Feedback is nothing new. It happens to a greater or lesser extent in all workplaces, in all relationships, at many times, whether we are aware of it or not. While most people agree that it is reasonable to give, receive and ask for feedback, a 1996 meta-study found that over 1/3 of just over 23,000 observed feedback interactions actually led to worse performance.
We have felt the effects of good and bad feedback first hand, we have seen it in many of our clients, and we know from experience that with a relatively small effort and a few good tools, you can greatly improve the quality of feedback and avoid ending up in the boring 1/3.
What are you curious about in terms of feedback?
Committed employees
Engaged employees inherently means employees who look forward to going to work and who enthusiastically get involved in their work and workplace. Ensuring highly engaged employees is a hot topic in organizational culture these days, and for good reason. Many studies indicate that organizations with highly engaged employees generally perform better on a wide range of parameters. Gallup conducted a study on engagement involving more than 1.8 million employees and over 82 thousand work units worldwide, which showed that
→ Substantial correlation between high commitment to work unit and high performance. The correlation held across organisations.
→ Work units that are in the top half in terms of. engagement are almost twice as likely to succeed compared to work units that score in the bottom half.
There are several factors that go into ensuring highly engaged employees, including good feedback a vital part of the equation. In fact, another Gallup study found that there is a correlation between the type of feedback employees experience and how likely they are to feel engaged in their work.
→ 61% of employees who experienced strengths-focused feedback were engaged
→ 45% of employees who experienced feedback focused on weaknesses were engaged
→ 2% of employees who felt they received no feedback were engaged
If you want highly engaged employees, it is therefore relevant for you to look at how you use feedback in your organisation and whether it is done in the most appropriate way. Feedback is not just a question of frequency. There is also a big difference between how we give feedback and the results we get from the feedback.
Performance
Feedback done right leads to better performance. For example, Kluger and DeNisi's 1996 meta-study showed that there was a correlation between the focus of feedback and the likelihood that it had a positive impact on performance.
→ The more the feedback had a task focus, the more likely it was to lead to better performance.
→ The more the feedback had a person focus, the more likely it was to lead to worse performance.
Another large study from 2002, which sought to examine the effect of different performance management strategies on performance, found that feedback had a significant impact on the motivation, commitment and performance of employees. In particular, the study found that formal feedback has the greatest impact if it is perceived as strengths-based, and most importantly for informal feedback, it is perceived as fair and accurate.
At Feedwork, we believe that feedback is the catalyst that can help improve performance on a wide range of parameters. Whether you have a goal to hold more effective meetings, make better presentations, or deliver better customer service, good feedback is essential to achieving your goals effectively.
Once an organisation realises this, and becomes good at using feedback colleague-to-colleague, manager-to-employee, employee-to-leader, etc., it is well placed to achieve its goals quickly and effectively. If you are a manager, your 1:1 conversations can be a good place to start with an extra focus on good feedback.
Read also our article on: Why feedback
Meaning, well-being and working environment
At heart, we humans are social animals who find meaning in fitting in socially, but at the same time we also strive to constantly evolve, gain new knowledge and become more skilled at what we do. It is this dilemma that sometimes makes feedback a little difficult. We want to know that we are good enough as we are, but we also sometimes want new perspectives on how we can do our work better, as we grow from being challenged.
Good feedback is an important factor in whether we thrive in our work. This is something most of us have probably felt first-hand. For example, have you ever tried to deliver or do a piece of work for someone else and then there is a kind of vacuum and you hear nothing back? That strange feeling of doubt as to whether our work is making a difference at all comes precisely because you haven't received feedback on whether your work was good or bad, or what it meant to others. If we experience this feeling of doubt often over a long period of time, we are likely to be unhappy with what we do.
A US study found that 68% of employees surveyed who felt their manager gave them continuous performance feedback found their work meaningful, whereas only 33% of employees who felt their manager did not give them continuous performance feedback found their work meaningful. So there is a correlation between meaning in work and the feedback we experience from the world around us.
In addition to meaning in work, there is also a link between motivation, well-being and feedback on work. In 2007, a meta-study was published (involving 259 studies and over 200 thousand participants) that aimed to examine the relationship between a number of work-related factors and its impact on, among others, well-being, motivation, and commitment. It found that feedback from the job, and also feedback from colleagues, had a substantial positive impact on one's job motivation and well-being.
Want to know more about well-being? Then read our big and in-depth article on well-being and feedback.
Learning culture
The purpose of learning is to close the gap between current competencies & performance and desired goals. Put more simply, we learn because it enables us to solve the challenges we face or want to face in the future.
We can learn in many ways; for example, by reading books, taking e-learning courses, listening to lectures, reflecting, or by getting good feedback from other people. And yes, we write "good feedback", because as you can read in the Performance section above, not all feedback leads to more learning and better performance.
If you want a learning-focused culture, where we are good at quickly acquiring relevant competences and skills to perform better - you also have to ask yourself if you are actively using feedback as a tool for effective learning and knowledge sharing in the company. For it is not only about feedback going from the top down, and from the more experienced to the less experienced, but also about managers receiving honest feedback from their employees on their leadership, and thus using them as a "mirror" for their leadership competencies in daily life.
At the same time, you should also ask yourself if you have the necessary conditions for honest feedback to actually exist. A Google study found that the biggest predictor of team performance was psychological safety - that is, whether team members feel comfortable taking risks and showing vulnerability in front of other team members. In other words, psychological safety is a prerequisite for whether people dare to give honest feedback, whether people dare to ask for feedback, or whether people dare to ask the "stupid" questions.
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