The one word that never appears in men's performance reviews

[lasagnasshole]

This is not surprising but still depressing. I am trying to be a little more assertive and out there at work, but it's such a tough balancing act. Yesterday I had to talk on the phone with a male superior who is a big interrupter, and I felt like I practically had to yell into the phone to get him to listen to me. And now I worry he'll think I'm "strident" in the way I defended my position. Sigh.

The formatting is difficult to copy so I've just put a key excerpt below.

www.fastcompany.com/3034895/strong-female-lead/the-one-word-men-never-see-in-their-performance-reviews

Perhaps unsurprisingly critical feedback was doled out in a much higher ratio to women: 58.9% of men’s reviews contained critical feedback, while an overwhelming 87.9% of the reviews received by women did.

Not only did women receive more criticism in their performance reviews, it was less constructive and more personal. For example, the critical feedback men received was mostly geared toward suggestions to develop additional skills:

“There were a few cases where it would have been extremely helpful if you had gone deeper into the details to help move an area forward.”

Women received similar constructive feedback, but they also included the personality criticism such as “watch your tone” and “stop being so judgmental.” For example:

“You can come across as abrasive sometimes. I know you don’t mean to, but you need to pay attention to your tone.”

Abrasive alone was used 17 times to describe 13 different women, but the word never appeared in men’s reviews. In fact, this type of character critique that was absent from men’s reviews showed up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women.

[IIOY]

I saw an article about this yesterday and thought back to my nightmare boss. His problem with me had zero to do with my work product and everything to do with my personality. In fact, I remember him sticking a sentence in the middle of a negative review that my work product was just fine, or some such phrase.

[Deleted]

I've mentioned this before on ML but last year the only negative feedback on my review was that one of the managers (Who I rarely have any interaction with beyond a hello in the hallway.) thinks I need to smile more. My manager was horrified that he even had to tell me that.

I actually asked him if he thought that feedback would have been given to a male employee. He said no and that he would speak to the other manager if anything like this happened again. People don't even realize that that's sexist until you tell them. :/

[FloFTW]

Another word I hate is "brash". Fuck you.

[secretlyevil]

Well last Friday my new supervisor told me I was difficult and opinionated. On here and IRL several agreed that he wouldn't have said that to me had I been male. It is beyond frustrating.

[wawa]

My (male) bosses boss is difficult and opinionated. But id never get to tell him that.


This shit pisses me off. Watch your tone? Strident? FUCK off. I've been so lucky with my bosses to date that something like this would totally blindside me. The closest ive come is ny first boss (female) who told me that I do not suffer fools. Which...frankly I took as a compliment even though she was telling it to mw as somethung to work on.

This kind of evidence that I am in fact lucky and that shit isn't changing makes me want to throw shit.

[ringstrue]

I'm a huge asshole at work and I've never been talked to. But my coworker is outwardly racist/sexist and they don't address that either.

[lasagnasshole]

@soudesafinado - don't sell yourself short on having actual leadership qualities. The book I was just reading talked about the importance of making decisions, even if sometimes they are wrong.

[Deleted]

I have never used abrasive in a review and can only imagine very extreme circumstances where I might.

I have been rewarded by bosses for being assertive, but I have received weird negative feedback from my staff (360). Quite honestly I think a lot of it is because I'm female. They expect me to be warmer. Some of it has been stuff I don't think a man would ever get.

[jillboston]

ugh... this is SO depressing. The last firm I worked at had a very experienced female litigator, well respected but they wouldn't make her partner bc she was "abrasive" (she wasn't -just didn't suffer fools). She ultimately got appointed to a judgeship. So, these guys look pretty funny IMO - an associate who was at their firm is now a judge.

And I should mention that one of the men they quickly made partner was known to scream FUUUUCK at other lawyers, the walls, people on the phone, several times a day.

[terpsfan]

"watch my tone" and "maybe you aren't coming across so nice" were the main comments at my performance review this year (100% remote job). Hence why this is my last day at this company.

