The Definitive Resource

Feedback at Work:
A Complete Guide

Ready to improve how you seek, receive, give, process, and use feedback? You are in the right place.

By Professor Cameron Conaway Updated Nov 23, 2025
Table of Contents
“We only learn with feedback.” — Dr. Angela Duckworth
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“The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn without it.” — Dr. Steven Levitt
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“A mistake to me equals… I’m getting feedback.” — Billie Jean King
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“The most successful are the most coachable.” — Tim Grover
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“We only learn with feedback.” — Dr. Angela Duckworth
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“The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn without it.” — Dr. Steven Levitt
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“A mistake to me equals… I’m getting feedback.” — Billie Jean King
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“The most successful are the most coachable.” — Tim Grover
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Chapter 1

What is Feedback?

Feedback is a response to a person’s activity with the purpose of helping them adjust to become more effective.

1. Evaluative

How you did and where you are.

2. Appreciative

How you are valued and recognized.

3. Coaching

How you can improve.

Video Transcripts:
English Transcript:

Hi there, my name is Cameron Conaway. I’m a faculty member at the University of San Francisco and my work on feedback has appeared in Harvard Business Review – where I positioned the need to process feedback as a critical next step after we receive it, and I was one of a few corporate leaders asked to help with Feedback Essentials – a course from Harvard Business Publishing that is used by global organizations to develop their leaders. For those who just want a quick feedback definition and then need to leave, here you go – this is how I define feedback: “Feedback is a response to a person’s activity with the purpose of helping them adjust to become more effective. Feedback comes in various forms, including evaluative (how you did and where you are), appreciative (how you are valued and recognized), and coaching (how you can improve).” For everybody else – I hope you’ll stick around because feedback is one of the most underrated and neglected aspects of our personal and professional development – and I’ll be breaking this feedback definition down into its parts so we have the more nuanced understanding we need to improve how we leverage it. So what is feedback? It’s the time you burnt your hand on the top of a stove and learned to be especially careful not to do that again. It’s the comment from your basketball coach about tucking your elbow in more on your jumpshot. It’s advice from a colleague, who said she felt your presentation could have been much more engaging if you had read off the slides a little less – and who continued by saying that what works for her is to just keep a few bulleted points on each slide that can serve as talking point reminders. Feedback can even be your partner asking if you could please take the garbage out before it begins to overflow, because when the garbage reaches the top of the can your dog goes superhero mode and knocks it all over. If you’re anything like me, feedback has had a tremendous impact on your life. As I look back over mine, feedback can feel as common as the air that surrounds me – it’s how I’ve improved in perhaps everything I’ve ever done and it’s how I’ve helped others become more effective in what they want to do. You’ve likely received feedback that has also caused you tremendous stress, I know I sure have – check out this video where I share a real story of one of those tremendously stressful experiences. And, although it may be hard to admit, our feedback to others has likely caused them tremendous stress. Again – I speak from experience here. But what if we could tap into and amplify the profound power of feedback while minimizing the stress we experience and cause due to how we give and receive it? There’s no quick fix for making that happen, but in my experience as an educator and corporate leader, I’ve come to believe that improvement in this regard begins… at the beginning – with a feedback definition and, from there, an understanding of what feedback is, an exploration of the three common feedback types, and then some real-world feedback examples that bring everything together. So if you’re still with me, here’s a quick look at what we will cover. First, we’ll briefly explore why it’s important to have a definition of feedback. It’s great to have one, but for it to stick and be integrated into your work and life I’ve found that it’s vital to also understand why we need one and some of the faulty assumptions not having one can cause us to fall into. Second, I’ll again share my feedback definition and how it came to be so we have a shared understanding of what we’re talking about. Third, we will unpack our definition of feedback – looking at its individual parts so we have a more nuanced understanding. Fourth, within our feedback definition there are three feedback types, so we’ll spend some time really diving into those because these three types of feedback can serve as important overarching categories where we can explore some specific feedback examples. And then fifth, as you likely guessed, we’ll explore examples of feedback for each of the types. At this point, I believe you’ll have the foundation you need to begin improving how you give and receive feedback. However, I’ve added kind of a bonus number six here – additional feedback types and terms – because it’s not enough to be equipped with a definition and some examples. In the workplace and beyond, you’ll likely encounter various dimensions and flavors of feedback… so we’ll take a tour of those to ensure that we become the feedback learning sponges we need to be to improve our performance at work and, more broadly, our communication with other humans… and maybe with sponges. Okay, so let’s take it from the top. Why is a feedback definition important? So first, let me back up. Consider that John Hattie, an education professor, spent 15 years of research and synthesized some 800 meta analyses on achievement in learners – here is one of the books that came from that work. In summarizing the results of John Hattie’s own epic achievement, researchers David Carless and David Boud put it this way: “The most powerful single influence on achievement is feedback but impacts are highly variable, which indicates the complexity of maximising benefits from feedback.” So, team, what we have here is just one of many proof points about the power of feedback in helping us learn and grow. However, Hattie also calls out the “complexity of maximizing benefits from feedback.” This is why I want us to spend some time here understanding our why – feedback can catapult your development like nothing else and it’s complex, it takes work, and it takes leveling up our ability as communicators. Because feedback is everywhere in our life… many of us assume we all know what feedback is and we assume other people see it in the same way we do. These are big assumptions, team, that can lead to a host of communication challenges. And they tend to lead us to believe that we don’t really need to have a shared definition. Indeed, in part because of these assumptions, the vast majority of the feedback articles out there, and even entire books about feedback, tend to skip past defining what it is. The result, then, is that we tend to have no shortage of content about giving feedback, receiving feedback, and even building great feedback cultures for our teams at work – but it all feels a bit like we’ve put the cart before the horse. These assumptions carry over into the corporate world, where some leaders speak beautifully about the importance of effectively leveraging feedback throughout their organization, but do not offer their employees a definition let alone training to make sure everybody has a solid foundation for what’s being talked about. Related to this, according to a few search engine tools, millions of people each month search for “feedback” or “what is feedback” or “feedback definition” – again, all in an attempt to get a baseline sense of what it is. But turning to search engines for an answer can lead us down some rabbitholes where we get all types of feedback definitions – definitions relating to the human-to-human type of behavior-based feedback, which is mostly what we are covering here, but also some confusing definitions related to self-regulatory biological systems or feedback as it relates to electrical devices. Those who go deeper or want a more authoritative source may land on Professor Ramaprasad’s 1983 paper in Behavioral Science titled, On the definition of feedback, which defines it like this: “Feedback is information about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way.” I love this definition’s focus on recognizing and altering “the gap”; this framing has stuck with me for years and, to this day, is often the lens through which I view the feedback relationship. Because, if you think about, feedback is meant to address some kind of perceived gap. However, as I’ve reflected on this definition over the years and presented it to others – they’ve provided feedback, that I agree with, that it feels too jargon-heavy for a general audience, what with “system parameter” and “reference level,” so I no longer lead with it when attempting to define feedback for others. So all that to say, finding a solid feedback definition is harder than it should be. And to come back to our why.. here are three reasons why it’s important to have one. Number one: doing so can help dismantle the pervasive assumptions we mentioned. Number two: it can ensure you and your team, or otherwise those around you, are aligned and have a definition to point to when situations arise – this can be especially helpful if you are a manager onboarding new teammates. And number three: it can set us up for continued learning on the topic as we’ll be doing here because the definition can serve as our foundation and save us from that horse stirrup-ing some trouble as we read the many great articles out there about various elements of feedback. All of this leads us, yes, to our feedback definition again. After spending years reading many books and hundreds of academic papers and popular business articles, here again is where I’ve landed: So let’s start to unpack this feedback definition. There are three parts worth exploring here. First, let’s zoom in on this one: “is a response to a person’s activity” This part centers that there was a stimulus, right, something happened – in this case, a person’s activity – and that there was a corresponding response – in this case, to a person’s activity. “Response” here is intentionally a bit vague because a feedback response can range a gamut that includes everything from an audience’s standing ovation – which is feedback letting a performer know they did something exceptionally well – all the way to an in-depth conversation with a colleague, where maybe a more junior colleague provides what’s called “upward feedback” to their manager about how they feel they are being micro-mananged and that they are struggling to remain productive and creative as a result. Let’s continue to the second part: “with the purpose of helping them adjust” The purpose of feedback is to be helpful. However, as you’ve likely learned through experience, having the best intentions, the best purpose, doesn’t necessarily mean things will go smoothly. You can have great intentions and still either deliver terrible feedback or deliver feedback terribly. Also of note here is that the feedback is about helping the other person adjust. “Adjust” is also a bit vague because this adjustment could range from feedback intended to adjust a teammate’s interpersonal behavior… to feedback meant to adjust the hip rotation on someone’s golf swing. This word “adjust” also refers to a future activity. After all, you can’t go back and adjust a thing in the past. In this sense, effective feedback by its nature is helpful precisely because it allows someone to adjust a future performance. Keep in mind that for feedback to be more directly future-oriented, it can be helpful to – but it doesn’t necessarily need to – explicitly talk about a future event. For example, even appreciative feedback like, “great job driving that project to the finish line” doesn’t specifically call out a future event but it can plant a seed that will allow the feedback receiver to carry lessons from how they successfully completed this project into their next project, right. And then, lastly, let’s look at various forms Part of the challenge in defining feedback involves addressing all it can be. Is it the compliment you received in the morning from your yoga instructor, the not-so-great performance feedback score (the one tied to your bonus) that you received from your manager in the afternoon, or your daughter’s glee when for the 100th time you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before bed? Yes, all of those can be considered feedback. In this sense, “various forms” leaves space for the many other forms or types, which we will cover, while specifically naming three of the most common (evaluative, appreciative, and coaching) which can serve as foundational types that many feedback examples can fit into. And that leads us to exploring the three feedback types. So these three feedback types come from a book titled Thanks for the Feedback – it’s a great read from Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project – and I’ve found the three primary types they’ve come up with to be quite reflective of my own work and experience. You’ll find a link to the book in the description. So here is how we define each type: Evaluative feedback helps you see how you did and where you are . It is evaluative because it compares how you did to how you could have done it. So in this sense it’s similar to Professor Ramaprasad’s “the gap between the actual level and the reference level.” To make evaluative feedback real, here are five feedback examples: Number 1: At the end of the quarter, you drove 10% fewer marketing leads than you forecasted. The feedback here, and perhaps it came from an automated dashboard, tells you how you did in relation to how you thought you would do. This not only lets you know how you did, but it provides a data point that can be the signal you need to improve how you drive leads and/or improve your next forecast. Here are a few other examples: Number 2: A direct report tells you: “You are the best leader I’ve ever worked with.” Number 3: You did not meet the qualifying standards to participate in the Boston Marathon. Number 4: You moved to #4 on a Duolingo leaderboard. Number 5: Your formal bid in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) was selected. Notice the variation of these examples. We have a positive but rather vague comment from a direct report… next to an example of missing your quarterly number. These are still evaluative because they directly or indirectly contain a comparative data point. You may be thinking, “What!? Wasn’t that comment from the direct report also the appreciative type of feedback?” Indeed, you are correct! The types of feedback can blur into each other; at times, it can feel like the feedback types exist on a spectrum. Let’s zoom out a bit to add context to this example. Let’s say this comment (You are the best leader I’ve ever worked with) was made during a quarterly performance review, and it was in direct response to when you asked for feedback about your leadership since joining the team six months ago. The comment now shifts more toward evaluative – with the subtle comparative data point being “other leaders they’ve worked with.” It can move further into the evaluative camp if specific details are provided about how you stack up next to leaders they’ve had in the past. Let’s move to appreciative feedback. Appreciative feedback helps you know you are valued and recognized . Here are five examples of appreciative feedback: Number 1: Your basketball team’s center points to you in gratitude after that great pass. Number 2: Your grandparent says, “I am so grateful for all you’ve done for us.” Number 3: Your teacher praises you in class for always asking great questions. Number 4: Upon returning from a dangerous military mission, one sergeant hugs another. Number 5: A patron at the restaurant where you work leaves you a great tip. You’ll notice that appreciation can be spoken in words (as the grandparent and teacher did) or it can be unspoken or nonverbally communicated (as with the basketball center, the sergeants, and the patron who left a great tip). Unlike Evaluative and Coaching, which can touch on negative areas, appreciation is positive. It motivates us. Keep in mind, however, that everybody wants different types of appreciation. Some, though they may not admit it and might blush as it happens, love to be appreciated in front of peers. For others, quietly renewing their contract for another quarter may be all the appreciation they want or need. If you’re a people manager, it can be especially important to know how those around you want to be appreciated. A great leader, for example, would not frequently embarrass a colleague by praising them publicly when that is the last thing they would ever want. One point to note here: appreciative, positive feedback is vital. It’s so vital that I even included it in my video here where I take an evidence-based approach to addressing five of the most common workplace feedback myths. While some erroneously view this type of feedback as the fluffy form of feedback that nobody needs, studies suggest that providing positive feedback, especially very specific positive feedback that goes beyond “great job” can improve employee satisfaction and development. I’ll link to a few good resources about the importance of positive feedback in the description. And that leads us to coaching feedback. The coaching feedback type helps point the way to how you can improve . Here are five examples of coaching feedback: Number 1: A colleague tells you they loved the flyer and social media graphics you created, but to please make sure to use the company’s proprietary font. After a conversation, they recommend taking a course they just completed titled “Omnichannel Branding.” There’s a positive comment in this feedback, and it’s also coaching feedback because it highlights a gap and a potential way to improve it in the future. Keep in mind that coaching feedback can come from anywhere – it need not be from a more senior colleague. Number 2: “Here’s what worked for me when I was in a similar position,” a colleague begins. Number 3: Your ballet teacher offers advice on how to improve your grand plié. Number 4: Through active listening and asking questions, one teammate guides another to finding their own solution to a challenge. Number 5: A teammate says: “I’m not a great public speaker, but I noticed each time you looked down at your notes it took away some of the great energy that kept your audience engaged. Are you open to working together so