I Gave My Mom a Performance Review
And you should too.
Earlier this year, I gave my mom a performance review. I sat her down under the cold fluorescent lights of a rented WeWork conference room, sliding a 5-page printout across the table—just kidding. I’m not that cringe. We did it in her living room.
It was hard, but also deeply beautiful. We cried. I learned things about her and our family I never knew. It has genuinely helped our relationship.
In my early 20’s, I was ecstatic when we became friends and I could share my world with her. Hear about her life. See each other as people. But lately, I had been feeling a lot less connected to my mom. And I wasn’t the only one.
My sister, juggling a new baby and a demanding job, didn’t feel she had the energy for grandma visits as often as my mom wanted. Growing up, we saw our grandparents almost every day. My mom felt hurt but was afraid to speak up.
“I feel like I’m losing her and I don’t know what to do,” my mom confided in me.
At work, we have permission and structure that can make it easier to speak up when things aren’t working. We know the value of feedback. But when it comes to our personal lives, it’s not so easy. Too often, the ‘feedback’ we receive is messy and unspoken, and comes in the form of passive aggressive sighs or growing distance between visits.
As a manager, I’d learned a lot about how to approach hard conversations directly.
So I thought, maybe I should try it here.
You might be thinking, “my mom would never do this, how would I even start?”1 As a millennial, I know my generation has a fundamentally different view—we’re open to introspection and self-improvement in a way that would be unfair to expect from our parents.
But I also know there is no mother in the world that doesn’t want to feel closer to her children. I was back home in California, visiting from Mexico, and I felt a responsibility to say something.
When I first brought up the idea, I was careful.
Making the Ask
I found my mom settled in her recliner in the living room, a microwaved mug of coffee balanced on the armrest. Her laptop glowing as she scrolled Facebook, the morning news blaring from the TV, filling the morning air with its constant, familiar noise.
“Hey mom, what are you watching?”
We made small talk for a bit. I let her talk and just listened. Then I went for it.
“I have something I want to ask but it’s hard to say. I’ve…” I paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “I’ve noticed that I feel less close to you lately. I feel our relationship is different. I was wondering how you feel.”
She had also noticed it felt harder for us to talk the way we used to. She didn’t know why. We both wanted to make things better.
“This might sound weird, but I was wondering if we could try a structured conversation where I share some feedback. As a manager, I’ve done this a lot—both giving and receiving—and it’s really helped me grow as a person.”
Immediately, she was defensive. Her body closed up and her voice went quiet. I asked gently if, as a teacher, she had ever had a performance review at work.
“No, not really,” she said softly. “There were two times I sat down with the superintendent, but both were because of complaints.”
“What was that like?” I asked.
“He just showed me the complaints and asked what I was going to do about it. Then he said, ‘Are you sure you still want this job?’”
Ouch. Her only experience with professional feedback was “here’s what’s broken—how will you fix it?” No empathy. No partnership.
I didn’t want this to feel like criticism or risk making things worse. Done right, feedback should feel like you’re problem-solving together, not pointing fingers. I knew from experience that it helps if you can establish positive intent and show people you’re on the same team.
“I want you to know that I love you and I really want our relationship to be better. I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. But I do think there are things we could improve. It would mean a lot if you’d consider it.”
Luckily, she was open-minded and so we set a time to chat the following week.
Preparing for the Review
I got to work. The early stage of good review is like an investigation. I have my sense for what’s going on, but I also have bias. With family, this can be especially charged after years of misunderstandings and built-up resentment. So it’s important to look for evidence and, when possible, speak to other people.
I chose to follow a framework called Start, Stop, Continue.2 I like it because it’s simple and powerful. I made a list of things I wanted my mom to start doing, stop doing, and to continue doing. For each one, I tried to think of examples where I could describe an action she took and the impact it had on me—often how it made me feel.3 If I couldn’t think of any, I left it out.
It would be easy to understate how hard this first step was. As children, we often expect a lot from our parents. It took discipline to recognize which things were important, and to let go of the rest.
Once I had a solid draft, I spoke with my sister for a few hours to get her take. Some things I included, she saw differently or not at all. It helped me see what I was missing and what to remove. Some clear themes emerged.
One of the big ones was that making decisions with my mom takes a lot of effort. She wants to collaborate and discuss every little detail. Imagine trying to order Thai food: it starts with her texting, ‘What do you feel like eating?’ I reply, ‘Thai sounds good.’ Then she calls. ‘Should we do pad thai? Or curry? What kind of curry? Red? Green? Oh, but I’ve been craving spring rolls… or should we try that new Vietnamese place?’ Forty-five minutes later, we’re still debating appetizers, and I need to get back to work. It’s exhausting.
My sister and I realized this was making it hard to spend time with her. We agreed that if she could “start” making more decisions independently, it would be a big help.
With the investigation now complete, I was finally ready for the “review.” (No, we didn’t call it that.)
How it Went
Tuesday. 10:00am. Back in the living room. My mom sat in her recliner, morning coffee cradled in her hands, the TV off for once. In the silence, the atmosphere felt thick with anticipation.
I sat across from her, my laptop open on the floor. My stomach churned slightly, the way it does before a big presentation. I glanced at the notes I’d prepared,4 my case neatly laid out in bullet points, and felt a tiny prick of hesitance. Was I about to overstep? My mom can be sensitive and I was afraid I might hurt her.
