Being top of the class comes with perks, like being lavished with your manager’s praise. Unless you’re a high-performing woman, that is.
New analysis of more than 23,000 performance reviews across 250 U.S. workplaces shows that women at the top of their game are still put down on paper as abrasive and opinionated—and it doesn’t matter if their manager is male or female.
Textio, the AI-powered writing platform for HR teams that ran the study, found that women have to sit through reviews that are harsher and less constructive than their male peers—and more often than not, their feedback is based on poor stereotypes of their personality, not their work.
For example, nearly a third of women were described as opinionated in their performance review—just 4% of men were told the same.
“Language like abrasive, difficult, friendly, and helpful showed up in the majority of women’s reviews, but in very few of the men’s,” the report notes.
Over half of top-performing men, on the other hand, are hailed for their confidence (54%) and ambitiousness (63%) in their performance reviews. Less than 18% of women received the same recognition.
Likewise, despite being more likely to be described as “nice” in their performance review, the majority of high-performing women recalled also being told they’re unlikable—compared to just 16% of men.
“If high-performing men are often told they are brilliant, and high-performing women are often told they are successful despite being unlikable, what impact does this have on their performance over time?” the report warns.
Despite the nonsensical feedback being conflicting, the report concludes that exhausted women are internalizing these negative stereotypes about themselves, and, as a result, watching their performance tank and their careers stagnate.
Even too much praise can be bad
It’s not just whittling women down to a stereotype that’s problematic. Even praise can be a problem, across the board for both genders.
The issue? It’s often exaggerated, perhaps for the purpose of backing up stellar scores in top performers’ reviews.
The report highlighted that it’s common to find statements like “You always bring a curious mindset to every conversation” or “You’re constantly looking for ways to improve things.”
In reality, no one is constantly looking for ways to improve—and top performers can see through this lazy effort to make them look good on paper.
It’s why, the report warns, “managers aren’t helping high performers by turning their feedback up to 11. Rather, managers undermine their own credibility when they provide this kind of feedback.”
Likewise, when praise is a generic cliché, such as “he thinks outside the box,” it does little to motivate high performers.
“These generic phrases have been used so often in business contexts that they have lost a great deal of their meaning,” the report says, adding that managers use this thoughtless quick filler in reviews instead of actually thinking of detailed examples of when a worker has excelled. But the latter would be far more flattering.
Be specific—or lose your top workers
Even among the best of the best, feedback can’t always be good. But it must be specific.
Using negative stereotypes or nonactionable statements in performance reviews doesn’t give workers room to work on their weaknesses and grow.
Instead, the report warns, it “tanks performance” and leaves high performers stagnating—or eyeing the exit door.
In 2023, Textio found that 10% of all employee attrition was down to low-quality feedback—which includes positive but “empty” remarks.
Meanwhile, people who receive poor-quality feedback are 63% more likely to leave the organization within the upcoming year than people who receive actionable input from their managers.
“In other words, you may be trying to retain your high performers, but if you’re like the thousands of managers whose feedback was included in this year’s report, you are likely making performance choices that send those high performers elsewhere,” the report adds.
“This is especially harmful when paired with the fact that it’s often easier for a high performer to get a significant pay raise when changing organizations rather than staying put.”
The solution is easy but more time-consuming than scribbling “high achiever” in yet another performance review: Always make feedback actionable, specific, and clear.
