Leaders may give female workers inflated and inaccurate performance feedback when concerned about appearing prejudiced against women, according to a study from Washington State University researchers.
This link between overly positive performance reviews and “protective paternalism” — or the belief that women need to be handled carefully and shielded from negative interactions — can hold women back and cause them to miss growth opportunities, the researchers found.
“If women don’t get honest feedback, they’re only going to fall further behind. That’s the clear, negative outcome,” Leah Sheppard, the lead study author and a researcher at Washington State University’s Carson College of Business, said in a statement. “It’s never going to be the right thing or even the kind thing to do, ultimately, to spare somebody from the obvious areas in which they need to improve.”
In a study, Sheppard and colleagues divided 486 participants into two groups by gender. The participants took a survey that measured their motivation to appear nonprejudiced toward women, which included statements such as “Being nonprejudiced toward women is part of my self-concept” and “Because of today’s politically correct standards, I try to appear nonprejudiced towards women.”
After that, the participants read a performance description of a hypothetical, gender-neutral employee and picked positive and negative statements from a list to provide feedback to the employee.
A week later, the participants looked at the same performance description, but the employee had a male or female name. The study participants were asked how they would feel while delivering feedback, including whether they felt they should protect the employee from harm, and then selected feedback statements from the list used in the previous scenario.
Overall, the research team found that participants who expressed a stronger external motivation to appear nonprejudiced (“due to today’s politically correct standards”) were more likely to say they had a desire to protect the woman employee from harm. These beliefs also led to the evaluators delivering more positive feedback than in the ungendered scenario. This happened whether the participants themselves were women or men.
Sheppard and colleagues said the findings could have implications for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, as well as help reframe workplace performance evaluations.
“We have to do a lot better at performance reviews and maybe even get away from some of the language traditionally used around it. So instead of a scary ‘performance appraisal,’ maybe it’s coaching or mentoring,” Sheppard said. “It could be a way to normalize mistakes. Everybody has areas in which they falter and could improve.”
Ineffective managers make employees feel less valued, according to research from the Society for Human Resource Management. On the other hand, workers who reported having a highly effective manager were more than twice as likely to feel a deep sense of commitment to their employer.
Nearly half of women report gender bias and discrimination during the hiring process, and 38% said they’ve hesitated to apply for a job based on perceived gender bias, according to a report from The Muse. Women in the C-suite were even more likely to report bias or discrimination.
Notably, inclusion-boosting practices could help alleviate burnout, according to a Boston Consulting Group report. Burnout and inclusion are tightly intertwined, BCG said, and four factors have the greatest effect on inclusion: access to resources; senior managerial support; psychological safety with a direct manager; and fair and equal opportunity for success.