It’s a familiar ritual for any employee: the performance review. Your manager calls you into their office to discuss your triumphs, failures, and opportunities for growth. In the aftermath of this meeting, you’ll (hopefully) have a better sense of what you need to do to be successful in your role. It happens once or twice a year—on a regular, scheduled cadence.
While this type of interaction may appear to only exist in the world of business, it may also be the secret to unlocking stronger friendships.
Giving your honest opinion (or receiving that of someone else’s) is to be expected in your professional career or love life. But that’s not necessarily the case with platonic relationships. As a result, protecting and growing a close friendship can often benefit from taking a bit of inspiration from the frank check-ins you have with your boss, coworker, or spouse.
We know that close friendships are important to our overall health and happiness: A 2023 systematic review published in Frontiers in Psychology that examined 38 research articles found that adult friendship was positively correlated with overall wellbeing. Another 2023 study published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences noted that those with high-quality friendships were more likely to live longer and less likely to have depression. But those friendships don’t thrive on their own—they require time, attention, and nurturing. Perhaps a performance review is the ultimate way to do that.
I’d know, because I practice this myself: For the past three years, my best friend and I have given each other performance reviews on our respective birthdays. While these types of sit-downs can often feel cold and anxiety-inducing in a corporate setting, our experience is anything but that. Over a meal or a drink, we discuss the times in which we did and didn’t show up for each other. Sometimes, we revisit a past argument, breaking down what we wish we had done differently. Even though it’s not always the most comfortable conversation, it gives me a clear direction on how to be a better friend, something I’m constantly striving for.
Many of us—myself included—aren’t always comfortable soliciting this type of feedback from a friend. “We simply don’t do it for friendships largely because we haven’t done it for friendships,” says Jaimie Krems, PhD, the director of the UCLA Center for Friendship Research and an associate professor of psychology at UCLA. “In our romantic relationships, we have these conversations,” Shasta Nelson, a friendship expert, tells SELF. “We know what each other’s frustrated by and what we each need from each other, and in our friendships, we so often don’t know.”
