Dr. Amanda Woolley
Why Most Appraisals Fail (And How to Fix Yours) with Dr. Amanda Woolley
Dr Amanda Woolley is an experienced organisational change consultant and founder of Building20 - an organisational development practice for insight, creativity and action. Amanda has a PhD in decision-making psychology and applies her expertise in creativity, reasoning and complex systems in her work with leaders, teams, organisations and partnerships. Amanda specialises in helping her clients to quickly build alignment, co-create effective ways of working and deliver consistent external communication to mobilise system-wide change. Follow her on Linkedin
Appraisals have a bad reputation—and for good reason. Too often, they feel like a box-ticking exercise, a source of anxiety, or a pointless HR requirement. But when done well, appraisals can be a powerful tool for clarity, motivation, and meaningful progress.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Amanda Woolley, who shares how to flip the traditional appraisal structure on its head and turn it into a conversation that actually matters. She explains why mattering matters at work and gives practical, simple strategies to make appraisals feel productive instead of painful.
Key Takeaways from This Episode:
✔ Why most appraisals fail and how to fix them
✔ How to structure an appraisal so it motivates instead of discourages
✔ Three powerful questions to ask that lead to real progress
✔ The role of visibility—and why underperformance is often just unnoticed effort
✔ How to track meaningful indicators of progress that go beyond generic HR metrics
Three Game-Changing Appraisal Questions:
1️⃣ What have you been really pleased with in your work over the last six months?
2️⃣ If six months from now, if things were great for you, the team, and me—what would be different?
3️⃣ On a scale of 1-10, where are you now? And what small steps would move you just one point higher on the scale?
When appraisals shift from judgment to collaboration, they stop being something to endure and start being something to use.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Why Most Appraisals Fail (And How to Fix Yours) with Dr. Amanda Woolley
Lucia Knight: [00:00:00] Almost every midlife professional I've spoken to over the years has had a strong, often negative reaction to the words, annual appraisal. Memories flood in, awkward conversations, pointless feedback forms, and frustrating time wasted on a process that often feels like a tick boxing exercise.
When I used to manage large teams, I put a lot of extra hours and energy into humanizing a process that everyone hated. And looking back, I really wish I'd known today's guest.
Meet Dr. Amanda Woolley. With a PhD in the psychology of decision making, she now leads an organizational development practice specializing in team leadership and systems effectiveness. If you're leading or participating in an appraisal anytime soon and want to get more value and dare I say enjoyment from the process, grab [00:01:00] a pen.
Note down Amanda's top three appraisal questions because they are magic. They have the power to transform the dreaded annual appraisal into a powerful conversation that can radically increase engagement, motivation to deliver. and actual results. If only I'd known these questions or Amanda herself back in the day, I might have actually looked forward to appraisal time.
Let's dive in.
Why Appraisals Have a Bad Reputation
Lucia Knight: Amanda, why do appraisals have such a bad reputation in general?
Amanda Woolley: So from my point of view, I think appraisals should be about really clarifying what matters in your team. And answering that question, is this individual meeting the expectations that we all have to contribute to this organization's aims?
But [00:02:00] so often when we do them, appraisals don't matter at all.
I've had jobs where I've never had objectives set. I've never had an appraisal, even though I've meant to. And I've had ones where I did do an appraisal and it was recorded, but it was so unrelated to the actual day to day content of my work and how I might do better at that. The point was just to stop HR emailing my manager. That's why sometimes we have appraisals.
On the other hand, sometimes they matter hugely. But for the wrong reasons. So they matter because they're about getting a particular pay reward or a promotion. And then they become something really to fear and that anxiety around them is huge. And of course we would hate that.
And in the worst case, actually they're just a big distraction from getting on and doing the work that really contributes to the aims that we're trying to do. So I totally understand why people think about appraisals and think what a [00:03:00] chore to get through.
Lucia Knight: Oh my god, and we've all lived through them. Almost every human I've ever met hates appraisals. Just for all the reasons you've just said. Yeah, every single one of them I've heard a hundred times.
The Potential of Well-Executed Appraisals
Lucia Knight: But let's think more hopefully. If an appraisal is done, well what differences does a valuable, worthwhile appraisal make.
Amanda Woolley: So work really it's a series of ongoing collaborations and we need to keep contracting and re contracting with each other, what is the purpose of this, what are we getting out of this, what are our responsibilities, our expectations?
And how are we going to be made accountable for our actions in this work that we're doing together?
