The Anti-Performance Review: How I’d Build Talent Development from Scratch
- Feb 10
- 10 min read
Dear Readers,
We’ve come to the end of our performance journey. Throughout this series, we’ve touched on reflection as self-recognition and feedback as a way to nurture, not wound. For this last bit, I wanted to get to the crux of all of this—the system.
To fully understand ourselves, we have to unwind the systems that make us. And yes, that includes how performance reviews influence our futures and self-esteem. So, let’s dig in.
Fifteen years ago, a company let little 24-year old me run performance reviews. I launched it with enthusiasm and possibility. No tools, just a set of questions I created.
Over the next month, I collected hopes and dreams on paper. I pored over wins and opportunities, celebrating and mourning with each individual.
I built a repository of everyone’s career goals to share with finance for workplace planning, only nothing came of it. No one wanted to check my work or review my findings. I was simply told to file each piece of paper. All those stories lodged into a metal cabinet—a cold, grey coffin.
In the next review cycle, everyone phoned it in. It was just a check-box, after all.
Despite this early defeat, I’ve held onto the ideal that there’s a better way, and have been lucky to test pieces over the years.
I’m not the only one. Ask anyone who’s been through a performance review, and they’re likely to list the flaws before any pros.
In fact, a Gallup survey found only 2% of Chief Human Resource Officers strongly agree that their performance management inspires improvement. Employees tend to agree. Only one in five believes their reviews are transparent, fair, or inspire better performance. That’s not a rave review.
So, what’s the thing standing in the way of dismantling the system?
We’re in deep with traditional performance management.
The first incarnation of today’s performance systems emerged in the 1920s as companies adapted US military practices from WWI into their organizations.
Those practices were designed to unearth poor performance, which for the military meant continuous evaluations of one's mental, physical, and ethical fitness. Companies viewed this as an objective way to measure effectiveness, yet the adaptation has been wonky at best.
Without life and death on the line, there wasn't an incentive for ongoing conversations, so instead of can I trust this person to act ethically under pressure?, which was difficult to evaluate, it evolved into output metrics as an “objective” way to dole out annual compensation.
From there, companies kept adding bits and bobs—like self-assessments and goal-setting as a way to develop individuals to fill a management shortage. The worst of them all was GE introducing forced ranking in the 1980s, creating the elusive “top performers.”
Companies copied and pasted these assumed best practices with little care as to what problems they wanted to solve, leading to competing motivations, conflicting priorities, and conflating reviews with developing people.
Modern tools haven’t fixed this—they’ve just digitized the same tired processes under a multi-year contract.
Companies get to give the facade of caring about individual growth without much lift.
Collectively, we’re all in on the sham even against our will.
Everyone feels better because we’re doing stuff. Individuals and managers have 1:1s, complete reviews, and give/receive praise via the Slack bot.
At the same time, companies get their legal documentation, whether for lay-offs or cutting “c-players.” When it’s all said and done, everyone gets to eat the story—We did everything we could to help this individual improve.
It’s easy to end up on autopilot and forget that the stories told to us from these performance practices—1:1s, reviews, praise—shape us. They shape our careers—the decisions, how we view ourselves, and what we see as our potential. And if they were shaping us for the better, I wouldn’t even need to write this series.
The reality is that reviews are useful to those in power—they turn structural limitations into individual shortcomings. There’s always someone to absorb the blame down the chain of hierarchy.
Reviews thrive on scarcity framing—only some people can be top performers, and asymmetry—managers narrate, employees defend.
Subjective takes get converted into process-driven decisions. If a manager wants to decline a raise, deny a promotion, justify a termination, or keep someone uncertain/compliant, they can.
The processes stick around because the system maintains a semblance of fairness, is open to interpretation, and places the burden of proof on the less powerful party.
Now that we know how we got here and why it’s not working, we can choose better.
The first step to untangle ourselves from reviews is to get right with our intentions.
Control is a powerful drug, so our systems have been born out of the question—How can I preserve power over people?
Implicit in that question is that performance practices have been built to center those in power. By design, they look backward, making individual accountability a reactive process, which is not the same thing as creating the environmental conditions for high performance.
