#443 The Annual Appraisal Interview: A Leadership Tool or a Bureaucratic Relic? - Article by Niels Brabandt
The Annual Appraisal Interview: A Leadership Tool or a Bureaucratic Relic?
By Niels Brabandt
As the year draws to a close, leaders across industries prepare for the ritual that has become synonymous with corporate life: the annual appraisal interview. For some, it is an eagerly awaited opportunity for recognition, a raise, or a promotion. For others, it’s an exercise in frustration, an arbitrary meeting where judgments are handed down without context, where months of work are distilled into a few vague sentences, and where feedback is often more performative than productive.
But the real question for any serious organisation is this: does the annual appraisal interview still serve its purpose—or has it become a management habit overdue for change?
The Problem with “Annual”
When an organisation reviews an entire year’s performance in a single conversation, memory itself becomes the first barrier to fairness. Few leaders can recall the details of what happened in February when they sit down in December. The result is a conversation skewed by recency bias, selective recollection, and the leader’s subjective impressions.
This is not leadership, it’s bureaucracy disguised as evaluation.
Research, such as that by Professor Cunning at the University of Osnabrück, confirms what most employees already know: quarterly reviews lead to significantly better results. They catch minor issues before they escalate into resignations. They recognise effort before motivation wanes. They allow leaders and teams to learn and adapt continuously, rather than rehashing a year’s worth of frustration.
Of course, not every global organisation can conduct quarterly reviews with thousands of employees. Yet that does not excuse a lack of meaningful engagement. The principle remains: frequency builds trust. The less often you speak with your people, the less you truly lead them.
From Monologue to Dialogue
Too many appraisal meetings still follow the same outdated script: the leader talks, the employee listens, and occasionally defends themselves. It’s a structure born not from leadership but from hierarchy.
A genuine appraisal conversation should invert that ratio. The leader should speak about 20 percent of the time, asking thoughtful, open-ended questions that stimulate discussion. The employee should speak 80 percent of the time, sharing insights, experiences, and suggestions. The leader’s role is to listen, to guide, and to ensure the conversation becomes a platform for growth, not judgment.
The annual appraisal interview, when done correctly, is not a courtroom; it is a dialogue built on mutual respect and accountability.
Leadership Requires Proof
Consider a leader who tells an employee, “I just don’t see you in that role.” That sentence—so often spoken in workplaces, reflects the very failure of modern performance management. Leadership is not a matter of “seeing” or “feeling.” It is a discipline grounded in evidence and reasoning.
A responsible leader must always carry the burden of proof. If a promotion is denied, it must be based on specific, documented examples, communicated transparently and respectfully. Anything less is not leadership—it is opinion masquerading as authority.
When reasoning is absent, trust erodes. When trust erodes, talent leaves. And when talent leaves, even the most sophisticated appraisal system becomes meaningless.
Preparation Is a Leadership Duty
No effective appraisal interview happens spontaneously. Preparation is non-negotiable—before, during, and after the meeting.
Leaders must review the year systematically, not from memory but from documented milestones. They must ensure all feedback and records comply with GDPR and data protection regulations, using secure systems rather than informal notes or spreadsheets. They must approach every conversation with a structured plan, but also with genuine curiosity about the individual’s experience and perspective.
And when the meeting ends, the work continues. Proper follow-up, clear documentation, actionable goals, and consistent monitoring, distinguishes genuine leadership from administrative routine.
From Obligation to Opportunity
In too many organisations, the annual appraisal interview is treated as a formality—a box-ticking exercise required by HR policy. Leaders exchange pleasantries, sign a form, and move on. Such “leadership by paperwork” not only demotivates employees; it signals a deeper cultural failure.
If leadership is to be credible, it must be intentional. Appraisal interviews should not be something leaders “get through”; they should be something leaders use—as a tool to build alignment, trust, and engagement. Anything less turns the process into an insult to those who deliver the organisation’s results.
Training Leaders to Lead
The truth is uncomfortable: many leaders have never been trained to lead. They have been promoted for technical expertise, not for their ability to develop people. Conducting effective appraisal interviews is not instinct—it is a skill that must be learned and practiced.
