Jessica Powell, the former Google vice president who wrote The Big Disruption and told you how to quit your job, is here to answer your common but tricky work questions. Check back every other week for more management advice with a tech inflection, and send your own work conundrums to askjessica@medium.com. (Your name will not be used.)
At my company, we do peer reviews as part of our performance rating and promotion process. A co-worker has asked me to give him a review. Am I actually supposed to be 100% honest in a peer review, or tell him the bad stuff privately? What if he’s up for promotion? I don’t want to keep him from being promoted, but I definitely have some constructive feedback I think he should hear.
The answer to this would surely be “100% honesty!” if the workplace were truly a meritocracy, and if people actually wanted to hear your opinions about them. But companies are rarely a meritocracy, and people generally don’t like criticism. In that case, the best guiding principle is probably to be honest but careful.
You say that your peer has asked you to write a review, so it sounds like the place you work lets employees pick some or all of their peer reviewers. Most likely, this reviewer thinks you two are on good terms and is expecting that you will give them a positive review. (Rare is the employee who actively seeks critical reviews and feedback, though they do exist, and should be praised for this behavior.)
In addition, this employee apparently knows they are up for promotion and it sounds like you are supportive of his move to the next level. So overall, you should plan to write a positive review.
The important thing to remember is that writing a positive review doesn’t mean writing a review devoid of critical feedback. At any point in our careers, we have development areas — just think of your sociopathic CEO, who probably has at least ten things they could work on.
Start by writing all your positive feedback. If you are supportive of this promotion, you have a lot of good and valuable things to write.
Now let’s tackle the hard stuff. Writing useful and honest critical feedback does not involve listing every fault of your co-worker. Not only is that super demoralizing for the recipient — it’s going to torpedo your relationship with them.
Instead of listing out every fault you’ve ever noticed, pick the most salient areas for growth and provide concrete feedback with supporting examples. That means no dialing it in and simply saying Richard should “be more assertive” or “work better with others.” If you’re going to say those things, you need to be specific about how those behaviors manifest, i.e. “Richard has really high standards and wants what’s best for our team. But sometimes that means he can be hard on less experienced team members. For example, many team members were asked to spend a weekend rewriting an entire presentation because Richard didn’t like the color scheme and graphics used.”
Ask yourself whether these development areas are things that your co-worker is already working on and where you’ve seen some growth. That’s worth noting if so. Also, are his development areas commensurate for his experience level? Talk about the areas within the framing of longer-term career growth, so that they are seen as potential enhancements to his abilities rather than current obstacles to him advancing to the next level.
Now read through your review in one go. If you’re doing it right, it should be clear that you are supportive of this promotion, but it should also not leave you feeling like you’ve totally compromised your values and lied on a performance review.
Most importantly, if your honest assessment doesn’t read to you like a strong endorsement for promotion, ask yourself why. For example, if you find yourself writing and rewriting critical sentences (e.g. “Lia is a bully and screams at her team” gets downgraded to ”Lia should act more professional with her team,” which then becomes “Lia could do more to empower her team members”), that’s a red flag that maybe this candidate truly isn’t ready for the next level.
Be honest, but be considerate. Or more simply: do unto others as you would have them unto to you.
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