we can both improve?” Similar to our other feedback types, you’ll notice some variety here. Coaching can be as direct as “here’s how to point your toes for the grand plié” or, as in the active listening example, more like a torch that helps light the way for another person to discover the answer for themselves. In some work environments, coaching relationships may be more formalized – such as more senior colleagues serving as a coach for a more junior colleague. But, as stated, it doesn’t have to be that way. We all have things to learn from each other and we can all be coaches for each other. The coaching feedback type perhaps most obviously corresponds to the “with the purpose of helping them adjust” part of our definition of feedback. But the other types do as well. Consider how positive feedback that is more appreciative in nature, such as – “Great work on your latest revision. I see the immense work you put in and your essay reads so much smoother as a result” – can help a beginning writer see the value of their effort and ensure they put in such effort on a future essay.. Or consider how knowing how you did on a project at work (evaluative feedback) can help you determine which qualities to bring to your next one. And that leads us to our bonus. Additional feedback types and terms. So here we will do a whirlwind through some types and terms that I’ve categorized and found it helpful to know. So you have these wherever you are, I’ve also assembled them into a PDF which I’ve linked to in the description. Okay, here we go: The primary term to describe generalized feedback capacities Feedback literacy. Feedback literacy is a term I use to refer to an individual’s understanding of and capacity to effectively give, receive, and process feedback. The term has research roots in the world of education, where it is primarily used to describe students’ ability to receive feedback. I’ve expanded its use, pulling it into the business world so we have a broad term to describe the overall feedback capacities. The next category is Feedback based on formality and timing. So the following terms and examples all fit within that. Planned feedback. Planned feedback refers to any feedback session that is scheduled in advance. Often referred to as formal feedback, this type of feedback may occur at regular intervals, such as during quarterly or annual performance reviews or even within a day’s notice. The benefit of a formal feedback session is that the primary feedback giver(s) and receiver(s) have a chance to prepare. An example of planned feedback would be: A customer experience (CX) team leader schedules a 90-minute quarterly performance review with each of their direct reports. The meeting invite includes an agenda detailing the topics to be covered. One of the topics reads: “Growth Opportunities – areas where you can grow + your thoughts on how I can grow.” This could be considered a formal feedback session. Informal feedback. Informal feedback is often considered the most common form of workplace feedback because it can occur anytime and come from anywhere in the organization. Although informal feedback is often thought of as differing from formal feedback in that it is not scheduled, it can include scheduling and planning elements. The benefit of good informal feedback is its timeliness. Sometimes, this type of feedback can be incorporated minutes after an activity, leading to improved outcomes. An example of informal feedback would be: Employee A types up a long email to relay feedback to Employee B about their performance on a project. Employee A plans to send the email after Employee B is back from an international business trip. And here’s another example: a junior designer conducted a stakeholder meeting and was tasked with creating a first draft of the company’s new brochure. Upon seeing the design on a shared digital whiteboard, the design lead quickly called the junior designer to share how excited they were about the direction. “Your use of white space is spectacular and ensures the viewer’s eyes are drawn to our calls-to-action. Great work. Might you be able to incorporate a similar design aesthetic in the footer? Otherwise, it feels like two different brands are colliding.” Unplanned feedback. Unplanned feedback is not scheduled in advance and occurs in real-time. Although it’s often referred to as informal feedback, unplanned feedback differs in that it is truly spontaneous and in-the-moment. Therefore, Employee A’s conscious email could be considered informal but it would not be considered unplanned. An example of unplanned feedback would be: On a team call with many junior colleagues, Colleague A, also relatively junior, senses the conversation is going too “in the weeds” rather than focusing on getting alignment on “the big rock” which was the purpose of the call. “Team,” they say, “I like that we’re digging into the details, but I’m wondering if we should first get alignment on the overall direction?” The manager agrees. “Great point. Thank you for having the awareness to bring us back, Colleague A.” The manager’s comment there is unplanned appreciative feedback. The manager may even leverage this unplanned feedback to reinforce the feedback to Colleague A in front of the team and create a teachable moment. They may say something like: “Team – I want to reiterate how great of a move that was by Colleague A. Down the road, you may find yourself on calls that ‘go down the rabbit hole’ as we did. It might feel awkward, but if a clear decision on a big topic has to be made, you can bring value by steering the conversation back to center as Colleague A did.” Real-time feedback. Real-time feedback occurs as the activity is happening. It can be planned (as in a collaborative working session) or unplanned (as in feedback received from the audience during a presentation). An example of real-time feedback that is planned would be: the design lead mentioned earlier schedules a 30-minute call with the junior designer so they can work in real-time to improve the brochure. The next category is: Feedback based on source Self-feedback. Although informal feedback is often referred to as the most common type of feedback, in all likelihood, self-feedback takes the crown. Self-feedback refers to the feedback in our minds as we critique, praise, and compare our performance. We may compare the speech we just gave next to an excellent TED Talk.. or the app functionality we’re building next to how our competitor did it. Self-feedback can happen consciously (such as an employee who was just asked to rate their quarterly performance, also known as a self-appraisal) or unconsciously (such as an unhelpful and hypercritical thought process that may be related to traumatic events in childhood). Space for mindfulness and self-reflection is a key part of developing conscious self-feedback and helping to bring unhelpful subconscious self-feedback to the surface so it can be worked with rather than reacted to. Peer-to-peer feedback. In the workplace, peer-to-peer feedback typically refers to feedback given and received by peers at relatively equal seniority levels, but it can also refer to peers of any level and kind giving or receiving feedback. Effective peer-to-peer feedback is built on several key pillars, including psychological safety (where each colleague feels respected and safe when sharing their thoughts). For the definitive read on psychological safety, check out Professor Amy Edmondson’s book titled The Fearless Organization – I’ve linked to it in the description. Having a shared understanding of the feedback basics is also vital for peer-to-peer feedback to work, and this includes – as we’re doing here – getting alignment on a feedback definition and having a general baseline of feedback literacy. Most academic research on peer-to-peer feedback occurs in the classroom through student-to-student feedback. The results make it overwhelmingly clear that students can learn a tremendous amount by providing feedback on each others’ work – sometimes even more than from feedback provided by the instructor. And some recent research suggests the same is true with peer-to-peer feedback at work, with some studies suggesting that getting feedback from a few peers can be just as helpful or even better than getting feedback from a single expert. In the right context, peers collaborating on and providing feedback about a project at work can reap immense benefits. Customer feedback. Customer feedback is feedback given by customers. It can occur in various forms, including customer satisfaction surveys, public customer reviews, and beta testing whereby a product or service is rolled out to a select group to provide feedback before a general release. Employee feedback. Employee feedback is a broad term that you may hear used in multiple ways. It commonly refers to feedback given by a manager to a direct report, but it can also refer to any feedback given and received between colleagues regardless of where they sit on the org chart. Additionally, an organization’s leaders may request “employee feedback” about, for example, how a new procurement process is working. 360-Degree Feedback. 360-degree feedback (also referred to as multi-source feedback or multi-source peer appraisal) is a process for employees to give and receive feedback to each other in an anonymous way. As the name suggests, the purpose is to improve employee performance by helping them receive feedback from 360 degrees – that is, from as many angles as possible (including self-feedback). Though the potential downsides are many, the proposed benefit and the reason this method became so popular is it can allow employees to get a broader range of feedback perspectives rather than, for example, getting feedback exclusively from their manager who may only see one side of their work. The collected feedback is then used to inform an employee development plan. Okay, the next category is Feedback based on positionality, meaning where the givers or receivers are in some hierarchical relationship. Upward feedback. Upward feedback is feedback given by a direct report to their manager. It can also refer to any feedback given by a more junior employee to a more senior employee (this includes skip-level feedback, which would be between a junior employee and their direct supervisor’s manager). Downward feedback. Downward feedback is feedback given by a manager to their direct report. It can also refer to any feedback given by a more senior employee to a junior employee. Let’s move now to Feedback based on content and giver/receiver perception Positive feedback. Positive feedback is how we know we are doing well. This can come in various forms, ranging from a colleague’s praise to an automated dashboard that turns the numbers green when you’ve met or exceeded your goal. For decades, feedback research has proven the benefits of positive feedback. Effective positive feedback is specific (it goes beyond “great job”) and can also give employees a glimpse into a strength they may not know about. An example of positive feedback would be: “I’m not sure if you know this, but you are a riveting public speaker. Your slides are clear and engaging, and your passion for the topic shines through. I especially appreciate how you engage your audience with questions.” Negative feedback. Negative feedback is how we see our gaps, those areas where we can improve. This can come in various forms, including from a friend who saw our action and commented that they felt we can do better. In this sense, negative feedback can be beneficial. However, for various reasons we will explore in a future video, folks often fear giving and receiving it. Working through this fear can be challenging, but there can be tremendous growth when you do. An example of negative feedback would be: “Upon review of the copy, I think we missed the mark in addressing the primary pain point of our targeted audience. Can you try again, this time working to empathize with their current struggle to do X and positioning our product as the solution?” Constructive feedback. Constructive feedback seems to exist due to confusion or misconceptions around what the “negative” in negative feedback refers to. “Constructive” here implies helpfulness or usefulness, and maybe a future-oriented view, which is all in our primary definition of feedback. So I struggle with the term constructive feedback because it reads to me like “feedback feedback.” Still, if we keep in mind that we all have different levels of feedback literacy, it’s easy to see how this term can be helpful. In the following example, imagine if the word “constructive” was replaced by “negative.” Would the sentence change in meaning or feel more jarring for you? “The call went well because the engineering team provided constructive feedback that I will include in our next release.” Feedforward. The term feedforward arose to ensure feedback takes a future-oriented approach. Effective feedback, however, does precisely that. It points to a past performance with the intention of improving future performance. In this sense, I believe it’s problematic to position feedforward as “the reverse” of feedback. Still, like “constructive feedback,” feedforward has its place depending on the audience. Reframing / rebranding feedback in this way can also help pull employees back into the feedback process if they’ve had terrible or even harmful experiences with it in the past. Positive feedforward. Positive feedforward is positive feedback with a phrase that attaches it to the future. An example of positive feedforward forward can be: In your report last week, you did an excellent job of steering our focus to the highlights of your research. Great work. You might want to try that in your client presentation next week. Negative feedforward. Negative feedforward is negative feedback with a phrase that attaches it to the future. An example of negative feedforward could be: Next time, I think it will be helpful to spend more time researching your audience. As long-time customers, they clearly didn’t need those first few overview slides. Before you present next week, let’s spend some time discussing the backgrounds of who will be in attendance so we can really nail the opening. Destructive feedback. Destructive feedback goes against our primary definition of feedback in that it is ultimately either not helpful or not given with the intent to be helpful. While this type of feedback may include valuable parts, it comes in the form of harsh critique that may include ridiculing that breaks a person’s confidence and thereby makes feedback adoption nearly impossible. There are long-term negative consequences to destructive feedback. Our next category is Feedback based on delivery method Oral feedback. Oral feedback, often called verbal feedback, is delivered via synchronous or asynchronous talking. One potential benefit to oral feedback, particularly of the synchronous variety, is that participants can pick up on verbal and non-verbal gestures, which can help ensure ideas are conveyed clearly. Written feedback . Written feedback is delivered in writing and can serve as a way to document feedback. Unlike oral feedback, where verbal and nonverbal gestures can be experienced, these elements are missing in written feedback. As Sarah Gershman and Casey Mank wrote in Harvard Business Review: “Therefore, when you deliver written feedback, make sure to include clear and unmissable signposts of warmth, encouragement, or gratitude. Writing is not the place for off the cuff feedback on someone’s performance that could have outsized impact or come across as harsher than you intended.” Visual feedback. In a corporate work context, visual feedback can refer to various types of visual indicators – such as numbers turning green to represent an achieved goal or a designer’s visual changes to a web design mockup. Automated feedback. Grammatical issues caught by Grammarly. A financial dashboard that adjusts based on parameters met. An online exam that provides insight as to why an answer is wrong. Even the feeling of pain when we touch a hot stove. These represent just a few of the many automatic/automated types of feedback that we experience throughout any given day. Additional feedback types Encouragement. Encouragement is a type of motivational feedback that can help the receiver move into a stronger place of empowerment. Example phrasing could be: “I spent a lot of time thinking about this feedback about your performance because I see you as a shining star in this organization. You didn’t land this particular deal, but with your skillset and passion you have so much potential and I see you landing far bigger and better deals in the future.” Formative feedback. Formative feedback is typically given in a low-stakes environment where the feedback receiver has a chance to redo or re-submit their work. In this sense, formative feedback refers to the type of feedback given over time to assess how a learner or worker is developing. Formative feedback differs from summative feedback in that summative comes near the end and typically addresses how much the learner learned or the worker developed. Summative feedback. Summative feedback is how we know how we did on an exam or a project – something that has reached an end. In the classroom, for example, a summative assessment typically attempts to measure all course material. This type of feedback is critical to help learners and workers understand how they did on a final or otherwise completed project. Criticism. Criticism can be considered a type of feedback that points only to the areas to be improved. It addresses and “critiques” a past performance without providing guidance or a future-oriented lens. Other feedback terms you may come across Feedback-Seeking Behavior. Feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) refers to how individuals seek feedback either by reading the actions of others to infer what it means or by explicitly asking others for feedback. Since 1983, Dr. Susan Ashford and others have been researching feedback-seeking behavior. In organizations, feedback-seeking behavior generally leads to positive improvements in performance and the conversational feedback process. Note: you may also come across “indirect feedback seeking behavior.” This separates asking others (direct feedback seeking) from “reading the actions” (indirect feedback seeking) to highlight one’s efforts to intentionally observe the behavior of others for the sake of improving in a particular area. Feedback orientation. According to Manuel London and James Smither’s classic 2002 paper in the Human Resource Management Review, feedback orientation “…refers to an individual’s overall receptivity to feedback, including comfort with feedback, tendency to seek feedback and process it mindfully, and the likelihood of acting on the feedback to guide behavior change and performance improvement.” Note: Are you a freelancer? See the article I linked to in the description about how freelancer’s can develop their feedback orientation. And that’s a wrap, team. If you found this video helpful, more are coming… so subscribe to get notified. But really what I’d love is for you to bring any insights you found here into your relationships with others, and of course to provide me with any feedback you may have. May you and those you love be well.
Transcripción en Español:

¿Qué es la retroalimentación? | Definición de comentarios, tipos, ejemplos Hola, mi nombre es Cameron Conaway. Soy profesor en la Universidadde San Francisco, y mi trabajo sobre la retroalimentaciónestuvo en Harvard Business Review, donde señalo que procesarla retroalimentación es esencial. Fui uno de los pocos líderes empresarialesque colaboró con Feedback Essentials, un curso de Harvard Business Publishing, cuyo objetivo es formar a líderesde organizaciones mundiales. Para aquellos que no tienen tiempo y quieren una definición rápidade retroalimentación, aquí lo tienen. Así la defino yo: Es una respuestaa la actividad de una persona con el propósito de ayudarloa adaptarse y mejorar. Hay varias formas, como el evaluativo(cómo lo hizo y dónde está), el apreciativo(cómo es valorado y reconocido), y coaching (cómo puede mejorar). Para todos los demás,espero que se queden aquí porque la retroalimentaciónsiempre la descuidamos en nuestra vida personaly desarrollo profesional, Desglosaré la definiciónde retroalimentación en partes, para comprender mejorpor qué debemos aprovecharla mejor. ¿Qué es la retroalimentación? Es esa vez que se quemóla mano con la estufa y aprendió a tener cuidadode no hacerlo de nuevo. Es el comentariode su entrenador de baloncesto sobre meter más el codoal hacer un tiro en suspensión. Es el consejo de una colega que le diceque su presentación pudo ser más atractiva si hubiera leído menos las diapositivas, y que le dice que lo que funcionapara ella es mantener algunos puntos con viñetasen cada diapositiva para recordar los temasque tiene que exponer. También puede serque su pareja le pregunte: si puede sacar la basuraantes de que se desborde, porque sí llega al tope del envase, su perro salta como superhéroey lo derriba todo. Si es como yo, la retroalimentaciónpuede tener un gran impacto en su vida. Cuando veo mi pasado, la retroalimentación es tan comúncomo el aire que me rodea y que gracias a ella he mejoradoen todo lo que he hecho, y es como he ayudado a otrosa ser más eficaces en lo que quieren. Seguro que recibió retroalimentaciónque le causó mucho estrés, a mí me ha pasado. En este video, comparto una historia realde una experiencia muy estresante. No es fácil admitir, pero es probableque nuestra retroalimentación a los demás les haya causado un gran estrés. De nuevo, hablo desde mi experiencia. ¿Qué pasaría si pudiéramos aprovecharel poder de la retroalimentación sin el estrés que es causadopor la forma en que lo damos y lo recibimos? No hay una solución rápidapara que esto suceda. Pero en mi experienciacomo educador y líder empresarial, creo que para mejorarhay que empezar desde el principio, con su definición. Y a partir de ahí, explorar los tres tiposde retroalimentación más comunes, y luego compartiré ejemplos realesde retroalimentación para unir todo. Sí se quedó conmigo, aquí tiene un breve resumende lo que hablaremos. Primero, exploraremos brevementela importancia de su definición. Es genial tener una, pero para que la mantengay la aplique en el trabajo y su vida. Descubrí que es vital comprenderpor qué necesitamos una y algunas suposiciones erróneasen donde se cree que no es esencial. En segundo lugar, compartiréde nuevo mi definición y cómo surgió para comprenderladesde una misma perspectiva. Tercero, analizaremos la definición, desglosando sus partes individualespara tener una comprensión más detallada. Cuarto, dentro de nuestra definiciónhay tres tipos de retroalimentación. Nos tomaremos el tiempode profundizar en ellas, porque estos tres tipospueden ser categorías generales que permitan explorar ejemplosespecíficos de retroalimentación. En quinto lugar, veremos ejemplosde retroalimentación para categoría. En este punto, creo que tendrá la baseque necesita para empezar a mejorar la forma en la que day recibe la retroalimentación. Sin embargo, no es suficienteuna definición y algunos ejemplos. Por eso agreguéun punto número 6 aquí, como bonus, tipos y términosde retroalimentación adicionales. En su lugar de trabajo y más allá, es probable que se encuentrecon varias clases de retroalimentación, así que haremos un recorrido por ellaspara asegurarnos de convertirnos en las esponjas de aprendizajede la retroalimentación que necesitamos ser para mejorarnuestro rendimiento en el trabajo y nuestra comunicación con otras personas. Y tal vez, esponjas. Vamos desde el principio. ¿Por qué es importantela definición de retroalimentación? Primero, déjame retroceder. Considere que John Hattie,un profesor de educación, dedicó 15 años a la investigación, y sintetizó unos 800 metaanálisissobre el rendimiento de los alumnos. Este es uno de los libros de ese trabajo. Al resumir los resultadosdel logro épico que John Hattie, los investigadores David Carlessy David Boud lo explicaron así: «La influencia más poderosasobre los logros es la retroalimentación pero los impactos son muy variables, lo que indica la complejidad de maximizarlos beneficios de la retroalimentación». Equipo, este es solo unode los muchos puntos de prueba sobre el poder de la retroalimentaciónpara ayudarnos a aprender y crecer. No obstante, Hattie también destaca la complejidad de maximizarlos beneficios de la retroalimentación. Por eso es quiero que dediquemosalgún tiempo aquí para entender por qué la retroalimentaciónpuede impulsar su desarrollo como ninguna otra cosa. Y es complejo, requiere trabajo, y mejorar nuestras capacidadescomo comunicadores. Debido a que la retroalimentaciónestá en todas partes de nuestra vida, muchas veces asumimosque todos saben lo que significa y suponemos que los demáscomparten nuestra perspectiva. Estas son grandes suposiciones, que pueden generar una seriede problemas de comunicación, y tiende a hacernos creerque realmente no es necesaria una definición compartida. Debido a estas suposiciones, la mayoría de los artículos y librosacerca de la retroalimentación solo pasan por altola definición de lo que significa. El resultado esque no nos falta el contenido sobre dar y recibir retroalimentación, incluso se crean culturasde retroalimentación para nuestros equipos de trabajo. Se siente un pococomo si hubiéramos puesto el carro delante del caballo. Estas suposicionesse trasladan al mundo empresarial, donde algunos líderes hablan maravillas sobre la importanciade aprovechar eficazmente la retroalimentaciónen toda su organización, pero no ofrecen una definiciónni formación a sus empleados para asegurarse que entiendende lo que se está hablando. Según algunas herramientasde motores de búsqueda, millones de personas cada mesbuscan: «Retroalimentación», o, «Qué es retroalimentación»,o, «Definición de retroalimentación», Insisto, todo en un intentopor entender de qué se trata. Pero utilizar estos motores de búsquedaspueden llevarnos a madrigueras de conejo, donde encontramostodo tipo de definiciones, definiciones de retroalimentaciónrelacionadas con el comportamiento de persona a persona, que es principalmentelo que cubrimos aquí. Así como definiciones confusas relacionadas con sistemasbiológicos autorregulados, o retroalimentación en relacióncon los dispositivos eléctricos. Aquellos que profundiceno quieran una fuente más autorizada pueden consultar el artículodel profesor Ramaprasad de 1983 en ciencias del comportamientotitulado On the Definition of Feedback, que la define así: «La retroalimentación es informaciónsobre la diferencia entre el nivel real y el nivel de referenciade un parámetro del sistema, que se utiliza para alterarla brecha de algún modo». Me encanta el enfoquede reconocer y alterar la brecha. Esta perspectiva la sigo desde hace años y hasta el día de hoy aún percibola retroalimentación desde allí. Porque sí lo piensas, la retroalimentaciónpretende abordar algún tipo de brecha. Sin embargo, al reflexionarsobre esta definición a lo largo de años y al presentarla a otros,me brindaron una retroalimentación, con lo que estoy de acuerdo, que es difícil de entenderpara una audiencia general con el parámetro del sistemay el nivel de referencia. Ya no la utilizo al definirla retroalimentación para los demás. Encontrar una definición sólidade retroalimentación es más difícil de lo que debería ser. Y volviendo al por qué, aquí tenemos tres razones importantespor las que deberíamos tener una. Primero, ayuda a desmantelarlas suposiciones generalizadas que mencioné. Dos, le asegura a usted,a su equipo o a quienes le rodean que estén alineados y tengan una definicióna la que recurrir en casos concretos. Esto puede ser útil si usted es un gerente que incorporanuevos compañeros de equipo. Y tercero, puede prepararnospara aprender más sobre el tema, como haremos aquí, porque la definiciónpuede servirnos de base y salvarnos de ciertas confusiones, mientras leemos numerosos artículos sobre los elementosde la retroalimentación. Todo esto nos lleva, de nuevo,a nuestra definición de retroalimentación. Después de pasar añosleyendo muchos libros, cientos de artículos académicosy de divulgación empresarial, he llegado aquí nuevamente. Analicemos tres partes importantesde esta definición de retroalimentación. Primero, enfoquémonos en esta, es una respuestaa la actividad de una persona. Esta parte se centraen que hubo un estímulo, algo sucedió. En este caso, la actividad de una persona. Y que hubo una respuesta correspondiente. En este caso,a la actividad de una persona. La respuesta aquí es un poco vaga, porque esta respuestapuede abarcar una gama que incluye todo. Desde una ovación del público, que es la retroalimentaciónpor la cual un artista sabe que hizo algo grandioso. Hasta una conversaciónde un colega tal vez más joven que proporciona a su jefe lo que se llamaretroalimentación ascendente, sobre cómo siente en su microgestión y que, como resultado, luchanpor seguir siendo productivos y creativos. Continuemos con la segunda parte,con el propósito de ayudarlo a ajustar. El objetivo de la retroalimentaciónes ser útil. Probablemente, haya aprendidoa través de la experiencia, tener las mejores intenciones,el mejor propósito, no significa necesariamenteque las cosas van a ir bien. Incluso puede tener buenas intenciones, y aun así puede dar o recibiruna terrible retroalimentación. También voy a destacarque la retroalimentación se trata de ayudara que la otra persona se adapte. Esta adaptación también es un poco vaga,porque esta adaptación podría variar desde retroalimentación destinadaa adaptar el comportamiento interpersonal de un compañero de equipo, a retroalimentación destinadaa ajustar la rotación de la cadera en el swing de golf de alguien. La palabra ajustar tambiénse refiere a una actividad futura. Después de todo,no puede ajustar algo del pasado. En ese sentido, la retroalimentación eficazpor su naturaleza es útil, porque le permite ajustarun desempeño futuro. Para que la retroalimentaciónesté más orientada al futuro, puede ser útil, aunque no necesario,hablar explícitamente de un evento futuro. Por ejemplo, retroalimentaciónde agradecimiento como: «Gran trabajo llevandoese proyecto a la meta», que si bien no menciona un evento futuro, puede recordarle esta sensación de éxitoa quien recibe la retroalimentación cuando esté realizandosu próximo proyecto. Y por último, veamos varias formas. El desafío al definir la retroalimentaciónes el abordar todo lo que puede ser ¿Es el cumplido que recibióen la mañana de su profesor de yoga? ¿O La baja puntuación de rendimientoque recibió de su jefe en la tarde, y que afecta su bonificación? ¿O la felicidad de su hijacuando por centésima vez usted le lee La oruga hambrientaantes de dormir? Sí, todos ellos pueden serconsiderados retroalimentación. Entonces, el decir: «Varias formas»,implica incluir otros tipos y formas, dentro de los cuales tenemosespecíficamente los tres más comunes, que son la evaluativa,apreciativa y coaching, las cuales sirven como categorías en las que pueden encajarmás ejemplos de retroalimentación. Exploremos ahoraestos tres tipos de retroalimentación, los cuales encontramosen el libro Thanks for the Feedback. Es una gran lecturade Douglas Stone y Sheila Heen del Harvard Negotiation Project, donde encontré tres tipos principales, los cuales reflejan bastantemi propio trabajo y experiencia. Hay un enlace del libroen la descripción. Así es como definimos cada tipo. La evaluativa le permite sabercómo lo