So an appraisal can be at its best a fantastic focal point for that ongoing activity.
Now, I think it's really important to drive home the point that if you are not [00:04:00] already taking regular opportunities to share clarity and feedback with your work colleagues, the most perfectly structured appraisal is not going to be useful or worthwhile.
Lucia Knight: Yes. Yes.
Key Elements of Effective Appraisals
Amanda Woolley: And for me, I think something really happens when you turn it around and rather than the appraisal being about checking up on people or ticking off things that have been done, really taking a stance of respect and trust for the other people.
In general, people want to do a good job. They have their needs. You have your needs. And they want to get along and people like a win.
The way that appraisals are often structured is to try and catch people out, it feels like. And I think when you're planning them, that seems perfectly straightforward. How do we always start the them? Give a bit of good feedback, then you give a bit of bad feedback, and then you say what you want to be done.
And I think there's something very powerful by flipping that [00:05:00] on its head, because we know about motivation, that it requires feelings of autonomy, feelings of competence, feelings of connectedness. And we also know that if someone feels that their work really matters, either the outcome or to the people that they're working with, they make more effort, they contribute more to that.
Mattering really is important. Whether I feel like I've got control over what I am doing, can I be successful in it? Am I doing it for a cause that I care about? All of those things make it matter. And so if you take that appraisal conversation from that point of view and say, how are we going to work together to achieve our shared aims?
That completely changes things. And suddenly it's a useful conversation.
Lucia Knight: I love what you said, mattering matters. Yeah, so that [00:06:00] whatever work you're doing, whether it's your dream work or whether it's the job J O B that you have, it matters that you understand what's expected of you and that it's clearly communicated and supported.
Love that.
Three Practical Tips for Better Appraisals
Lucia Knight: So I particularly, I really want to go very practical now. So if someone is listening and they're thinking, oh, I want to lead a better appraisal or enjoy a better appraisal, I'd love to know. What are maybe three of the best questions to ask in an appraisal to increase the chances of it being a valuable investment of time and energy for everybody involved?
Amanda Woolley: Great. So I mentioned flipping it on its head and I think that's the key to this. So step one appraisal. I say what I'm happy about that you've done and what I'm unhappy about. Let's flip it on its head. So great question to start with. What have you been really pleased to [00:07:00] notice about how you've been working in the last six months?
And then keep shtum. And actually the most likely thing is they'll tell you the stuff that You were going to say anyway, and they know it and you get to reinforce it. And also, I think this is really important for visibility. One of the most difficult things, especially for middle managers, is that when you're doing work well, it can become invisible.
Lucia Knight: Yes.
Amanda Woolley: And the challenges aren't seen. So if somebody seems to be underperforming, but actually they've maybe been over performing and you've not noticed that, it gives a chance for people to say I've been really pleased that I've actually held on just about to this thing that for all these other reasons could have been a lot worse.
Secondly, I think my second question is to get into the nitty gritty of what it would look like to improve. So in six months time, if you were working in a way that was good or really good [00:08:00] for you and for me and for the rest of the team, what are some of the things that you might notice that are different?
Okay, so we're getting into the art of the possible. How might we work together in a future that really works for us? You get to leave on time, I get projects finished, that sort of thing. How do we get to the win that we all want?
Just going back, there's a limit how much this can achieve if you're not already in the habit of offering and receiving good faith feedback.
Lucia Knight: Yes. Yes.
Amanda Woolley: because that can only strengthen over time. And then the final one is a bit of a funny one. Let's put this on a scale, okay? All that stuff we just talked about, all these fantastic indicators of us working together in a way that's really good. If that was 10 and 0 was none of it, where are you on that scale?
And then crucially, if you're just one or two points higher, where would you be? What would you be doing? What are those, just those first things?
Tracking Progress and Indicators
Amanda Woolley: Okay, and now you've got meaningful indicators to [00:09:00] track. You've got the really useful things. You probably have to put those down, don't you, in your appraisal. What are your success factors going to be?
Now, some of the things that come out might not be the thing that you want to put on someone's HR record, but they're still useful things to track. I might be having my camera on more often in online Zoom meetings if I was working really well. That can be for some people, a really nice, easy indicator of how engaged somebody is feeling.
Change really needs a combination of A vision of a positive future and the available first steps that are greater than what's getting in the way. And often we don't have a lot of control over what's getting in the way. So if we can make that vision and those small steps much bigger, more vivid, more noticeable, then we still get change.
Conclusion and Additional Resources
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's [00:10:00] bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
