Give Performance Feedback to Their Staff One way otherwise effective top people do performance feedback badly is they don’t do it at all. Or they do it on the fly. Five minutes over a beer. It can be so quickly and informally that the recipient doesn’t know that’s what it was, as the HR leader later finds out. A phantom review. It was said about one CEO, “It’s difficult getting him pinned down for reviews.” Usually there’s no escaping this annual chore, no escaping the iron grip of the performance-management apparatus, fitted out with forms, rating scales, strict deadlines and pesky automated …