This paper was written for those who have already read The Feedback Breakthrough and want to better understand the science behind receiving and giving feedback.
The principles and techniques modeled by Paula, Matt, and Beth represent the integration of art and science. This article summarizes some of the research behind giving and receiving feedback effectively; in it we will review a few studies that confirm
- the link between feedback and success (individual, team, and organization success),
- the connection between failure and the lack of feedback, and
- the best ways to deliver feedback (frequency, ratio of positive to negative, and focus).
Feedback and Exceptional Performance
In his book, Visible Learning, John Hattie writes, “I realized that the most powerful single influence enhancing achievement is feedback.”1 Feedback and challenge, according to Hattie, are “two of the essential ingredients of learning.” The greater the challenge, the greater necessity for feedback. The leader’s role is to provide individuals with increasingly challenging tasks along with the timely feedback they need to meet those challenges.
Geoff Colvin reports on dozens of studies that were designed to identify the path leading to world-class performance. The findings are conclusive: intensive practice along with constant feedback and adaptation—not innate talent or IQ—best explain exceptional performance.2
This is an empowering discovery. Becoming world-class at your profession is not determined by an accident of birth; it is driven by individual choices informed by feedback. Chance doesn’t determine your success; you determine it with the relatively easy-to-learn techniques and skills explored in The Feedback Breakthrough.
Feedback and Other’s Perceptions of You
Seeking feedback also influences how others see you. Ashford and Northcroft found that individuals who seek candid feedback are more highly valued by their colleagues and managers than those who simply wait for feedback to come to them.3
Feedback and Innovation
Feedback also plays a critical role in innovation and organizational change. In his study of innovation, Gifford Pinchot found that successful innovators within large corporations are masters at seeking and using feedback. Before trying to secure formal sanction for their proposals, innovators informally solicit feedback from potential stakeholders and others. This allows them to identify and then plug the holes in their new ideas before trying to win broader support. By using criticism from potential critics to improve their ideas, the innovators transform potential naysayers into staunch supporters.4
Fearing criticism, some would-be innovators choose not to seek input on their ideas or proposals. When they skip this all-important step their ideas aren’t improved by the tempering fires of criticism; they cannot solve problems they do not see. After their proposals are shot down, they blame their failures on resistance to change, when in reality it was their own resistance to seeking out feedback that derailed them. The American novelist William Simms recognized the crippling power of fear: “Those who want to acquire fame and fortune must not show themselves afraid of criticism. The dread of criticism is the death of genius.”
In order to achieve your career potential, you must inoculate yourself against the fear of criticism. Part 1 of The Feedback Breakthrough was written to help you do just that.
Feedback and Organization Success
Feedback is critical not just for personal success but also for the success of organizations. Chris Voss of the London Business School demonstrated that customer satisfaction scores are highest for companies in which employees receive timely feedback directly from customers.5 Information from daily, face-to-face customer feedback is more effective at improving customer satisfaction than information from annual or periodic customer service surveys. Moreover, timely feedback is the surest path to customer retention.
Research by Gallup has identified twelve factors that drive employee engagement, and six of these factors are directly tied to the timing, quality, and frequency of feedback—both positive feedback (at least once within the last 7 days) and criticism. Gallup also found that high employee engagement correlates with higher customer satisfaction, productivity, and profits.6 (More information about these six feedback related factors can be found at the end of this article).
Positive Feedback and Team Success
Losada and Heaphy7 looked at the effectiveness of 60 teams in a single company. The ratio between positive feedback and criticism was the best predictor of team success, which was measured in terms of financial results, customer satisfaction scores, and employee morale. The highest performing teams had a ratio of six positive comments to every negative one. For medium-performing teams the ratio was two to one. For the lowest-performing teams the ratio was one to two—one positive for two negatives.
Feedback and the Role of Leaders
While individuals should take responsibility for seeking and accepting feedback, leaders can do much to facilitate this process. Park, Takahashi, and White found that a culture of continuous learning can influence people to be more open to feedback and create a organizational culture where feedback is seen as a gift:
- “Research has shown that individuals are more likely to absorb feedback if they believe it is for their development and growth, rather than seeing it as strictly for purposes of judgment.” 8
Researchers at the Melbourne Business School9 identified the key to sidestepping the natural defenses of feedback receivers: leaders need to focus their feedback less on diagnosing past performance and failure (which feels judgmental) and more on designing a plan for future performance and success (which feels developmental).
The Lack of Feedback and Failure
Even the most talented people require regular feedback to reach their potential. Kaplan and Kaiser studied people who had previously been identified as “high potentials”; while some lived up to that moniker, others were eventually demoted or fired. Those who tripped up were derailed by the same obstacle: inadequate feedback.10 Thanks to the absence of candid feedback, or the individuals’ failure to hear it, these talented people ignored their blind spots while continuing to bank on their strengths. Over time a valuable strength, such as high intelligence, can metamorphose into a weakness, such as arrogance or the inability to listen to others. As previously stated, people cannot solve problems they do not see.
