Recall that 63 percent of executives surveyed say their biggest challenge to effective performance management is that their managers lack courage to have the difficult performance discussions.1 They give artificially high reviews to even mediocre employees, which dilutes the usefulness of reviews for addressing performance or guiding decision making. In one organization 96 percent of employees received the highest rating.2 And researcher Brené Brown observes that a lack of meaningful feedback was the number-one reason cited by talented people for leaving an organization.