ha hecho y dónde se encuentra. Es evaluativa, porque compara lo que hizocon lo que podría haber hecho. Es similar a la definicióndel profesor Ramaprasad, la diferencia entre el nivel realy el nivel de referencia. Para que la retroalimentación efectivasea real, aquí hay cinco ejemplos. Número uno. Al final del trimestre, consiguió un 10 % menosde clientes potenciales de lo previsto. La retroalimentación, que tal vez vinode un cuadro de mando automatizado, le dice cómo le fue en relacióncon cómo pensó que le iría. No solo le permite saber cómo le fue,sino que le da un puntaje, que puede tratarse de lo que necesitapara mejorar en la captación de clientes y/o mejorar su próxima previsión. Les mostraré otros ejemplos. Número dos. Un informe directo le dice: «Usted es el mejor lídercon el que he trabajado». Número tres. Usted no cumplió con los criteriosde calificación para participar en el Maratón de Boston. Número cuatro. Usted pasó al nivel cuatro en la tablade clasificación de Duolingo. Número cinco. Su oferta formal en respuestaa una solicitud de propuesta (RFP) fue seleccionada. Fíjese cómo varían estos ejemplos. Tenemos un comentario positivo,pero bastante vago de un informe directo; junto a ejemplo que indicaque no cumplió con su meta trimestral. Ambas son evaluativas, porque de forma directa o indirectacontienen datos comparativos. Quizás usted esté pensando: ¿Qué? ¿El comentario del informe directono es la retroalimentación apreciativa? De hecho, tienes razón. Un mismo ejemplopuede pertenecer a varios tipos. A veces, parecería que esos tiposforman parte de una escala. Ahora, contextualicemos este ejemplo. Digamos que el comentario: «Usted es el mejor lídercon el que he trabajado», se generó durante una revisióntrimestral del rendimiento como respuesta a la retroalimentaciónque usted pidió sobre su liderazgo desde que se unió al equipohace seis meses. Ahora, la respuesta estámás orientada hacia la evaluación, luego de añadir el sutil dato comparativo:otros líderes con los que he trabajado. Se orientará más hacia la evaluación si muestra más detalles concretossobre su rendimiento en relación con líderes pasados. Veamos la retroalimentación apreciativa. Esta retroalimentación le ayuda a sabersi es valorado y reconocido. Les presentaré cinco ejemplos de ella. Número uno. El pivote de su equipo de baloncestole dedica un gesto de gratitud tras un gran pase. Número dos. Dice su abuelo:«Estoy muy agradecido por toda su ayuda». Número tres. Tu profesor te elogia en clasepor hacer preguntas interesantes. Número cuatro. Al regresarde una peligrosa misión militar, un sargento abraza a otro. Número cinco. Un cliente en el restaurantete deja una gran propina. Notará que el agradecimientopuede expresarse con palabras, como hicieron el abuelo y el profesor, o puede ser tácito o no verbalcomo en el caso del pivote de baloncesto, los sargentos y el clienteque dejó una gran propina. A diferenciade la evaluación y el coaching, que pueden responder negativamente, la retroalimentación apreciativaes positiva y nos motiva. Tenga en cuenta, sin embargo, que todos deseandistintos tipos de agradecimiento. Algunos, aunque no lo admitany se sonrojen al hacerlo, les encanta ser apreciadosdelante de sus iguales. Para otros, renovar en silenciosu contrato un trimestre más, quizás es la muestra de aprecioque quieren o necesitan. Si usted es un gestor de personas,puede ser muy importante conocer cómo quiere ser apreciado su equipo. Un gran líder, por ejemplo, no avergonzaría a un colegaelogiándolo públicamente cuando eso es lo último que querría. Hay que tener en cuenta que la retroalimentaciónpositiva apreciativa es vital. Es tan vital que la incluíen mi video aquí, donde adopto un enfoquebasado en la evidencia para examinar los mitos comunessobre la retroalimentación en el trabajo. Es erróneo pensar que no se necesitaesta forma de retroalimentación. Los estudios sugieren que proporcionarconcretamente retroalimentación positiva, más allá de: «Buen trabajo», puede mejorar la satisfaccióny el desarrollo de los empleados. Les dejo un link en la descripcióncon buenos recursos sobre la importanciade la retroalimentación positiva Esto nos llevaa la retroalimentación coaching. Esta retroalimentación se aplicapara indicar cómo mejorar. Les mostraré 5 ejemplos de ella. Número uno. Un colega le dice que le gustanlos gráficos para redes sociales que creó, pero que utilice el tipo de letrahabitual de la empresa. Tras conversar, recomiendatomar un curso que acaban de terminar, titulado Omnichannel Branding. Es una retroalimentación positivay también de coaching, porque resalta una brecha y una posible formade mejorar en el futuro. La retroalimentación coachingpueden venir de cualquier lugar, no es necesario que seade un colega de mayor rango. Número dos. «Esto funcionó para mícuando estuve en esa posición», dice un colega. Número tres. Su profesor de ballet le da consejospara mejorar su grand plié. Número cuatro. Al escuchar activamentey formular preguntas, un compañero guía a otropara que encuentre la solución a un reto. Número cinco. Un compañero le dice a otro:«No soy un gran orador, pero me fijé que cuando mira sus notas, disminuye la energíaque mantiene a su público atento. ¿Está abierto a trabajar juntospara poder mejorar? Al igual que con los demás tiposde retroalimentación, hay variedad. Coaching puede ser directo como: «Apunta tus dedos asípara hacer el grand plié», o como en el ejemplo de la escucha activa, más como una antorchaque ilumina el camino de otra persona para que descubrala respuesta por sí misma. En algunos entornos laborales, las relaciones de coachingpueden ser más formales como cuando los colegas seniorson entrenadores de los más jóvenes. Pero no tiene por qué ser así. Todos podemos aprender de los demás, y ser entrenadoreslos unos de los otros. Este tipo de retroalimentacióncorresponde más con parte de la definición que indica que la retroalimentaciónsirve para hacer ajustes, pero los demás tipos también. Como la retroalimentación positivay que es también apreciativa: «Excelente trabajo en su última revisión, Veo que se esfuerza y por endesu redacción cada vez es mejor», esto puede ayudar a que sientaque su esfuerzo es valorado y, a su vez, se sentirá motivadocuando hago su siguiente trabajo. O si ya sabe cómo le fue en ese proyecto, la retroalimentación evaluativapuede ayudarlo a determinar qué aportar al siguiente. Pasaremos a nuestro bonus, otros tipos de retroalimentacióny condiciones. Repasaremos algunos tiposy condiciones que clasifiqué y que me han sido muy útiles. Están siempre a su disposición, los reuní dentro de un PDFcuyo link dejo en la descripción. Comencemos. El término para describir las capacidadesde retroalimentación generalizadas es: alfabetización en retroalimentación. Concepto que utilizo para referirmea esa comprensión individual y a la capacidad para dar,recibir y procesar la retroalimentación. Este término surgeen el ámbito de la educación y se utiliza para describirla capacidad de los alumnos para recibir retroalimentación. Lo apliqué en el mundo empresarialy ahora es un término amplio que describe las capacidades generalesde la retroalimentación. La siguiente categoría es la retroalimentación basadaen la formalidad y el momento. Los siguientes términos y ejemplosencajan en esta categoría. Retroalimentación planificada. Se refiere a sesiones de retroalimentaciónque son programadas con antelación. También denominadoretroalimentación formal, que pueden ocurrir regularmente, por ejemplo, en revisionestrimestrales de rendimiento o con un día de antelación. La ventaja de una sesión formal es que los emisores y receptorestienen tiempo para prepararse. Un ejemplo sería cuando el líderdel equipo de experiencia del cliente programa una revisión trimestralde rendimiento de 90 minutos con cada uno de sus subordinados directos. La invitación incluye una orden del díaque detalla los temas a tratar. Uno de los temas dice:«Oportunidades de crecimiento: áreas en las que puede crecer,comparte tus ideas de crecimiento». Esto podría considerarseuna sesión formal de retroalimentación. Retroalimentación informal. Se considera la formamás común de retroalimentación en el lugar de trabajo, porque puede iniciarseen cualquier momento y en cualquier departamento. Aunque a menudo se piensaque la retroalimentación informal se diferencia del feedback formalen que no está programado, puede incluir elementosde programación y planificación. La ventaja de un buenfeedback informal es su oportunidad. A veces, este tipo de retroalimentaciónpuede incorporarse minutos después de una actividad, dando mejores resultados. Un ejemplode retroalimentación informal sería, el empleado A escribeun largo correo electrónico al empleado B para transmitirle su apreciaciónsobre si rendimiento en un proyecto. El empleado A planea enviarel correo electrónico después que el empleado B esté de vueltade un viaje de negocios internacional. Aquí hay otro ejemplo. Un diseñador junior llevó a cabouna reunión con las partes interesadas y se le encargó la creaciónde un primer borrador del nuevo folleto de la empresa. Al ver el diseñoen una pizarra digital compartida, el jefe de diseñollamó rápidamente al diseñador junior para compartir lo entusiasmados que estaban con la dirección. “Su uso del espacioen blanco es espectacular y garantiza que los ojosdel espectador se dirijan a nuestras llamadas a la acción. Gran trabajo. ¿Podría incorporar una estéticade diseño similar en el pie de página? De lo contrario, pareceque chocan dos marcas diferentes”. Retroalimentación no planificada. No se programa con antelacióny se produce en tiempo real. Aunque a menudo se denominaretroalimentación informal, la retroalimentación no planificadaes verdaderamente espontánea y en el momento. Por lo tanto, el correo electrónicoconsciente del empleado A podría considerarse informal,pero no se consideraría no planificado. Un ejemplo de retroalimentaciónno planificada sería. En una llamada de equipocon muchos colegas subalternos, El colega A, también relativamente junior, intuye que la conversaciónse está yendo por las ramas en lugar de centrarseen realmente importante, que era el propósito de la llamada. «Equipo», dice, «Me gusta que profundicemosen los detalles, pero me pregunto: ¿si primero deberíamos alinearnosen la dirección general?». El director está de acuerdo:«Buena observación. Gracias por tener la concienciade traernos de vuelta, colega A». El comentario del gerente es del tipo apreciativa no planificada. El gerente puede incluso aprovecharesta retroalimentación no planificada y reforzar esa retroalimentaciónhacia el colega A delante del equipo y crear un momento de enseñanza. Puede decir algo como: «Equipo, quiero reiterar,qué gran jugada la del colega A. Más adelante, puede quese encuentren en llamadas que se meten en la madrigueradel conejo como nosotros. Puede resultar incómodo, pero si hay que tomar una decisión clarasobre un tema importante, puedes aportar valorvolviendo a centrar la conversación, como lo hizo el colega A». Retroalimentación en tiempo real. Se produce a medidaque se desarrolla la actividad. Puede planificarse,como una sesión de trabajo colaborativa. O no planeada, como la respuestadel público en una presentación, Un ejemplo de retroalimentaciónen tiempo real es el siguiente. El jefe de diseño antes mencionado, programa una llamadade 30 minutos con el diseñador junior para que en tiempo realpuedan mejorar el folleto. La siguiente categoría esla retroalimentación interna, autorretroalimentación. A menudo se cree que la informales la retroalimentación más común, les aseguro que esta esla está en primer lugar. Se refiere a esa retroalimentaciónque tenemos en nuestra mente mientras criticamos, elogiamosy comparamos nuestros resultados. Podemos comparar el discursoque dimos con una excelente charla TED, o la funcionalidad de lo que creamoscontrapuesto a nuestro de competidor. Se puede presentar de forma consciente. Como a un empleadoque califica su rendimiento trimestral, conocido como autoevaluación. O inconscientemente, como un procesode pensamiento inútil e hipercrítico, quizás relacionado con traumas de la infancia. Tener una conciencia plenay practicar la autorreflexión son claves en el desarrollode una autorretroalimentación