So, I posit that we ask a different question—How can we help humans grow, contribute, and have clarity at work?
For starters, what do humans even need at work to grow?
Performance starts with a sustainable and trusting environment that prioritizes health and ethical decision-making. So, here’s my non-exhaustive list of influences for a start-from-scratch model.
Companies need to articulate what they’re looking for in clear, honest terms, and they need to let people know in clear, honest terms if they’re doing it.
Managers need to be able to flag when they don’t understand what good looks like in terms of performance, requirements, coaching, and so forth.
Any evaluation starts with the assumption that perceived underperformance is systematic until proven to be within an individual’s control.
There’s no hiding behind documentation or using reviews for gaslighting, bullying, or bad-faith terminations. That behavior is recognized as lose-lose.
Companies decouple compensation decisions and feedback loops. By untangling these processes, it’s easier to have honest conversations without feeling your livelihood is on the line, so feedback is addressed head-on.
There’s priority given to a psychologically safe culture, including speaking up and expressing ideas without fear of judgment and freedom to fail.
Everyone has access to relevant company and role context as well as an opportunity to acknowledge constraints, risks, and trade-offs with their manager.
To center collaboration, teams share responsibility for team outcomes, and collective efforts are lauded over individual heroics.
Everyone has a manager who checks in on them and cares about their well-being.
All the things that shape a person’s capacity and growth—such as becoming a parent, grief, infertility, menopause, divorce, marriage, political strife, and even weather—are supported through policy and understood as a part of life.
Any ethical process that seeks to accurately assess individual performance means reflecting at all levels to understand the overarching system, power, and constraints at play.
Now that we’ve established some ground rules, I’d prioritize reflection > career planning > talent mapping.
If you've followed this series, you know that I'm bullish on intentional reflection.
It rewires your brain. It releases dopamine and serotonin to promote feelings of reward and stability, while reducing stress and improving emotional regulation + resiliency. It taps into our inner wisdom about our talents, interests, and histories.
Rooting a performance system in a structured and ritual retrospective would allow a rhythmic pause to ask: How did the week go? What did you work on? Anything to celebrate? Feedback you got, feedback you need to give?
While there are risks of falling into wallowing, avoidance, or endless rumination, pairing structured retrospectives with support and action-oriented behaviors combats this. It’s the inspiration for this whole she-bang.
Reflection provides critical value at each level.
For individuals, these retrospectives are about understanding themselves—likes, interests, ideal circumstances, and lessons learned–so they can not only be in the best roles and environments for themselves but also do better within future scenarios. It’s tying their work to a bigger picture or a north star. This self-knowledge is the foundation for agency in one’s career.
For a manager, there’s benefit in having a team that’s coming to you with this self-knowledge. It’s easier to direct career conversations and growth pathing when an individual comes with a perspective. Reflection also primes managers to consider what’s theirs to fix before evaluating someone else.
For a company and its leadership, reflection susses out what you actually value within your business and how your systems reinforce this.
Career storytelling is the next frontier.
Reflection taps into the nooks and crannies of your soul. It’s not about performing, posturing, or hiding—It’s about being honest with yourself. From there emerge the stories—the ones you tell yourself and the ones you tell others.
Instead of measuring output or tasks completed as markers of performance, we evaluate in terms of problems solved—why those problems mattered, who it took to solve them, and what was learned and changed along the way.
This sets a foundation for individuals to narrate their story for a promotion, a new job, or as a way to relish their wins. It also builds a bigger career bucket, because they’re focused on the types of problems they like instead of a specific role.
There’s so much not in our control at work, but what is in our control is how we tell our story, which is influenced by how you view yourself.
To shepherd these reflections and stories, we first need a reimagined manager role and shared accountability.
Instead of a manager as a catchall, their roles are spliced up into org connector, team lead, and career advocate.
The org connector is doing the up, down, and around communication, strategy + influencing, and resourcing.
The team lead is in the weeds with the team prioritizing day-to-day work, being a sounding board or extra hands, and making real-time decisions.