Short online tutorials or templated HR forms are not enough. Leaders need professional development in communication, feedback, and coaching. They need to understand that leadership is not about power—it is about service. When done properly, appraisal interviews stop being dreaded appointments and start becoming moments of genuine progress.
A Call to Action
The annual appraisal interview can still be a powerful tool—but only if leaders choose to make it one.
That means:
Holding more frequent, shorter conversations throughout the year.
Treating the appraisal as a dialogue, not a monologue.
Ensuring every statement is supported by evidence.
Preparing thoroughly and following up responsibly.
Recognising that leadership is a profession, not a title.
The modern workplace demands better leadership than tradition alone can offer. Appraisal interviews, when designed and executed with integrity, can become milestones of growth rather than moments of frustration.
Because ultimately, leadership is not about completing forms—it’s about enabling people to perform at their best.
About the Author
Niels Brabandt is the Owner and Founder of NB Networks, based in London and Zurich. He is a global leadership expert, speaker, consultant, and coach. His Leadership Blog and Leadership Podcast reach audiences worldwide, focusing on sustainable leadership, organisational culture, and professional excellence.
Keywords:
Niels Brabandt, Leadership, Annual Appraisal Interview, Performance Review, Leadership Blog, Employee Motivation, Sustainable Leadership, Leadership Training, Leadership Development, NB Networks.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
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Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
The end of the year is getting closer. We are the last quarter of the year. We all know what is a. What is approaching right now. It's the annual appraisal interview. And of course, some of you might now say, yeah, that's going to be a good moment to get my promotion or my salary raise. And some of you might think, oh, it's going to be an interesting one.
Let's see what they have to say. And some of you will sit there and think, yeah, pointless, isn't it? And that's exactly what we're talking today. I received quite a number of emails about this where people said, this annual appraisal interview thing, could you please have a talk about this? Because I think it's totally pointless. I think it's very arbitrary and I think it's holding something against me without any proof and I suddenly have to defend myself for no reason. And that's exactly part of the problem.
Of course, you cannot simply tell someone it's the annual appraisal interview. Here are my points of view. And now you have to defend yourself. Let's get into details of the annual appraisal interview. And of course, when you now say, okay, the annual appraisal you have happens every year. I have to endure this. This is not how it should be.
And when you as a leader say, yeah, I just meet spontaneously, I am good with people and I think this is all going well, that is also not an approach that you choose to talk with people in that way. You need to be prepared better than this. When you say, my annual appraisal interview is just a spontaneous chat, sitting down, putting my opinion out there. And then people have to give their point of view on the matter. That is not what an annual appraisal interview should be about. When we talk about the annual appraisal interview, of course, some people might now claim, is it something like a review? Yes. And let's phase one aspect.
Let's say it's now October. I'm going to send you the Microsoft Outlook invite for December and say, let's meet for one hour or an hour and a half or how long it might be in your industry. And then of course, we sit down in December and you now think, what are we going to talk about? Well, as the name says annual appraisal interview, it should be an annual review.
And the question is, is it? Because many people will now say, well, it's of course not annual when we meet in December. Because when someone now says, yeah, Mr. Bunton, do you remember this thing in February I would say no, I don't. Most likely I don't because it's probably a very important detail for you. It's not an important detail for me. So how should I remember this?
How can you expect me to remember this? And that's exactly part of the first problem. Of course it's a review of the year. But when you do a review in December for January, March, etc. Etc. Then people will most likely not remember every single detail. Which by the way, does not mean that you as a leader are automatically right with what you are saying.
Some people always think it is a bit of a review, it's not much of a preview. And that's the next problem, of course, besides having a review. And now we have to question, is it very, very smart to take the only a choice of a once a year one off chat where we talk about the whole year? The answer already in there. It's of course not the case. And when you don't give a preview about what's coming up in the future, people will feel that this whole meeting is basically only about you. It's about your opinion.
It's nothing substantiated. And also a monologue. A monologue of the leading person of the leader telling other people, that's what I think about you. And that is of course, nothing which goes down too well. It's very important here that any appraisal interview is always a discussion. And the discussion means when you want to have the A plus plus. And that's very difficult to achieve in this case when you want to have the A plus appraisal interview, which you do once a year and you most likely should do more often.