consciente. En base a esta autorretroalimentaciónaparentemente inútil, consciente, podemos ir trabajandoen lugar de reaccionar ante ella. Retroalimentación entre iguales. Se refiere a esa retroalimentaciónque se da entre compañeros en niveles relativamente iguales, pero también a una retroalimentaciónque es recíproca entre compañeros de cualquier nivel y tipo. Para que sea eficaz son esencialesvarios pilares fundamentales, incluida la seguridad psicológica, donde predomina el respetoy es seguro compartir pensamientos. Para saber mássobre seguridad psicológica, te recomiendo el librode la profesora Amy Edmondson titulado The Fearless Organization. Les dejé el link en la descripción. Compartir una misma perspectivade esos conceptos de retroalimentación es esencial para que pueda ser eficaz. Incluyendo, lo que hacemos aquí,al profundizar en una definición clara y en esa base de alfabetizaciónen retroalimentación. No hay mejor ejemplode retroalimentación entre iguales que las que se danen el aula de clases entre alumnos. Los resultados dejan muy claro, que los alumnos pueden aprender muchode esa respuesta entre ellos mismos, a veces incluso másde la que reciben del profesor. Investigaciones recientes sugierenque ocurre exactamente lo mismo entre iguales en el trabajo, también que la retroalimentaciónde unos pocos compañeros puede ser igual de útilo incluso mejor que la de un experto. Los compañeros que colaboran y brindan retroalimentación sobre un proyecto en el trabajopueden cosechar inmensos beneficios. Retroalimentación de los clientes,es el proporcionado por clientes. Puede ocurrir de diversas formas, como encuestasde satisfacción del cliente, revisiones públicas de clientes, y pruebas beta de un productoo servicio a un grupo selecto para que dé su opiniónantes del lanzamiento. Retroalimentación de los empleados. Este es un término muy amplioque puede utilizarse de muchas maneras. Se refiere a la retroalimentaciónde un gerente a un subordinado directo. Pero también puede sercualquier comentario entre colegas, independientemente, de su posición. Los líderes de una organización pueden solicitar la opiniónde los empleados sobre, por ejemplo, qué les pareceel nuevo proceso de contratación. Feedback de 360 grados. También denominadoretroalimentación de múltiples fuentes, o en pares de múltiples fuentes. Los empleados dan y recibenretroalimentación entre ellos de forma anónima. El objetivo es ayudar a mejorar el rendimiento de los empleados con esa retroalimentaciónde 360 grados que reciben, desde todos los ángulos posibles,incluida la autoevaluación. Aunque las desventajas son muchas, la razón por la que esta práctica se hizo tan popular es que, permite a los empleados obteneruna gama más amplia de perspectivas en lugar de solo recibiresa retroalimentación de su jefe, que tal vez solo veuna cara de su trabajo. Con estas respuestas se elaboraun plan de desarrollo de los empleados. Seguimos con la retroalimentaciónbasada en la posicionalidad, es decir, que quienes participan en ellatienen alguna relación jerárquica. Retroalimentación ascendente. Es esa que un subordinado directoda a su superior o a su jefe, también desde un colega más jovena un empleado más veterano. Incluye la retroalimentacióna nivel de salto, que sería entre un empleado subalternoy al jefe de su supervisor directo. Retroalimentación descendente. Es esa que da un gerentea su subordinado directo, también de un empleado más veteranoa un empleado subalterno. Pasemos a la retroalimentaciónque está basada en el contenido y la percepción emisor/receptor. Retroalimentación positiva. Es la forma en que sabemosque lo estamos haciendo bien. Puede darse de distintas formas,desde el elogio de un colega, hasta un panel automatizadoque pone los números verdes cuando se alcanza el objetivo. Durante décadas, se han demostrado los beneficiosde la retroalimentación positiva. La positiva efectiva es específica,va más allá de un gran trabajo, y también ayuda a los empleadosa ver fortalezas que no saben que poseen. Un ejemplo de retroalimentaciónpositiva es este. No sé si lo sabes,pero eres un gran orador. Las diapositivas son clarasy brilla tu pasión por el tema. Aprecio especialmente la formaen que involucra a su audiencia con preguntas. Retroalimentación negativa. Es cómo vemos nuestras brechas,aquellas áreas donde podemos mejorar. Puede venir de varias formas,incluyendo de un amigo que vio nuestra accióny dijo que podíamos hacerlo mejor. La retroalimentación negativapuede ser beneficiosa. Sin embargo, por diversas razonesque analizaremos en un próximo vídeo, la gente a menudo teme darla y recibirla. Superar este miedo puede ser todo un reto, pero hay grandes beneficiosde crecimiento al hacerlo. Un ejemplo de reacción negativa sería. Tras revisar la copia, creo que fallamosal abordar los principales problemas de nuestro público objetivo. Puedes intentarlo de nuevo, esta vez trabajando para empatizarcon nuestra lucha actual por hacer X y posicionar nuestro productocomo la solución. Retroalimentación constructiva. Parecen deberse a confusioneso ideas erróneas alrededor de a qué se refiere a negativoen la retroalimentación negativa. Constructivo significa útil o provechosoy tal vez una visión orientada al futuro que es nuestra definición primariade retroalimentación. Así que tengo problemas con ese término,porque me parece una retroalimentación. Considerando que todostenemos diferentes niveles de alfabetización en retroalimentación,es fácil ver cómo puede ser útil. En el siguiente ejemplo, imagine que la palabra constructivose sustituye por negativo. ¿Cambiaría el significado de la fraseo le parecería más extraña? La llamada salió bien, porque el equipo de ingenierosaportó comentarios constructivos que incluiré en nuestra próxima versión. Feedforward. El término feedforwardsurgió para garantizar que la retroalimentaciónesté orientada hacia el futuro. La retroalimentación efectivahace precisamente eso, señala una actuación pasada con la intención de mejorarlos resultados futuros. Creo que es problemático situar el feedforwardcomo el reverso del feedback. Aun así, me gustala retroalimentación constructiva. El feedforward tiene su lugardependiendo del público. Reformular el concepto puede ayudara que los empleados vuelvan a los procesos de retroalimentaciónsi han tenido experiencias terribles o incluso perjudicialescon ella en el pasado. Feedforward positivo. Es retroalimentación positivacon una frase que lo vincula al futuro. Un ejemplo de feedforward positivo sería. En su informe de la semana pasada, hizo un gran trabajodirigiendo nuestra atención a lo más destacado de su investigación. Gran trabajo. Puedes probarlo en tu presentaciónal cliente de la semana que viene. Feedforward negativo. Es el feedback negativocon una frase que lo vincula al futuro. Un ejemplo de feedforward negativo sería. La próxima vez, será útil dedicar más tiempoa investigar a su público. Como clientes de toda la vida, esas primeras diapositivasde resumen no eran necesarias. Antes de la próxima presentación,vamos a debatir sobre los asistentes, para que empecemos muy bien. Retroalimentación destructiva. Este concepto va en contrade nuestra definición primaria de retroalimentación. En última instancia no es útil,o no tiene intención de ser útil. Aunque puede incluir partes valiosas, se presenta como una dura críticaque puede incluso ridiculizar, dañar la confianza de una persona. Y, por tanto,es casi imposible utilizarla. Hay efectos negativos a largo plazocomo consecuencia de ella. La siguiente categoría es la retroalimentación basadaen el método de entrega. Retroalimentación oral. También llamada retroalimentación verbal. Se hace en conversacionessincrónicas o asincrónicas. Una de las ventajasde la retroalimentación oral, sobre todo si es sincrónica, es que se pueden captargestos verbales y no verbales que pueden ayudarlea transmitir sus ideas con claridad. Retroalimentación escrita. Se entrega por escrito, y sirve como una formade documentar la retroalimentación. A diferencia de la oral, donde se vengestos verbales y no verbales, esta retroalimentacióncarece de esos elementos. Como escribieron Sarah Gershmany Casey Mank en Harvard Business Review, «Por lo tanto, cuando proporcioneretroalimentación por escrito asegúrese de incluir señalesclaras e ineludibles de calidez, motivación o gratitud. Escribir no es el lugar adecuadopara comentarios improvisados en el rendimiento de alguien que podría tenerun impacto desproporcionado o parecer más duro de lo que pretendía». Retroalimentación visual. En un contexto laboral empresarial, puede referirse a varios tiposde indicadores visuales como números que se ponen en verdecon un objetivo alcanzado, o cambios visuales de un diseñadoren una maqueta de diseño web. Retroalimentación automatizada. Problemas gramaticalesdetectados por Grammarly, un panel financiero que se ajustaen función de parámetros cumplidos, y un examen en línea que le dicepor qué una respuesta es incorrecta. Incluso la sensación de doloral tocar una estufa caliente. Estas son algunas de las diferentesrespuestas automáticas/automatizadas que experimentamos a lo largo de un día. Tipos de retroalimentación adicionales. Estímulos. Es un tipo de retroalimentación motivadoraque puede ayudar al receptor a avanzar hacia un lugar más fuertede empoderamiento. La frase de ejemplos pueden ser: «Pasé mucho tiempo pensandoen este feedback sobre tu actuación, porque te veo como alguien brillanteen esta organización. No conseguiste este acuerdo en particular. Pero con tus habilidadesy tu pasión, tienes tanto potencial y te veo consiguiendo tratos más grandesy mejores en el futuro». Retroalimentación formativa. Suele darse en un entorno de bajo riesgo,donde el receptor de la retroalimentación tiene la oportunidad de rehacero volver a presentar su trabajo. Esto se refiere al tipo de feedbackque se da a lo largo del tiempo para evaluar el desarrollode un alumno o trabajador. Este tipo difiere del feedback sumativo, en donde la sumativa se hace al finaly suele cuantificar ese desarrollo. Retroalimentación sumativa. Es cómo sabemos que nos fueen un examen o en un proyecto, algo que ha llegado a su fin. En el aula, por ejemplo, una evaluación sumativamide todo el material del curso. Es fundamental para ayudar a alumnosy trabajadores a comprender cómo les fue en un proyecto finalo cualquier otra evaluación. Crítica. Puede considerarseun tipo de retroalimentación que señala los aspectosque deben mejorarse. Aborda y critica una actuación anterior, sin ofrecer orientaciónni una perspectiva a futuro. Otros términos de retroalimentaciónque te puedes encontrar. Comportamiento de búsquedade retroalimentación (FSB). Se refiere a cómo los individuosbuscan retroalimentación, ya sea leyendo a los demáspara deducir lo que significa o pidiendo explícitamenteopiniones a los demás. Desde 1983, la Dra. Susan Ashford y otros,han investigado sobre este comportamiento. En las organizaciones, este comportamiento conducea mejoras positivas en el rendimiento y en los procesosde retroalimentación conversacional. También puede encontrarsecon un comportamiento indirecto de búsqueda de retroalimentación. Esto separa el preguntar a otros(búsqueda directa de feedback) de la lectura de las acciones(búsqueda indirecta de feedback), resaltar esfuerzos propiospara observar intencionalmente el comportamiento de los demáspara mejorar en un área concreta. Orientación a la retroalimentación. Según el artículo de 2002de Manuel London y James Smither en la Human Resource Management Review, se refiere a la receptividad generaldel individuo a la retroalimentación, incluida la comodidad con ella, tendencia a buscar feedbackprocesarlo con atención, y la probabilidad de actuar sobre ellapara guiar un cambio de comportamiento y la mejora del rendimiento. ¿Es usted freelancer? Vea el artículo que dejo en la descripción sobre cómo los freelancerspueden desarrollar su retroalimentación Eso es todo, equipo. Si este vídeo le fue útil,pronto vendrán más, suscríbete para recibir notificaciones. Pero lo que me encantaría esque algo de lo que vio aquí pueda aplicarlo de ahora en adelante, y, por supuesto, hágame llegarsus comentarios al respecto. Que usted y sus seres queridos estén bien.
हिंदी में प्रतिलेखन:

फीडबैक क्या है – फीडबैक परिभाषा, प्रकार, उदाहरण नमस्ते, मेरा नाम कैमरून कॉनवे है। मैं सैन फ्रांसिस्को विश्वविद्यालय में एक संकाय सदस्य हूं और फीडबैक पर मेरा काम हार्वर्ड बिजनेस रिव्यू में छपा है – जहां मैंने फीडबैक प्रोसेसिंग के लिए काम किया है, और मैं उन कुछ कॉर्पोरेट नेताओं में से एक था जिनसे फीडबैक में मदद करने के लिए कहा गया था। यह हार्वर्ड प्रकाशन का एक कोर्स है जिसका उपयोग वैश्विक संगठन अपने नेताओं को विकसित करने के लिए करते हैं, उन लोगों के लिए जो केवल एक त्वरित फीडबैक परिभाषा चाहते हैं। तो यह फीडबैक की मेरी परिभाषा है: फीडबैक किसी व्यक्ति की गतिविधि के प्रति एक प्रतिक्रिया है जिसका उद्देश्य उन्हें अधिक प्रभावी बनने के लिए समायोजित करने में मदद करना है। फीडबैक विभिन्न रूपों में आता है, जिनमें मूल्यांकनात्मक, सराहनीय और कोचिंग शामिल हैं। बाकी सभी के लिए – मुझे आशा है कि आप बने रहेंगे क्योंकि फीडबैक हमारे व्यक्तिगत और व्यावसायिक विकास के सबसे कम महत्व वाले और उपेक्षित पहलुओं में से एक है – और मैं परिभाषा को भागों में बताऊंगा इसलिए हमारे पास यह जानने के लि और भी नई चीजें हैं कि हम अपनी यात्रा को कैसे जानते हैं। तो फीडबैक क्या है ? आपने सीखा कि उसके बाद दोबारा चूल्हे पर अपना हाथ नहीं जलाना चाहिए। जब आप जंप शॉट लगाते हैं तो अपनी कोहनी को अधिक अंदर लाने के बारे में आपके बास्केटबॉल कोच ने यही कहा था। यह एक सहकर्मी से आया है जिसने कहा था कि यदि आपने स्लाइड्स से इतना कुछ नहीं पढ़ा होता तो आपकी बातचीत अधिक दिलचस्प होती। उन्होंने यह भी कहा कि प्रत्येक स्लाइड पर केवल कुछ बुलेटेड बिंदु रखना उनके लिए सबसे अच्छा काम करता है। जिसका उपयोग बातचीत के बिंदुओं को याद रखने के लिए किया जा सकता है। फीडबैक में आपका साथी भी आपसे कचरा भरने से पहले उसे बाहर निकालने के लिए कह सकता है, क्योंकि जब कचरा बहुत ज्यादा भर जाता है, तो आपका कुत्ता सुपरहीरो में बदल जाता है और सब कुछ खत्म कर देता है। फीडबैक ने शायद आपके जीवन में बहुत बड़ा अंतर ला दिया है, ठीक वैसे ही जैसे इसने मेरे लिए किया। जब मैं अपने बारे में सोचता हूं, तो प्रतिक्रिया उतनी ही सामान्य लग सकती है जितनी मैं सांस लेता हूं। इस तरह मैंने अब तक जो कुछ भी किया है, उसमें मैं बेहतर हुआ हूं, और इसी तरह मैंने अन्य लोगों को जो वे करना चाहते हैं उसमें बेहतर होने में मदद की है। यह संभव है कि आप भी फीडबैक को लेकर बेहद तनावपूर्ण स्थिति से गुजरे हों। मुझे पता है मेरे पास है। इस वीडियो में, मैं एक वास्तविक अनुभव के बारे में बात करता हूं जो बहुत तनावपूर्ण था। साथ ही, इसे स्वीकार करना कठिन हो सकता है, लेकिन अन्य लोगों के प्रति हमारी प्रतिक्रिया ने संभवतः उन्हें बहुत तनाव में डाल दिया है। फिर, मैं अनुभव से बोल रहा हूं। लेकिन क्या होगा अगर हम इनपुट के शक्तिशाली प्रभावों का उपयोग और बढ़ावा दे सकें और साथ ही हमारे देने और प्राप्त करने के तरीके से महसूस होने वाले और पैदा होने वाले तनाव को भी कम कर सकें? ऐसा करना आसान नहीं है, लेकिन एक शिक्षक और बिजनेस लीडर के रूप में मेरे अनुभव से, मुझे लगता है कि सुधार शुरुआत से ही शुरू हो जाता है। फीडबैक की परिभाषा के साथ, फिर फीडबैक क्या है इसकी खोज, फिर तीन सामान्य प्रकार के फीडबैक पर एक नजर, और अंत में फीडबैक के कुछ वास्तविक जीवन के उदाहरण जो सब कुछ एक साथ जोड़ते हैं। यदि आप अभी भी मेरे साथ हैं, तो आइए एक नज़र डालें कि हम किस बारे में बात करने जा रहे हैं। सबसे पहले, आइए इस पर एक नज़र डालें कि फीडबैक क्या है, इसकी स्पष्ट जानकारी होना क्यों महत्वपूर्ण है। इसका होना बहुत अच्छी बात है, लेकिन मैंने पाया है कि यह समझना भी महत्वपूर्ण है कि हमें इसकी आवश्यकता क्यों है और इसके न होने से हम कुछ गलत धारणाएँ बना सकते हैं। दूसरा, मैं फीडबैक का अपना अर्थ फिर से समझाऊंगा और यह कैसे हुआ, ताकि हर कोई जान सके कि हम किस बारे में बात कर रहे हैं। तीसरा, हम फीडबैक की अपनी परिभाषा को अलग करेंगे और बेहतर विचार प्राप्त करने के लिए प्रत्येक भाग को अलग से देखेंगे। चौथा, फीडबैक के हमारे विवरण में तीन अलग-अलग प्रकार शामिल हैं। हम इन पर अधिक विस्तार से विचार करने में कुछ समय व्यतीत करेंगे क्योंकि ये फीडबैक के विशिष्ट उदाहरणों को देखने के लिए व्यापक श्रेणियों के रूप में उपयोगी हो सकते हैं। पांचवां, जैसा कि आपने शायद अनुमान लगाया होगा, हम प्रत्येक प्रकार के इनपुट के कुछ उदाहरण देखेंगे। इस बिंदु पर, मुझे लगता है कि आपके पास बेहतर प्रतिक्रिया प्राप्त करने और देने के लिए आवश्यक उपकरण हैं। लेकिन मैंने वह जोड़ा है जो मैं बोनस नंबर छह के रूप में सोचता हूं: अधिक प्रकार की टिप्पणियां और शर्तें, क्योंकि केवल यह जानना पर्याप्त नहीं है कि उनका क्या मतलब है और कुछ उदाहरण देखें। कार्यस्थल पर और अन्य स्थितियों में फीडबैक के विभिन्न प्रकार और स्तर होने की संभावना है। हम यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए इन पर गौर करेंगे कि हम फीडबैक सीखने वाले स्पंज बनें जो हमें अपने काम और अन्य लोगों के साथ अपने संचार को बेहतर बनाने के लिए चाहिए, और शायद स्पंज भी। ठीक है, तो चलिए इसे ऊपर से लेते हैं। फीडबैक परिभाषा क्यों महत्वपूर्ण है? पहले, मुझे वापस जाने दो। जॉन हैटी, एक शिक्षा प्रोफेसर, ने 15 वर्षों तक अध्ययन किया और स्कूल में छात्र कैसा प्रदर्शन करते हैं, इस पर लगभग 800 मेटा-विश्लेषण किए। यह उन पुस्तकों में से एक है जो उस कार्य से निकलीं। डेविड कारलेस और डेविड बौड, दो विशेषज्ञ, जॉन हैटी की अपनी विशाल उपलब्धि के परिणामों का वर्णन इस प्रकार करते हैं: फीडबैक का उपलब्धि पर सबसे शक्तिशाली प्रभाव होता है, लेकिन इसके प्रभाव बहुत अलग होते हैं, जो दर्शाता है कि फीडबैक से अधिकतम लाभ प्राप्त करना कितना कठिन है। टीम, यह सिर्फ एक उदाहरण है कि कैसे टिप्पणियाँ हमें सीखने और बढ़ने में मदद कर सकती हैं। हालाँकि, वह प्रतिक्रिया से अधिकतम लाभ प्राप्त करने की जटिलता की ओर इशारा करती हैं। यही कारण है कि मैं चाहता हूं कि हम अपना कारण जानने में कुछ समय लें: टिप्पणियाँ आपको बढ़ने में मदद कर सकती हैं, लेकिन यह कठिन है, इसमें मेहनत लगती है, और हमें संवाद करने में बेहतर होने की आवश्यकता है। फीडबैक हमारे रोजमर्रा के जीवन का एक हिस्सा है, इसलिए हम में से कई लोग सोचते हैं कि हर कोई जानता है कि यह क्या है और हम इसे उसी तरह देखते हैं जैसे हम देखते हैं। टीम, ये बड़ी धारणाएँ हैं जो एक-दूसरे से बात करना कठिन बना सकती हैं। वे हमें यह भी सोचने पर मजबूर करते हैं कि हमें वास्तव में किसी अर्थ पर सहमत होने की आवश्यकता नहीं है। उदाहरण के लिए, फीडबैक के बारे में अधिकांश पेपर और यहां तक कि पूरी किताबें भी इस बारे में विस्तार से नहीं बताती हैं कि यह क्या है। यह आंशिक रूप से इन धारणाओं के कारण है। इस वजह से, फीडबैक देने और प्राप्त करने के साथ-साथ काम पर हमारी टीमों के लिए बेहतरीन फीडबैक संस्कृतियां बनाने के बारे में बहुत सारी सामग्री है। हालाँकि, यह सब ऐसा लगता है जैसे हम गाड़ी को घोड़े के आगे रख