Feedback That Puts Employees In Their Feels

Today's WSJ piece about making performance "feedback" language more positive to account for the feelings of employees to whom performance management is directed sends the wrong message to managers about the point of performance evaluations. I wrote about this topic recently and suggested that an effective performance evaluation should be a little bit like talk therapy. If an effective performance evaluation informs employees what they are doing well and how they can do better, that assessment can only happen based upon an introspective and interactive discussion. If performance evaluations are designed only to make employees feel better, then it seems to me this defeats the evaluation's core purpose. Watering down constructive criticism to make it nice, or to make someone feel better, misses the point.