[blink]

This makes me so depressed. A few weeks I was stressing over my response to an email because I didn't want to come off rude. But the person asked for information I had included in the original and I wasn't about to apologize for something I hadn't forgotten. Luckily nothing came of it but still.

[lasagnasshole]

Thank you for sharing your stories, everyone. It is very frustrating to see how many women face this! But I think it's important that we talk about it so women realize it's not an individual issue.

[jillboston]

Aug 29, 2014 8:06:12 GMT -5 lasagnasshole said:

Thank you for sharing your stories, everyone. It is very frustrating to see how many women face this! But I think it's important that we talk about it so women realize it's not an individual issue.

This is SO true. 

[leeba25]

Aug 29, 2014 8:03:02 GMT -5 blink said:

This makes me so depressed. A few weeks I was stressing over my response to an email because I didn't want to come off rude. But the person asked for information I had included in the original and I wasn't about to apologize for something I hadn't forgotten. Luckily nothing came of it but still.

A woman I work with wrote "scroll down" once in a situation like that. 

I have had numerous conversations with employees about their demeanor ... But most of them have been men. Abrasive, harsh, know it all, and you need to work on your self awareness have been recent ones. I can't remember a conversation with a woman like that in a long time, which maybe means I'm reverse sexist. Lol. 

[Michelle]

Aug 29, 2014 5:42:10 GMT -5 lasagnasshole said:

This is not surprising but still depressing. I am trying to be a little more assertive and out there at work, but it's such a tough balancing act. Yesterday I had to talk on the phone with a male superior who is a big interrupter, and I felt like I practically had to yell into the phone to get him to listen to me. And now I worry he'll think I'm "strident" in the way I defended my position. Sigh.

The formatting is difficult to copy so I've just put a key excerpt below.

www.fastcompany.com/3034895/strong-female-lead/the-one-word-men-never-see-in-their-performance-reviews

Perhaps unsurprisingly critical feedback was doled out in a much higher ratio to women: 58.9% of men’s reviews contained critical feedback, while an overwhelming 87.9% of the reviews received by women did.

Not only did women receive more criticism in their performance reviews, it was less constructive and more personal. For example, the critical feedback men received was mostly geared toward suggestions to develop additional skills:

“There were a few cases where it would have been extremely helpful if you had gone deeper into the details to help move an area forward.”

Women received similar constructive feedback, but they also included the personality criticism such as “watch your tone” and “stop being so judgmental.” For example:

“You can come across as abrasive sometimes. I know you don’t mean to, but you need to pay attention to your tone.”

Abrasive alone was used 17 times to describe 13 different women, but the word never appeared in men’s reviews. In fact, this type of character critique that was absent from men’s reviews showed up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women.

Interesting. I plan on giving that feedback today in a 1:1 ahead of a formal performance review next month, as I plan one of my employee's exits.

I have also coached one man to be more assertive. I coach women to be more assertive too - you have to be at my company. But you have to be respectful and actually contributing rather than blowing people off and being a rude ass like this one person.

Note - I didn't interview him. We absorbed another organization and he was guaranteed a job. He is making my life harder by not doing well at that job - so much I got in trouble from the very top yesterday about my responsiveness because I'm doing this dude's job and mine and getting 2-300 emails a day. It's the guy at the top that publicly guaranteed the guy a job along with a few thousand others. 

No more miss nice guy trying to coach the guy along. He doesn't have the data management skills, doesn't assert himself or add anything to client conversations, passes his work off on everyone else and the clients have no confidence in him. It would be easier to have a vacancy there. Or even a secretary making half what this joker makes.

[Michelle]

^and on that note I'm jumping off so I can be sure to be responsive today!!

[Deleted]

If it makes you ladies feel any better, I have had a manager call me both abrasive and brash. Of course, I am both at times, so fair enough.

[anodyne]

I was once told I needed to wear skirts/dresses more often. I left that job within a month.

[StrawberryBlondie]

I had a boss like that a while back. I'm pretty sure he would've told similar things to men, though. He just really didn't like it if you disagreed with his opinion or preferred way of doing things.