रहे हैं। ये विचार व्यवसाय जगत में भी मौजूद हैं, जहां कुछ नेता इस बारे में बहुत बात करते हैं कि उनके पूरे संगठन के लिए फीडबैक का अच्छी तरह से उपयोग करना कितना महत्वपूर्ण है, लेकिन वे अपने कर्मचारियों को यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए कोई परिभाषा या कोई प्रशिक्षण नहीं देते हैं कि वे पूरी तरह से समझते हैं कि वे क्या कर रहे हैं। के बारे में बात कर रहे हैं। यह इस तथ्य से संबंधित है कि लाखों लोग हर महीने फीडबैक या फीडबैक क्या है या फीडबैक परिभाषा की तलाश करते हैं, फिर से, एक सामान्य विचार प्राप्त करने के लिए कि यह क्या है। लेकिन उत्तर खोजने के लिए खोज इंजनों का उपयोग हमें कुछ खरगोशों के छेद में ले जा सकता है जहां हमें प्रतिक्रिया की सभी प्रकार की परिभाषाएँ मिलती हैं। इनमें लोगों के बीच व्यवहार-आधारित प्रतिक्रिया की परिभाषाएँ शामिल हैं, जिसके बारे में हम यहाँ ज्यादातर बात कर रहे हैं, साथ ही स्व-नियामक जैविक प्रणालियों या विद्युत उपकरणों में प्रतिक्रिया के लिए कुछ भ्रमित करने वाली परिभाषाएँ भी शामिल हैं। जो लोग गहराई में जाते हैं या अधिक आधिकारिक स्रोत चाहते हैं , वे व्यवहार विज्ञान में प्रोफेसर रामप्रसाद के 1983 के पेपर पर पहुंच सकते हैं, जिसका शीर्षक है, फीडबैक की परिभाषा पर, जो इसे इस तरह परिभाषित करता है: फीडबैक वास्तविक स्तर और संदर्भ स्तर के बीच के अंतर के बारे में जानकारी है एक सिस्टम पैरामीटर जिसका उपयोग किसी तरह से अंतर को बदलने के लिए किया जाता है। मुझे अंतराल को पहचानने और बदलने पर इस परिभाषा का फोकस पसंद है; यह फ़्रेमिंग वर्षों से मेरे साथ चिपकी हुई है और, आज तक, अक्सर वह लेंस है जिसके माध्यम से मैं फीडबैक संबंध को देखता हूं। क्योंकि, यदि आप सोचें, तो फीडबैक का उद्देश्य किसी प्रकार की कथित कमी को दूर करना है। हालाँकि, जैसा कि मैंने वर्षों से इस परिभाषा पर विचार किया है और इसे दूसरों के सामने प्रस्तुत किया है – उन्होंने प्रतिक्रिया दी है, जिससे मैं सहमत हूं, कि यह सामान्य दर्शकों के लिए बहुत भारी शब्दजाल लगता है, सिस्टम पैरामीटर और संदर्भ स्तर, इसलिए जब मैं दूसरों के लिए फीडबैक को परिभाषित करने का प्रयास करता हूं तो मैं अब इसके साथ आगे नहीं बढ़ता हूं। इतना कहने के लिए, एक ठोस फीडबैक परिभाषा ढूंढना जितना कठिन होना चाहिए, उससे कहीं अधिक कठिन है। और अपने ‘क्यों’ पर वापस आते हैं ।।। यहां तीन कारण बताए गए हैं कि एक का होना क्यों महत्वपूर्ण है। नंबर एक: ऐसा करने से हमारे द्वारा उल्लिखित व्यापक धारणाओं को खत्म करने में मदद मिल सकती है। नंबर दो: यह सुनिश्चित कर सकता है कि आप और आपकी टीम, या अन्यथा आपके आस-पास के लोग एकजुट हैं और स्थितियां उत्पन्न होने पर इंगित करने के लिए एक परिभाषा है – यह विशेष रूप से सहायक हो सकता है यदि आप नए टीम साथियों को शामिल करने वाले प्रबंधक हैं। और नंबर तीन: यह हमें इस विषय पर निरंतर सीखने के लिए तैयार कर सकता है जैसा कि हम यहां करेंगे क्योंकि परिभाषा हमारी नींव के रूप में काम कर सकती है और हमें उस परेशानी से बचा सकती है, जब हम वहां कई बेहतरीन लेख पढ़ते हैं। फीडबैक के विभिन्न तत्वों के बारे में। यह सब हमें, हां, फिर से हमारी फीडबैक परिभाषा की ओर ले जाता है। कई किताबें और सैकड़ों अकादमिक पेपर और लोकप्रिय व्यावसायिक लेख पढ़ने में वर्षों बिताने के बाद, मैं फिर से यहीं पर पहुंचा हूं: तो आइए इस फीडबैक परिभाषा को खोलना शुरू करें। यहां देखने लायक तीन हिस्से हैं। सबसे पहले, आइए इस पर ज़ूम करें: यह एक व्यक्ति की गतिविधि की प्रतिक्रिया है यह भाग इस बात पर केंद्रित है कि एक उत्तेजना थी, ठीक है, कुछ हुआ – इस मामले में, एक व्यक्ति की गतिविधि – और इसमें एक समान प्रतिक्रिया थी – इसमें मामला, किसी व्यक्ति की गतिविधि के लिए। यहां प्रतिक्रिया जानबूझकर थोड़ी अस्पष्ट है क्योंकि फीडबैक प्रतिक्रिया का दायरा बहुत बड़ा हो सकता है जिसमें दर्शकों के खड़े होकर स्वागत करने से लेकर सब कुछ शामिल होता है – जो कि फीडबैक है जो एक कलाकार को यह बताता है कि उन्होंने कुछ असाधारण रूप से अच्छा किया है – किसी के साथ गहन बातचीत तक। सहकर्मी, जहां शायद एक अधिक कनिष्ठ सहकर्मी अपने प्रबंधक को अपवर्ड फीडबैक प्रदान करता है कि उन्हें कैसा लगता है कि उन्हें सूक्ष्म प्रबंधन किया जा रहा है और परिणामस्वरूप वे उत्पादक और रचनात्मक बने रहने के लिए संघर्ष कर रहे हैं। आइए दूसरे भाग को जारी रखें: उन्हें समायोजित करने में मदद करने के उद्देश्य से फीडबैक का उद्देश्य मददगार होना है। हालाँकि, जैसा कि आपने अनुभव से सीखा है, सबसे अच्छे इरादे, सबसे अच्छा उद्देश्य होने का मतलब यह नहीं है कि चीजें सुचारू रूप से चलेंगी। आपके इरादे बहुत अच्छे हो सकते हैं और फिर भी आप या तो भयानक प्रतिक्रिया दे सकते हैं या भयानक प्रतिक्रिया दे सकते हैं। यहां ध्यान देने वाली बात यह है कि फीडबैक दूसरे व्यक्ति को समायोजित करने में मदद करने के बारे में है। समायोजित करें भी थोड़ा अस्पष्ट है क्योंकि यह समायोजन टीम के साथी के पारस्परिक व्यवहार को समायोजित करने के लिए फीडबैक से लेकर किसी के गोल्फ स्विंग पर हिप रोटेशन को समायोजित करने के लिए फीडबैक तक हो सकता है। यह शब्द एडजस्ट भविष्य की गतिविधि को भी संदर्भित करता है। आख़िरकार, आप पीछे जाकर अतीत की किसी चीज़ को समायोजित नहीं कर सकते। इस अर्थ में, अपनी प्रकृति से प्रभावी प्रतिक्रिया सटीक रूप से सहायक होती है क्योंकि यह किसी को भविष्य के प्रदर्शन को समायोजित करने की अनुमति देती है। ध्यान रखें कि फीडबैक को सीधे तौर पर भविष्योन्मुख बनाने के लिए, यह सहायक हो सकता है – लेकिन यह जरूरी नहीं है – कि भविष्य की किसी घटना के बारे में स्पष्ट रूप से बात की जाए। उदाहरण के लिए, यहां तक कि प्रोजेक्ट को फिनिश लाइन तक पहुंचाने में बहुत अच्छा काम जैसी सराहनीय प्रतिक्रिया भी विशेष रूप से भविष्य की घटना का आह्वान नहीं करती है, लेकिन यह एक बीज बो सकती है जो फीडबैक प्राप्तकर्ता को यह सबक लेने की अनुमति देगी कि उन्होंने इस परियोजना को सफलतापूर्वक कैसे पूरा किया। अपने अगले प्रोजेक्ट में, ठीक है। और फिर, अंत में, आइए विभिन्न रूपों पर नजर डालें, फीडबैक को परिभाषित करने में चुनौती के एक हिस्से में वह सब कुछ संबोधित करना शामिल है जो यह हो सकता है। क्या यह वह प्रशंसा है जो आपको अपने योग प्रशिक्षक से सुबह मिली थी, क्या यह उतना अच्छा प्रदर्शन फीडबैक स्कोर नहीं था जो आपके बोनस से जुड़ा हुआ है जो आपको दोपहर में अपने प्रबंधक से मिला था, या आपकी बेटी का 100वीं बार उल्लास था क्या आपने सोने से पहले द वेरी हंग्री कैटरपिलर पढ़ी है? हां, उन सभी को फीडबैक माना जा सकता है। इस अर्थ में, विभिन्न रूप कई अन्य रूपों या प्रकारों के लिए जगह छोड़ते हैं, जिन्हें हम कवर करेंगे, जबकि विशेष रूप से तीन सबसे आम मूल्यांकनात्मक, सराहनीय और कोचिंग का नामकरण करेंगे जो कि कई फीडबैक उदाहरणों के लिए मूलभूत प्रकारों के रूप में काम कर सकते हैं। और यह हमें तीन फीडबैक प्रकारों की खोज की ओर ले जाता है। तो ये तीन फीडबैक प्रकार