We get to that in a minute. It's always a discussion where you as a leader talk roughly 20%.
That's the A plus level. A plus plus level.
20% is you talking or asking smart questions that that actually make the discussion move. And 80% is the other person talking.
Their points of view. Maybe they have a different point of view, maybe they have wishes, ideas or input. And then you on with that. The annual appraisal interview is not there for you as a leader to pour on other people what you actually wanted to tell them for the whole year. Because especially when it comes to the appraisal interview, I see that there's a wild amount of malpractice out there where people pretty much say, yeah, you know, we have a process and we have this scheme where you have to follow the scheme because I have to put it into our CRM. System or into HR system or whatever else you're running. And the process is I am talking, you are listening, but you are allowed to defend yourself.
And that's not how an appraisal interview should ever go. The process always is. First, of course you need to question is it smart to do this annually? And let's face it, you will always proven by science Professor Cunning from the University of Osnabruck did research on that is the best way to do this quarterly. When you now say that doesn't work in our industry because of it this might actually be true. Sometimes quarterly is just impossible because you are a global corporation, you have global work, people are travelling all over the world. And also you don't have enough to talk about because it's all incomplete projects.
So you really have to wait until the end of the year and then it's perfectly fine. However, after I told you what this is about, most likely not every single business is a global one. Most likely not every single business has global projects. Most likely not every single business has incomplete project and has to wait until the end of the year. The first choice you make is always quarterly reviews and the last one per year can be longer. To do a whole annual review with the protocols you have written over the Indian due course of the whole year, which is extremely helpful because then you really talked about everything in that year. Unfortunately, quite often they go for biannually. Sorry, they.
They go for every six months, twice a year or for annually. And annually, unfortunately is still the most prevalent, most seen one. So the question is, is annual really helpful? In reality, no. If it doesn't work any other way, you have to keep it. With all the downsides that this might have in many businesses you can have shorter ones quarterly and I guarantee you immediately you will have better results in your organisation. Because the probably slight dissatisfaction which happened in February, which escalated to someone quitting in July, could have been solved.
The probably tiny bit of issues you have with the project in March, which escalated in October, might have been found out. The very little and tiny conflict between two team members in January that escalated country, no, probably company wide in November could have been found out and dealt with much earlier. And it's very important that annual is the last resort when you are a large corporation. I work for corporations which have six digits amounts of people working for them. And you need to have one process in place, then you can still have your own little process where you say in our team we do it this way. Fair enough. Be sure that when you make any kind of notes or anything similar.
You do it GDPR compliant. You very quickly in today's times run into issues with gdpr. You cannot just do Excel files and then put something with a name in there where anyone probably can access it on some sort of drive so anyone can suddenly read what you think about others. That's not a smart choice. It's also not GDPR compliant. Be sure that you use software or solutions where people know that this is GDPR compliant. Some leaders get around it very simp.
They simply say, I don't put any names there, I just have acronyms. Someone is water bottled, someone else is sunflower and they just use acronyms for people. So you don't know who that is. However, often by when you read this due to what is in there, often people can find out who is, who is the one you're actually talking about. So question if it should be done annually. And of course when you now have certain opinions, I give you a one to one copy, an original copy of what I just recently saw in an annual appraisal interview. And the leader sat down there and said, yeah, I'm going to do with my name now, Mr.
Raband, I think you're less motivated than the year before, you know, and, and when the person said I, I actually don't see it that way. Could you please tell me how you get to that conclusion? Yeah, well that's just, that's just how I see things, right? I. I know that you applied for promotion, but I just don't see you there. I don't see you there. When I don't see you there, you can't get promoted because I can't see you there.
I just don't see you there. You're better off working in my department. So first of all, multiple issues with that. Number one, when you say I don't see you there, that is not reasoning. When you, for example, say hey look, you want to be promoted and in my opinion I can't promote you at the moment. I don't see you there because of three specific issues which really came to my mind in February of last year. We had a massive issue with a client and it's your job to deal with this.
