Performance reviews are broken. Here's a 3-step approach to getting more actionable feedback

Performance reviews are suspended. In many businesses, they pack a punch – they instill fear and they also waste time. Management guru Bob Sutton said that if a typical performance review were a drug, "it wouldn't be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration because it's so ineffective and has so many effects despicable secondary".

Collect more actionable feedback.

An ugly side effect is that performance reviews are often riddled with vague statements that aren't actionable. Unfortunately, this lack of actionable feedback can disproportionately impact women. In their study of performance reviews, Stanford researchers found that during performance reviews, women were more likely to receive vague feedback that lacked specific guidance.

Another problem with performance reviews is that they are almost always individual: one person giving their opinion to another person. This means that ultimately the assessee receives a hodgepodge of feedback that can be difficult to put together.

At Asana Labs, where I work, my teammate, Joshua Zerkel, and I wanted to design a new, more actionable, lightweight, and research-based way for leaders to gather feedback, especially in dynamic climates . We call it the Feedback Switcheroo.

The feedback switch.

The Feedback Switcheroo was inspired by the idea that a leader's own team, collectively, is best placed to co-create actionable feedback for their leader. Your team is a team for a reason.

This is how the Switcheroo works.

1. Ask each member of your team to submit an action to implement.

A Switcheroo starts with everyone imagining that they are you--the leader of their team. Encourage your team members to put themselves in your shoes. Ask them to observe how you interact in meetings. Have them look at your calendar to get a full picture of your day-to-day work. Encourage them to think about your goals and priorities.

Why is this perspective a crucial first step? Research shows that team members and leaders often suffer from what's called "perception distance," meaning your team members likely have different perceptions of your day-to-day work than you do. For example, your team may not know where you spend the most time.

By getting participants to bridge this perpetual distance through perspective taking, the goal is to inspire more actionable feedback informed by real day-to-day work, not biased perceptions of work.

Next, ask each of your team members:

Choose one action that you would like me, your boss, to take that would help you do your job more efficiently.

Ask each member of your team to independently submit the action of their choice. You can use a survey tool to collect these responses.

2. Ask your team members to collectively vote on the best action to take.

Once you've compiled all the submissions, ask your team members to vote on the main action they want you to take.

This step is a form of structured brainstorming, which has proven to be more effective than the more common loosely structured brainstorming. By having your team members vote based on all submissions, you'll limit rigid thinking.

We found that when team members were asked to vote on all ideas, many of them changed their selection because they found out that one of their teammates had submitted. ..