3 Ways to Overcome Gender Bias in Performance Feedback

The words we choose to describe our colleagues matter more than we think. Ambitious, passionate, nice, opinionated, abrasive. When these adjectives find their way into performance reviews and feedback, they can have a very high, negative impact. Let me explain.

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I was once told that I was abrasive in an annual performance review. The feedback was in relation to an interaction I'd had with a stakeholder months prior. First fail by my manager - respectfully provide feedback in the moment, not months later! Second epic fail, which I did happen to point out at the time (probably to my detriment) was that if I was a man, there is no way thats would have been said about me.  The performance evaluation didn't go well. As it was delivered by a manager who had consistently demonstrated a fundamental lack of respect and gender bias towards me, I terminated the performance evaluation then and there, and resigned from my role soon after. 

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This is not just one story of a woman receiving feedback about her personality, instead of her performance. This is the story women that women have been telling me for nearly a decade in my group coaching sessions, after I deliver keynotes and when I am facilitating women's leadership programs.

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Personality Feedback is Disproportionately Received by Women

Recent research by Textio has emphasised what many of us have known for a long time. This type of "personality" feedback is disproportionately received by women, with just 2% of men receiving feedback about being abrasive versus 22% of women. 

Seemingly innocuous terms wield a profound impact, especially when considering who they are directed towards. The study highlighted that women, Black, Latinx and Asian professionals are more likely to be the recipients and disproportionately labelled as "aggressive" compared to their White counterparts who are often praised as "easy to work with." 

In a broad sense, women receive commendations for being helpful and friendly. But the last time I looked, not a lot of people were being promoted for being helpful and friendly. Men, who are more often characterised as confident and ambitious will be the beneficiaries of positive assumptions about their potential and are more often promoted as a result. The research by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic also supports that men's careers flourish due to the (incorrect) correlation between confidence and competence, and women's careers flounder when they are not perceived as confident. Women aren't lacking confidence; they are simply trying to navigate these murky waters of gender bias and double standards. 

"Not only do white and Asian men receive the highest-quality feedback overall, but they are also significantly more likely to be described with terms like brilliant and genius. Managers are more likely to identify white and Asian men as possessing innate intellectual ability than all other groups."

Personality Feedback Impacts the Gender Pay Gap

Women receive more vague and nebulous feedback than men (listen to our podcast episode about that), with the Textio report also showing that women are nearly two times more likely to receive feedback that is not actionable. Furthermore, 71% of women say they're clear about performance expectations to earn a promotion versus 83% of men, which directly translates to the gender pay gap.

"The groups receiving the most biased performance feedback are also the ones that are consistently on the wrong side of the pay gap. This is not a surprise: high-quality feedback about someone's performance offers them more opportunities to grow. When a group of people systematically receives feedback that is lower quality, we expect to see this manifest in disparate career opportunities and outcomes, and it does."

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People subjected to such low-quality feedback are 63% more likely to contemplate leaving their current employment, and this means employers have a big red flag for their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts if this issue is left unaddressed.

What's the Call to Action?

It's no different to what I've been recommending for nearly a decade. Build the capability and skills of people leaders, including front-line managers, to develop their DEI and inclusive leadership skills. These skills are 21st-century leadership skills and are no longer "nice" to have skills if organisations are serious about creating and sustaining high-performing teams. 

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Here are three minimum steps to take to reduce the impact of personality based feedback in your workplace.

1. Invest in skills based training for people leaders at all levels. People leaders must be better at coaching, which includes providing actionable feedback and inclusive leadership practices.
2. Have specific and overt criteria for performance evaluations which includes education to people leaders about biased language. Ensure that calibration sessions take place using an independent skilled observer to intervene when biased language is used.
3. Insist on respect as a baseline value for your organisation. Every interaction, no matter what it is, must be grounded in respect and inclusion.

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People Quit Their Boss, Not Their Job

I know that there are varying opinions about why people quit their jobs, but there is no doubt that a shitty boss is a big driver of voluntary employee attrition. Poorly skilled managers who create interpersonal conflict with unthinking lanugage can have a dreadful impact on the organisations attrition, or worse, engagement levels of people who stay.

The power of feedback towards women and other marginalised people cannot be underestimated as having an impact on company culture, and the decision making process of whether a person will stay or go.

Feedback can engage and empower or, it can disengage and alienate the people in your workplace. The bottom line is that every person in the workplace has the right, regardless of their identity, to feel seen, heard, valued and respected, especially when receiving feedback. So if you're a leader who want to ensure that DEI efforts have a positive impact, then pay attention to the power of your feedback, and that of your management team.

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