The career advocate is a mentor and coach who gets to know individuals—their goals, strengths, and hang-ups, essentially helping an individual answer the question of whether they're in the right place. With all that fodder, they match folks to opportunities and support their growth + wellbeing.
All three roles work together for promotions, compensation, and decisions related to people. It helps stave off bias + favoritism, diversify feedback, and create an accountability group.
Managers need to account for the conditions they’ve created, not just the observable outcomes. This includes looking at the team dynamics, collective impact, and outliers.
Divvying up the role of the manager can look like overhead at first glance. What it actually does is return managers to their strengths. An org connector focuses on alignment, a team leader on execution, and a career advocate on growth—each supporting more people without being pulled into competing demands.
To keep things consistent, there’s no surprise feedback because everything starts with a performance preview.
Instead of routine status updates masquerading as manager 1:1s, there’s something real to revisit—the performance preview. It’s a document to capture what’s expected and needed on both sides before any work is done.
For new hires, new projects, new roles, there’s a performance preview—this intentional pause identifies what good looks like and weaves past learnings into the fold. It's a sibling to a growth plan or a proactive reframe of PIPs.
It’s an opportunity for an individual to advocate for how they want to use their talents authentically and predetermine rewards, such as promotions, should they be successful. Crafting this upfront also ensures teams are complementary.
Feedback is directed and targeted because there’s something for the manager trio to reference and pinpoint when something’s not working.
The art of negotiating up front on an individual’s role, deliverables, quality, expectations, timelines, and more softens the process of later feedback because there’s less chance of miscommunication, assumptions, or moving the goal post.
Alongside rescoped manager roles and clarity of individual expectations, we get to be proactive.
Remember my grey coffin?
I could have paired future org chart possibilities—based on company ambitions and anticipated growth—to individual career goals by creating a Talent Map.
In this model, we have reflections on an individual’s wins, learnings, and challenges. We understand their impact and their career bucket list—where they want to grow. With all that good data alongside the insights of the manager trio, talent mapping just makes sense.
Talent mapping allows a company to:
Work backward to source mentors and create learning goals for individuals to ensure they’re ready for those roles by the time they’re needed.
Reveal when a person is outgrowing a company or the company is outgrowing them, so the future can be discussed thoughtfully and openly by both sides.
There’s immense goodwill created by both pathways—a company is either designing a growth path for you or it’s giving you the necessary context to make an informed decision.
That type of openness creates loyalty, meaning companies retain, grow, and promote their people. Everyone wins, which should be the goal of any relationship.
If you’re desperately waiting for your company to build a reflective, supportive, and cohesive approach to your performance + growth, consider EverMore.
Our career infrastructure helps individuals evolve with agency, honesty, and care. Plus, it typically qualifies for a company's Learning & Development stipend.
Most people choose or fall into their career before they truly know themselves, then spend years being shaped by work without ever pausing to reflect on who they’re becoming.
We don’t know what we don’t know about ourselves and work when we’re 24.
Our current systems are letting us down because how do you measure the human spirit?
Companies hold power over career—who advances, who stays, who leaves, who is valued. Individuals need resources to take that power back and operate their careers proactively.
Career ownership shouldn’t mean figuring it out alone—it’s about understanding your alignment, energy, design, and contribution so you can tell your story and make informed choices about where you’re growing or shrinking.
No review ever showed me who I could become; they just told me who I was to them.
Reviews cornered me into a mold. These practices have been normalized for so long that it feels foreign to imagine something different. But we’re on the precipice of a new future of work.
xoxo,
Courtney
p.s. If you’re a leader and this piece felt uncomfortable, consider:
What are you afraid will happen without control?
What conversations are you avoiding by hiding behind the process?
Who benefits from ambiguity of expectations—and who pays for it?
The unfortunate truth is that systems built for control, compliance, or conformity often reveal a power imbalance. So, are you doing it because you think it’s serving you or because it’s growing your team?
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the career reflection engine. She's a former Chief People Officer known for her award-winning cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.
If you enjoyed this piece, we think you'll like our podcasts on What's Wrong with Feedback at Work and Untangling Performance and Compensation.