I recently read an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal on feedback response, or the anxiety and sometimes visceral response some experience during performance reviews. It seems several major companies are considering changes in this process in the hopes of making the experience more constructive, retaining talent in the process. Some chose to rebrand the phrase “review” calling the information they received things like “perspectives,” “performance development” and even “feedforward” instead.

No matter what you name it, to me, evaluations, even the informal kind, are an essential part of achieving your potential. As one of the professionals in the interview said, there is an art to giving constructive feedback and we need to redefine what it is. While we are not there yet, we are working to make our standardized reviews both comfortable and constructive.