Performance evaluations. Rewards. Goal setting. Feedback. These are the stock-in-trade for most managers and they swear by their effectiveness. But Charles Jacobs says managers have got it all wrong: Science proves feedback doesn’t work, money doesn’t motivate and employees ignore the goals managers set.

That may be music to ears of workers today, who complain they often feel as if managers aren’t even on the same planet with what they need and want, let alone the same page.

“A lot of what managers are doing now doesn’t work. It may make them feel better, but it’s not helping their employees,” says Jacobs, managing partner of 180 Partners in Boston. “Much of this came out of Greek philosophy 2,500 years ago, but now we have the brain science to prove it.”

In his new book, “Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science” (Portfolio, $25.95), Jacobs says:=

Performance feedbacks backfire. Employees aren’t going to change their behavior because they have a “deep seated” need to hang on to their self image. So, they will either attribute a performance failure to something else, or discount the source of the feedback. “When the source is our bosses or people we don’t especially care for, this is an attractive option,” Jacobs says.

Rewards don’t work. The brain is wired to produce feelings of pleasure when we’re fully engaged on the job. Financial incentives actually decrease our intrinsic motivation — the need for achievement that comes from inside us.

Goal-setting doesn’t produce results. It’s emotion — not numerical objectives — that keep us focused and committed to a larger mission. “Objective goals should be in the service of a larger mission than just profit,” he says.

Further, the key to managing effectively is realizing that management practices that “are the way things have always been done” simply don’t work, and the brain science proves it, Jacobs says. Instead, he says it’s time companies realize that leaders must learn to manage “both mind and behavior.”

“No one wants to be controlled by a manager or anyone else,” he says. “We all want to do a good job. So, what’s going to work is them (employees) is doing it on their own. You can’t force people. They can be successful on their own.”

Better Motivation

Jacobs says that if organizations will learn “to channel our innate selfishness rather than attempting to counter it,” employees will be more engaged, more motivated and more successful — and that translates into real bottom line results for a company.

He says managers should:

Use questions to engage employees. “They should stop worrying about the right incentives to motivate good performance and should instead leverage the universal human desire for meaningful work,” Jacobs says.

Ask for more employee input. While the tough economy and potential layoffs has everyone on edge, managers need to motivate employees by asking for their ideas on keeping a company successful. For example, workers can feel more empowered when managers ask for their ideas on how to cut expenses. “When employees are fearful about what’s going to happen, their behavior can change. The brain slows. The result is that people become less productive. You don’t need hokey recognition programs. You need to give as much information as possible and let them know where the business stands. You’ve got to keep them really focused when they’re scared.”

Let employees be their own judge. Jacobs says that no matter how constructive managers try to make it, feedback from them is just perceived as negative. It’s much better to let workers appraise their own performance, using whatever hard data is available. “They have a greater ownership of any shortfalls,” he says. “It then becomes in their best interests to correct them.”

Tell stories. Stories are the way our brains naturally work; they make sense of the world. By telling stories to illustrate a point — how Americans didn’t give up during the Revolution, for example — the “mental environment” is created that helps get them to do what is needed.

“It’s not like you’re turning the asylum over to the inmates. What will happen if you do these things is that people are going to like working there, and they’ll do better,” Jacobs says.

Anita Bruzzese is author of “45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy…and How to Avoid Them.”