I took a deep breath and began, keeping my tone as calm and warm as I could.
“First, Mom, I just want to say how much I love you. It means a lot that you’re willing to have this conversation. I know it’s a little odd. I appreciate that you’re open to trying and I’m grateful we have a relationship where we can talk. I don’t think most parents would do something like this.”
Her eyes met mine. She nodded, hands tightening slightly around her mug.
“I love you too,” she said. “I’ll admit, I’m nervous, but I want to hear what you have to say.”
I shared the first “start” theme with her: make more decisions independently, especially when it's not energizing for others to be included.
She sighed and turned her head, eyes darting off to the side. But I was prepared. I shared specific examples to illustrate why this was difficult for me and my sister, making clear that it wasn’t a criticism of her personally. We weren’t avoiding her out of a lack of love, but spending time together sometimes felt stressful.
I paused, and asked how she saw it.
She explained that she was modeling what she had seen growing up—my grandma and aunties planned everything together, and she thought that’s what families were supposed to do.
I had never thought about it that way. How often do we misjudge each other for behavior that is, at its core, well-intentioned?
We talked about how life is different now, we have so many demands on our time, especially for my sister. In the end, she saw our perspective and we came up with a simple plan together: if it’s something small like lunch, take initiative. For bigger decisions, include us.
We spent another hour discussing the start and stop feedback. We talked about miscommunications, places we both felt unseen, ways to meet each other halfway. I went slow and I listened generously.
The most beautiful part of the conversation came at the end when I shared what I wanted her to “continue.”
My sister and I both realized how independent and confident we felt as adults, and I shared examples of things we experienced from her growing up. I wondered how intentional she might have been in designing the impact.
“Oh, yes,” she said, tearing up. “Your dad and I worked very hard to make sure you felt that way. I never felt like I could do the things I wanted to do, and I didn’t want that for you.”
That’s when I started crying, too. Before reflecting on it as part of this process, and before hearing my mom describe it in detail, I hadn’t fully appreciated how much she played a role in one of the things I’m proudest of about myself. I felt grateful I could fully thank her now.
When done thoughtfully, giving honest feedback to someone you love isn’t just about fixing problems. It’s a way of saying, I care about you. I appreciate you. I want us to keep growing together.
So, naturally, I invited her to share feedback with me too.
Things aren’t perfect, of course. Our family is still messy, still complicated in ways I haven’t shared here. But making it past this step—an honest conversation about how our relationship could be better—felt like proof that we’re moving forward. That we don’t have to accept the way things are. That it’s possible to ask for the connection you want—and to work together to build it.
With family, we tend to operate on unspoken expectations and assumptions. That’s just how people are. They won’t change. It’s not worth it to try.
I wholeheartedly beg to differ.
A week later, in the middle of a packed day, my phone buzzed.
“Hey, I’d like to take you to lunch,” my mom texted. “How about Thai? Are you free on Thursday?”
I smiled.
“That sounds great! Thanks for making it easy, Mom <3”
I went into that lunch with a lightness I hadn’t felt in a while.
Special thanks to , , , , , , , , , , and Jennifer Scott for helping me find my voice on this piece.
What about you? Have you ever had a conversation like this with someone you care about? I’d love to hear—how did it go, or what’s holding you back?
If you’re nervous about jumping into a “review”, try something more lighthearted like asking questions about your parents’ lives to get to know them better and build more openness into your relationship. I love the card game Parents are Human for this and they make their decks available for free in digital format.
Here’s a template you can follow to write a review of your own. It has more details on the Start, Stop, Continue framework.
Non-violent communication has a helpful list of feelings you can use when describing the emotional impact of behaviors. Here’s a link: https://baynvc.org/list-of-feelings
An example from my written review so you can see the level of detail I went into:
START
Making more decisions independently, especially when it's not energizing for others to be included.
Having to talk through many details and options of most decisions with you—e.g. what to get for lunch, what are all the options, what do I get, what are you going to get—can feel draining for others. This is reflective of a "collaborative" decision-making style which can be good and appreciated when making the correct/best decision is critical—to be clear, it’s not bad. But it requires much more energy and time from people to arrive at a collaborative decision. So in cases where the decision itself isn't critical (e.g. what to order at a restaurant) it can take energy from others in a way that feels frustrating.
Why does this matter? Taking unnecessary energy from people for non-critical decisions can lead to a feeling of stress. For example, if I have a very busy week, being included or asked for my opinion for small decisions, or having to go back and forth on things—e.g. the convo we had last week about different recipes for the chicken, and could we swap ingredients etc—feels frustrating and stressful. I found myself thinking “it would have been better if I just chose the recipe myself." It would feel nice and supportive if you tried to take more initiative, just made plans, or made a decision independently when getting it right isn't critical so that it takes the burden away from other people.
SUGGESTED ACTION:
Try organizing a meal where you just tell us the time and place but we don't need to make any effort in the planning.
Whether you call it a ‘review,’ a ‘heart-to-heart,’ or a ‘relationship reflection,’ this kind of give-and-take, especially when it is not only offered but also sought, can only improve the relationship in the long term. Great article, Phil!
Love how this piece turned out and how actionable it is. Especially with the framework and your story :)