What Performance Ratings Do to Your Brain

Three weeks of reviews. Fifty-two weeks of waiting for it.

If you’ve ever been rated against your colleagues, you know the review itself is only a small part of it. The rest of the year is spent watching, calculating, and quietly holding back the idea that might be wrong in public.

In this episode, Virginia Palm looks at what a ranking does inside the brain of the person being rated, and why the cost doesn’t end when the review does.

You’ll hear:
• Why the brain reads a rating against colleagues as a threat, not an HR process
• Why an outcome you can’t predict is more stressful than bad news you can
• How sustained threat weakens the part of the brain that plans, weighs options and holds back the quick reaction
• Why over a third of feedback actually makes performance worse, and what separates it from feedback that helps
• Why your strongest performers may be the most exposed
• A two-part audit, for yourself and for the team you lead

This isn’t an argument against high standards. It’s an argument for designing how they’re enforced.

Work with Augment Mind (leadership teams and individuals):

augment-mind.com

Book Virginia to speak: virginia-palm.com

The newsletter, one idea, one finding, one thing to try: augment-mind.kit.com/newsletter

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Research mentioned:

• Dickerson & Kemeny (2004), Psychological Bulletin: social-evaluative threat and cortisol

• Zink et al. (2008), Neuron: neural processing of social hierarchy

• de Berker et al. (2016), Nature Communications: uncertainty and acute stress

• Arnsten (2009), Nature Reviews Neuroscience: stress and the prefrontal cortex

• Kluger & DeNisi (1996), Psychological Bulletin: the effects of feedback on performance