New research shows there's still a gender bias in the workplace. An international Textio study of 25,000 performance reviews shows three quarters of women were labelled ‘emotional’ - compared to just 11 percent of men.
According to the study, 88 percent of high-performing women receive feedback on their personality during performance reviews — compared with 12 percent of high-performing men.
And when men do receive personality-based feedback, it’s different from the personality feedback women receive.
As the study notes:
68 percent of women and 31 percent of men were described as “collaborative.”
36 percent of women and 21 percent of men were described as “helpful.”
26 percent of women and 12 percent of men were described as “nice.”
28 percent of women and 4 percent of men were described as “opinionated.”
22 percent of women and 2 percent of men were described as “abrasive.”
18 percent of women and 54 percent of men were described as “confident.”
17 percent of women and 63 percent of men were described as “ambitious.”
You can see how this type of personality feedback leans heavily into stereotypes.
But what if stereotypes are true, and women are more than twice as likely to be collaborative and men are almost four times as likely to be ambitious?
Negative feedback (“you’re too mean”) or positive (“you’re so nice”) is unhelpful if your employee can’t understand how it relates to their actual performance.
In the case of compliments, your employees know what they are doing right. In the case of criticism, they know what they need to correct.
Textio also found that employees who receive high-quality feedback — that is, detailed feedback rather than personality-based feedback — are less likely to quit.
In fact, their 2023 study found that employees who received low-quality feedback were 63 percent more likely to quit within the next year. That’s a crazy stat.
If you haven’t written your year-end reviews, take a look through your rough drafts and make sure you focus on actionable items rather than personality traits.
