You’ve likely conducted many performance reviews and been the subject of many more. How much time do you put into your employees’s performance reviews? Do you consider the process merely a formality? As a leader, your team’s success depends on an effective performance-review process. The key is to put employees in charge of their performance reviews and destiny. When your team members don’t feel that they have control over their situations, it causes what’s called situational stress. It’s the same feeling we feel when confronted by danger, like a house fire, and it triggers a fight-or-flight response. The amygdala, a group of neurons in your brain, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus, the brain’s command center. The brain senses danger and activates the sympathetic nervous system. Adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine are released, and blood pressures and heart rates rise.
