We’re going to skip the explanatory part of this discussion—the part about the gender baggage we’re all dragging around—and simply advise using anonymous evaluation tools sparingly, or at least with the recognition that they don’t reliably bring out the best in us. If you must invite everyone to opine on each other’s strengths and weaknesses, then we suggest first training people in how to perform productive, unbiased evaluations. Figuring out how to separate signal from noise from ego in assessing our colleagues is varsity stuff, and we shouldn’t just be throwing people into the deep end with
...more