I really wish our evaluations here had a way to respond. Its great because we do a self-eval, but we do it before our bosses do theirs. Then we get theirs much later. My eval last year (donne by an old manager for my old job) had some stuff, both positive and negative, that absolutely wasn't me. I know who it actually was. I have no recourse.

[mrspez07]

A little something I caught myself doing in emails and changed to be assertive but not rude was changing "can you please send the file?" To "please send the file."
I need the file, why make it an option?!

Try doing that in conversation as well.

My boss is a woman that many might see as brash or strongly opinionated or assertive, but she started the company by taking a big client company (all men) from her previous male-run firm. They love her because she can hold her own and gets shit done.

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2014 8:43:39 GMT -5 anodyne said:

I was once told I needed to wear skirts/dresses more often. I left that job within a month.

A friend of mine had a woman manager tell her she needed to lose weight to be successful (it was a normal office job and I would guess she was only about 200lbs)

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2014 9:18:25 GMT -5 @evelynrichards said:

Aug 29, 2014 7:30:15 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Send it back with a winkie emoticon after every sentence.

I started with "with all due respect." Apparently this is disrespectful.

It kind of is. Like a coworker started an email this week with "I don't mean this to be harsh, but ". It usually implies you're trying to cover something that is disrespectful/harsh/whatever

Usually you're better off just saying without drawing attention to it.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Can I just say that I have a colleague who really does need to watch his tone because he really is harsh and abrasive in a really bad way?

Not that I'll ever know what his reviews look like, but if they don't say something to that effect, I'd be really surprised.

[wawa]

Aug 29, 2014 9:48:00 GMT -5 StrawberryBlondie said:

Can I just say that I have a colleague who really does need to watch his tone because he really is harsh and abrasive in a really bad way?

Not that I'll ever know what his reviews look like, but if they don't say something to that effect, I'd be really surprised.

I'd actually be surprised if MH's reviews don't have some wording to that effect.  I know his bosses get pissed at him on the regular for being too blunt with clients about what is and is not reasonable.

[gpw]

Aug 29, 2014 8:00:53 GMT -5 terpsfan said:

"watch my tone" and "maybe you aren't coming across so nice" were the main comments at my performance review this year (100% remote job). Hence why this is my last day at this company.

God, that pisses me off because that is how we talk to children.  

::throws things:::

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2014 9:52:08 GMT -5 wawa said:

Aug 29, 2014 9:48:00 GMT -5 StrawberryBlondie said:

Can I just say that I have a colleague who really does need to watch his tone because he really is harsh and abrasive in a really bad way?

Not that I'll ever know what his reviews look like, but if they don't say something to that effect, I'd be really surprised.

I'd actually be surprised if MH's reviews don't have some wording to that effect.  I know his bosses get pissed at him on the regular for being too blunt with clients about what is and is not reasonable.

My brother got in serious trouble for his "tone" once at work, to the point where the only reason he was not fired was because he was actually right in WHAT he said, just not how he said it.  He almost got fired.   This was during his residency though and he did his residency at kind of a unique place.  

[zelda25]

My boss told me during my last review that I need to be "friendlier" to him and the one other guy on on our team. Because I give no fucks (because he likes to mindfuck everyone and I want out of here anyway), I pointed out that he goes entire days without speaking a single fucking word to me and that when I greet him EVERY MORNING, I'm lucky to get a grunt in my general direction in response.

Interestingly, he didn't put any of that bullshit in the actual written review--it was just stuff that he brought up while we were talking.

[foundmylazybum]

I've been told things in this vein often. I try to find the balance of when it's true and when it's not lol.

I cannot stand it when men are assertive but women are the bitch. Or that honesty in a situation, especially coming from a woman is seen as aggressiveness. Worse is when a woman even promoting her IDEAS in a situation is seen as overly aggressive.

[2curlydogs]

I was told I take things "too personally" when I argue about things/directions I think are wrong. In formal reviews. Oh. And to "watch my body language".

Which may or may not have contributed to my leaving.