The Lack of Feedback and Turnover
A longitudinal study by Gallup found that the best predictor of satisfaction and a willingness to stay with a company is whether or not the employee had been recently told how well they were performing.11 This is true even when people are told they are NOT doing a good job. For many employees, flying blind and not being told how they can improve is much more frustrating than receiving timely feedback on their development needs. Of course, balanced feedback remains critical. Joanne Sujansky and Jan Ferri-Reed found that a leader’s willingness to give both positive feedback and criticism is a key to reducing turnover, especially among millennials and those with the highest potential.12
Why does a lack of feedback increase turnover? The most obvious answer is that everyone wants to feel that what they do actually matters, and the absence of feedback robs them of that satisfaction. But why is a lack of feedback more likely to drive high-potential employees out?
First, those with the highest potential usually have a strong growth mindset, and are therefore more likely to be frustrated by the lack of developmental feedback. Second, when supervisors fail to give feedback to low performers, the more capable and committed team members have to pick up the slack. Perceived unfairness and the lack of developmental feedback drive many of the highest performers towards the exit.
Six Factors Driving Employee Engagement: The Link to Feedback
The 2016 Q-12 Gallup report11 on employee engagement confirms that engagement is driven primarily at the level of the work group rather than the company. This means there are exceptionally well-managed companies with pockets of disengaged workers, and there are poorly-managed companies with pockets of highly engaged workers. According to the data, engagement is driven less by company policy than by the day-to-day interactions between supervisors and their direct reports. As stated earlier, the Gallup Q-12 Meta-Analysis also found that high employee engagement correlates with higher customer satisfaction, productivity, and profits.
So, what drives employee engagement? Gallup has found twelve factors, and six of those are directly tied to the timing, quality, and frequency of feedback—both praise and criticism. We will touch on each of those six below:
Factor #1: I know what is expected of me at work.
Expectations will never be made perfectly clear in a job description, during the on-boarding conversation a new employee has with their supervisor, or during the routine goal-setting conversations held at the start of each year. Most expectations are clarified, refined, calibrated, and expanded upon during the many day-to-day feedback conversations held throughout the year.
Factor #2: In the last 6 months someone has spoken to me about my progress.
Progress—or the lack thereof—is at the heart of every feedback conversation.
Factor #3: In the last 7 days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. This factor speaks for itself.
Factor #4: There is someone at work who encourages my development.
When you compliment Jill on her improved presentation skills, you are encouraging her development. When you give Jill feedback on how to better engage her audience, you are encouraging her development. When you alert Michael to a gap in his performance and then help him develop a plan to close that gap, you are encouraging his development.
Factor #5: This last year, I have had opportunities to grow.
The most important growth opportunities occur not in the classroom but in jobs where people are challenged to stretch and try new things. A feedback conversation involves more than telling someone where they are falling short or the skills they need to develop in order to achieve both their work and career goals; it involves exploring the on-the-job opportunities that will help them acquire and demonstrate those skills.
Factor #6: My supervisor cares about me as a person.
How does someone know you care about them as a person? It doesn’t typically come from saying, “I care about you,” or from holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Caring begins when you take the time to get to know the individual on a personal level—their hopes, fears, personal goals and aspirations, proudest accomplishments, and the things that motivate them. That caring is then confirmed when you initiate meaningful conversations to help the individual attain their goals and avoid behaviors and mistakes that take them in the wrong direction.
The primary objective of any feedback conversation is to help others achieve the things that are most important to them. Think about it this way: who cares about you most? Is it the person who is so indifferent that they couldn’t be bothered to tell you when you are doing things that are sabotaging your success? Or is it the person who will initiate a difficult conversation—at some risk to themselves—to share hard truths that might save you from a lot of disappointment? If you care about others, don’t treat them with indifference; give them the feedback they need—both positive and negative—to achieve their goals.
1 John Hattie, Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Routledge, p. 12 and p. 24, 2009.
2 Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, The Penguin Group, 2008.
3 S.J. Ashford and G.B. Northcroft, “Conveying More [or Less] Than We Realize: The Role of Impressions Management in Feedback Seeking,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, 1992, vol. 53.
4 Gifford Pinchot III, Intrapreneuring: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur, Harper and Row, 1985.
5 Chris Voss, London Business School, The Economist, April 24, 2004, p. 69.
6 Gallup 2016 Q-12 Meta-Analysis Report.
7 Marcia Losada and Emily Heaphy, “The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams,” American Behavioral Scientist, Feb. 1. 2004.
8 Sandra Park, Sola Takahashi, and Taylor White, Developing an Effective Teacher Feedback System, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, p.7, 2014.
9 Jackie Gnepp, Joshua Klayman, Ian Williamson, and Sema Barlas, “The Future of Feedback: Motivating Performance Improvement through Future-Focused Feedback,” PLOS ONE 15(6): e0234444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.023444 (June 19, 2020)
10 R.E. Kaplan and R.B. Kaiser, “Developing Versatile Leadership,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 44 (4), 2003.
11 Annamarie Mann and Jim Harter, The Worldwide Employee Engagement Crisis, Gallup, January 7, 2016.
12 Joanne Sujansky and Jan Ferri-Reed, Keeping the Millennials: Why Companies are Losing Billions in Turnover to This Generation––and What You Can Do About It, Wiley, 2009.
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“Nothing in life is to be feared,
it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more,
so that we may fear less.”
—Marie Curie