But what you did is you put it forward first to a colleague who isn't even qualified on the matter. And that colleague then was desperate and forwarded that to me and I picked it up from there. Second, in May we had a massive issue during our annual expo. We needed new products, we needed presentations and we needed someone to actually step up and when I asked who could step up, two others volunteered and you didn't do anything. And the final thing on that is in October, which is just two months ago. Then we had this issue internally where you had a conflict between two team members. You could have easily stepped up and showed that you have leadership abilities, or at least ask me about this if I am okay with you stepping up.
But you didn't do anything. You were the first one retreating, sitting at your desk, only doing your work, not helping the team at all. And as a leader, you need to be different. And to get you to the point of leadership, if you want to, we can give you training or coaching or consulting or mentoring or whatever else you need here. And then you continue from that. That is reasoning. Because very important is the burden of proof is always with you.
Of course, some leaders now say, well, I never had to do it that way. And of course, let's face it, many leaders never learned how to do annual appraisal interviews. It is something you learn. It's not something that suddenly blows to your mind when someone gives you the title Senior Vice President of Global Operations. Of course not. There are way too many people out there who never learned how to be leaders and suddenly they are leaders. It is extremely important that you simply learn leadership before you do leadership.
Any kind of outlook and options are always with a burden of proof on your side. You cannot simply tell people, I don't see it that way, I disagree with you. So, you know, any disagreement in this course of discussion always ends up with me being right. Because, you know, I am the leader and you are not, then people will not do any kind of appraisal interview with you anymore in the future. So when you now say, how do I develop my people towards being able to deliver great annual appraisal interviews? First, of course, is people need to know. It is not a formality.
You probably know these kind of appraisal interviews which you have annually, where people sit down with you and say, yeah, it's going well, isn't it? How are you, mate? Yeah, it's all good. Cool. Same with me. I just tick the box here, Right. If you have anything, my door is always open.
Cool, thank you. See you next week. And that is something I've seen way too often happening. When you think that it is a formality where people can simply put out their nonsense on you or simply tick the box and move on, you shouldn't be surprised if they consider your organisation arbitrary one. What I told you before, the case of I don't See you there is a real one. I sat there in due course of coaching and a leader said, I don't see you there. And the consequence of that was that the person simply left the organisation.
Then HR stepped in because they said, please don't leave the organisation, we really appreciate your work. Then the person said, I don't see myself being appreciated here. A negotiation followed. The whole notice was taken back. The person was promoted, however, in a different team because they said, yeah, we can't promote you in that team because the leader says they don't see you there. So they again backed the leader that didn't deliver on the promise of burden of proof is with them. That's a solution where at least the result was satisfying.
But the process was not. Because now anyone knows the way how to get promoted is you actually have to file your notice and then basically blackmail someone into promoting you. That is not how anything should be. Annual appraisal interview are not a formality, they are an important aspect of actual leadership work and they are also not an optionality. Just ticking the box is a massive offence towards the work of your people in your team. It is not something you do within 15 minutes. It needs intense preparation with every single member of your team and it also needs intense preparation afterwards, including documentation and whatnot.
Because people rely on having fair chances and especially in today's world, they have a right to get reasoning if something is denied towards them. And when you, for example, say this is reason A, reason B, reason C, and by the way, reason D is how our business model is challenged at the moment. And I don't even know what the regulation the government is putting out that our business model exists in six months time, then of course people will understand that you can't pour out money and promotions there, but you need to give the reasoning behind it. It's always your job as a leader to do that. In reality it means people need to get professional training and coaching. And I can't stress this often enough, the 49 Euro online class is not going to make it the cut here. People need to learn how to do it.
People need to learn how to communicate. Because as soon as you put everything in place the way it should be, people feel seen, people feel heard, people actually are seen, people actually are heard. And with a burden of proof with you, you're way better with preparation, you're way better with delivery and everything will become better in your organisation from there. And I wish you all the best implementing that in your organisation. And when you now say, oh God, I think I have 58 questions here. Feel free to contact me. So of course first when you listen to me or watch me on YouTube right now, feel free to leave a like here, subscribe to my channel.
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