miss out for fear of offending them.

Giving valuable feedback to women is harder for some managers in an era of #MeToo and micro-aggressions.

Is there any such thing as an honest performance review any more?

Giving sincere assessments about where people shine — and where they need to smooth out their rough edges — has always been tricky for managers.

But in the present era of #MeToo and microaggressions, a lot of bosses are having a particularly hard time giving valuable feedback to women, according to several professors who study management issues.

Shelley Correll, a professor of sociology and organisational ­behaviour at Stanford University, runs the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, which generates research surrounding the gender divide in the workplace and designs research-based solutions to help build better workplaces. Correll’s research shows that leaders often give male employees specific (and sometimes harsh) feedback that helps them achieve specific goals, while women more often receive vague, personality-based feedback.

In an analysis of more than 200 performance reviews inside a large tech company — part of a broader study of performance evaluations of men and women across three hi-tech companies and a professional-services firm — Correll and her researchers found that 60 per cent of developmental feedback linked to business outcomes was given to men; only 40 per cent was given to women.

Women also tended to receive more fuzzy feedback tied to their communication styles. For example, a manager might simply say, “People find you off-putting”, without any details or suggestions, says Correll. “What can you do about that aside from worry?”

Even when women get the same advice from a manager as men, following that advice can prove detrimental to a woman’s career, says Elisabeth Kelan, a professor of leadership and organisation at Essex Business School in Britain. Kelan’s research focuses in part on women in leadership.

“A man might be told to be ruthless to close a deal, but if a woman pursued the same strategy, she might be perceived as aggressive and receive negative feedback again,” she says.

Giving candid feedback to anybody can be tough for managers who want to avoid conflict or don’t have the time, Kelan says, but the lack of constructive feedback to ­women frequently stems from concern about appearing biased or being too harsh.

“There’s this fear that if you give a woman honest feedback she will break out in tears, that women need to be protected,” she says. “That’s just not the case.”

In her career, Clara Shih, chief executive and founder of software company Hearsay Systems and a Starbucks board director, says she has been called out for being ­assertive or self-promotional — “things that you would not ding a man for”.

When Shih has to give feedback to her own employees, she applies this method: “Write it down and then ask yourself, would you email this to a white man and have it on the record?”

People who don’t feel they are getting the honest assessments they need to grow should talk to their manager about how they work together and candidly ask how they are doing, she says, adding that shouldn’t wait until performance-review time.

“As a manager, I feel more comfortable giving feedback to someone who gives me feedback,” Shih says. “It builds trust, making the working relationship more equitable.”

The Wall Street Journal