Being top of the class comes with benefits, such as praise from your boss. Unless you’re a high-achieving woman, that is.
A new analysis of more than 23,000 performance reviews from 250 workplaces in the United States shows that even women in top positions are still viewed on paper as rude and opinionated – and it doesn’t matter whether their boss is a man or a woman.
Textio, the AI-powered writing platform for HR teams that conducted the study, found that women face harsher and less constructive evaluations than their male colleagues—and that their feedback is mostly based on negative stereotypes of their personality, not their work.
For example, almost a third of women were told in their performance appraisal that they had strong opinions, compared to only 4% of men.
“Expressions such as rude, difficult, friendly and helpful appeared in the majority of women’s ratings, but in very few of the men’s ratings,” the report said.
More than half of top-performing men are praised in performance reviews for their confidence (54%) and ambition (63%), compared to less than 18% of women.
And although they were more often described as “nice” in their performance reviews, the majority of high-performing women also recalled being told they were unpleasant – compared to only 16 percent of men.
“If high-performing men are often told they are brilliant and high-performing women are often told they are successful despite being unlikable, what effect does this have on their performance over time?” the report warns.
Although the nonsensical feedback is contradictory, the report concludes that exhausted women internalize these negative stereotypes about themselves and, as a result, see their performance decline and their careers stagnate.
Too much praise can also be bad
It is not just the reduction of women to a stereotype that is problematic. Even praise can be a problem, for both genders.
The problem? It is often exaggerated, possibly to support the excellent ratings of top performers.
The report highlighted that statements such as “You approach every conversation with a curious eye” or “You are constantly looking for ways to improve things” are common.
In reality, no one constant They look for ways to improve – and top performers see through these superficial efforts to look good on paper.
For this reason, the report warns: “Managers do not help high performers when they take their feedback to extremes. In fact, they undermine their own credibility when they give this type of feedback.”
And if praise is given in the form of a general phrase such as “he thinks outside the box,” it does little to motivate top performers.
“These general phrases have been used so often in business contexts that they have lost much of their meaning,” the report says. Additionally, managers would use these thoughtless filler words in appraisals rather than actually thinking of detailed examples of when an employee has performed exceptionally well. The latter would be far more flattering.
Be specific – or lose your best employees
Even with the best of the best, the feedback can’t always be good. But it has to be concrete.
Using negative stereotypes or unactionable statements in performance appraisals leaves no room for employees to work on their weaknesses and develop further.
Instead, the report warns, it will impair performance and cause top talent to stagnate – or be forced to leave.
In 2023, Textio found that 10% of all employee turnover was due to poor quality feedback – which includes positive but “empty” comments.
At the same time, people who receive poor quality feedback are 63% more likely to leave the company in the next year than people who receive actionable advice from their managers.
“In other words, you may be trying to retain your top performers, but if you’re like the thousands of managers whose feedback went into this year’s report, you’re likely making performance-related decisions that will send those top performers elsewhere,” the report continues.
“This is particularly damaging when you consider that it is often easier for top performers to get a significant pay rise by changing companies than by staying with their employer.”
The solution is simple, but more time-consuming than scribbling “top performer” into the next performance review: Always make the feedback actionable, specific and clear.