थैंक्स फॉर द फीडबैक नामक पुस्तक से आए हैं – यह हार्वर्ड नेगोशिएशन प्रोजेक्ट के डगलस स्टोन और शीला हेन द्वारा पढ़ी गई एक बेहतरीन किताब है – और मैंने पाया है कि वे जो तीन प्राथमिक प्रकार लेकर आए हैं वे काफी चिंतनशील हैं। मेरे अपने काम और अनुभव पुस्तक का लिंक आपको विवरण में मिलेगा। तो यहां बताया गया है कि हम प्रत्येक प्रकार को कैसे परिभाषित करते हैं: मूल्यांकनात्मक फीडबैक आपको यह देखने में मदद करता है कि आपने कैसा प्रदर्शन किया और आप कहां हैं। यह मूल्यांकनात्मक है क्योंकि यह तुलना करता है कि आपने यह कैसे किया और आप यह कैसे कर सकते थे। तो इस अर्थ में यह प्रोफेसर रामप्रसाद के वास्तविक स्तर और संदर्भ स्तर के बीच के अंतर के समान है। मूल्यांकनात्मक फीडबैक को वास्तविक बनाने के लिए, यहां पांच फीडबैक उदाहरण दिए गए हैं: नंबर 1: तिमाही के अंत में, आपने अनुमान से 10% कम मार्केटिंग लीड हासिल की। यहां फीडबैक, और शायद यह एक स्वचालित डैशबोर्ड से आया है, आपको बताता है कि आपने जैसा सोचा था कि आप क्या करेंगे, उसके संबंध में आपने कैसा किया। यह न केवल आपको यह बताता है कि आपने कैसा प्रदर्शन किया, बल्कि यह एक डेटा बिंदु प्रदान करता है जो आपके लीड बढ़ाने और/या अपने अगले पूर्वानुमान को बेहतर बनाने के लिए आवश्यक संकेत हो सकता है। यहां कुछ अन्य उदाहरण दिए गए हैं: नंबर 2: एक प्रत्यक्ष रिपोर्ट आपको बताती है: आप सबसे अच्छे नेता हैं जिनके साथ मैंने कभी काम किया है। नंबर 3: आप बोस्टन मैराथन में भाग लेने के लिए योग्यता मानकों को पूरा नहीं करते थे। नंबर 4: आप डुओलिंगो लीडरबोर्ड पर #4 पर चले गए। नंबर 5: प्रस्ताव के अनुरोध आरएफपी के जवाब में आपकी औपचारिक बोली का चयन किया गया था। देखें कि ये मामले कैसे भिन्न होते हैं। हमें प्रत्यक्ष रिपोर्ट से अस्पष्ट अच्छी प्रतिक्रिया प्राप्त हुई, जिसमें गायब त्रैमासिक संख्याओं का एक उदाहरण भी शामिल है। ये अभी भी मूल्यांकनात्मक हैं क्योंकि ये डेटा की तुलना करते हैं। आप सोच रहे होंगे, “क्या!” क्या प्रत्यक्ष रिपोर्ट का उत्तर भी सराहनीय नहीं था? सचमुच, आप सही हैं! फीडबैक प्रकार ओवरलैप हो सकते हैं, जिससे वे एक स्पेक्ट्रम की तरह प्रतीत होंगे। ज़ूम आउट करने से इस उदाहरण में संदर्भ जुड़ जाता है। मान लीजिए कि यह टिप्पणी (आप सबसे अच्छे नेता हैं जिनके साथ मैंने कभी काम किया है) आपके छह महीने के नेतृत्व प्रतिक्रिया अनुरोध के जवाब में त्रैमासिक प्रदर्शन मूल्यांकन के दौरान की गई थी। यह टिप्पणी “अन्य नेताओं के साथ काम कर चुकी है” का उपयोग करते हुए मूल्यांकनात्मक हो जाती है। पूर्व नेताओं के साथ विस्तृत तुलना इसे मूल्यांकन शिविर में धकेल सकती है। चलिए सराहनीय प्रतिक्रिया की ओर बढ़ते हैं। सराहनीय प्रतिक्रिया आपको यह जानने में मदद करती है कि आपको महत्व दिया जाता है और पहचाना जाता है। यहां प्रशंसनीय प्रतिक्रिया के पांच उदाहरण दिए गए हैं: नंबर 1: आपकी बास्केटबॉल टीम का केंद्र उस महान पास के बाद कृतज्ञता में आपकी ओर इशारा करता है। नंबर 2: आपके दादा-दादी कहते हैं, आपने हमारे लिए जो कुछ किया है उसके लिए मैं बहुत आभारी हूं। नंबर 3: आपके शिक्षक हमेशा अच्छे प्रश्न पूछने के लिए कक्षा में आपकी प्रशंसा करते हैं। नंबर 4: एक खतरनाक सैन्य मिशन से लौटने पर, एक सार्जेंट दूसरे को गले लगाता है। नंबर 5: जिस रेस्तरां में आप काम करते हैं, वहां का संरक्षक आपको एक बढ़िया टिप देता है। आप देखेंगे कि प्रशंसा शब्दों में कही जा सकती है जैसा कि दादा-दादी और शिक्षक ने किया था या इसे अनकहा या गैर-मौखिक रूप से संप्रेषित किया जा सकता है जैसे कि बास्केटबॉल सेंटर , सार्जेंट और संरक्षक जिन्होंने एक महान टिप छोड़ी थी। मूल्यांकन और कोचिंग के विपरीत, जो नकारात्मक क्षेत्रों को छू सकता है, सराहना सकारात्मक है। यह हमें प्रेरित करता है। हालाँकि, ध्यान रखें कि हर कोई अलग-अलग प्रकार की सराहना चाहता है। कुछ, भले ही वे इसे स्वीकार न करें और ऐसा होने पर शरमा जाएं, लेकिन साथियों के सामने सराहना पाना पसंद करते हैं। दूसरों के लिए, चुपचाप एक और तिमाही के लिए अपने अनुबंध को नवीनीकृत करना वह सारी सराहना हो सकती है जो वे चाहते हैं या जिसकी उन्हें आवश्यकता है। यदि आप लोगों के प्रबंधक हैं, तो यह जानना विशेष रूप से महत्वपूर्ण हो सकता है कि आपके आस-पास के लोग कैसे सराहना चाहते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए, एक महान नेता किसी सहकर्मी की सार्वजनिक रूप से प्रशंसा करके बार-बार उसे शर्मिंदा नहीं करेगा, जबकि यही वह आखिरी चीज है जो वह कभी चाहेगा। यहां ध्यान देने योग्य एक बात: सराहनीय, सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया महत्वपूर्ण है। यह इतना महत्वपूर्ण है कि मैंने इसे यहां अपने वीडियो में भी शामिल किया है जहां मैं पांच सबसे आम कार्यस्थल फीडबैक मिथकों को संबोधित करने के लिए साक्ष्य-आधारित दृष्टिकोण अपनाता हूं। जबकि कुछ लोग ग़लती से इस प्रकार के फीडबैक को फीडबैक के दिखावटी रूप के रूप में देखते हैं जिसकी किसी को आवश्यकता नहीं है, अध्ययनों से पता चलता है कि सकारात्मक फीडबैक प्रदान करना, विशेष रूप से बहुत विशिष्ट सकारात्मक फीडबैक जो महान कार्य से परे हो, कर्मचारी संतुष्टि और विकास में सुधार कर सकता है। मैं विवरण में सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया के महत्व के बारे में कुछ अच्छे संसाधनों से लिंक करूंगा। और यह हमें कोचिंग फीडबैक की ओर ले जाता है। कोचिंग फीडबैक प्रकार यह बताने में मदद करता है कि आप कैसे सुधार कर सकते हैं। यहां कोचिंग फीडबैक के पांच उदाहरण दिए गए हैं: नंबर 1: एक सहकर्मी आपको बताता है कि उन्हें आपके द्वारा बनाए गए फ़्लायर और सोशल मीडिया ग्राफिक्स पसंद आए, लेकिन कृपया कंपनी के मालिकाना फ़ॉन्ट का उपयोग करना सुनिश्चित करें। बातचीत के बाद, वे ओम्नीचैनल ब्रांडिंग नामक एक कोर्स लेने की सलाह देते हैं जिसे उन्होंने अभी-अभी पूरा किया है। इस फीडबैक में एक सकारात्मक टिप्पणी है, और यह कोचिंग फीडबैक भी है क्योंकि यह एक अंतर और भविष्य में इसे सुधारने के संभावित तरीके पर प्रकाश डालता है। ध्यान रखें कि कोचिंग फीडबैक कहीं से भी आ सकता है – यह किसी वरिष्ठ सहकर्मी से होना जरूरी नहीं है। नंबर 2: जब मैं इसी तरह की स्थिति में था, तब मेरे लिए यही काम करता था, एक सहकर्मी शुरू करता है। नंबर 3: आपका बैले शिक्षक आपके ग्रैंड प्ले को बेहतर बनाने के बारे में सलाह देता है। नंबर 4: सक्रिय रूप से सुनने और प्रश्न पूछने के माध्यम से, एक टीम का साथी दूसरे को चुनौती का अपना समाधान खोजने के लिए मार्गदर्शन करता है। नंबर 5: एक टीम का साथी कहता है: मैं एक महान सार्वजनिक वक्ता नहीं हूं, लेकिन मैंने देखा है कि हर बार जब आप अपने नोट्स को देखते हैं तो इससे वह महान ऊर्जा खत्म हो जाती है जो आपके दर्शकों को बांधे रखती है। क्या आप एक साथ काम करने के लिए तैयार हैं ताकि हम दोनों सुधार कर सकें? हमारे अन्य फीडबैक प्रकारों के समान, आप यहां कुछ विविधता देखेंगे। कोचिंग इतनी सीधी हो सकती है जैसे यहां बताया गया है कि ग्रैंड प्लि के लिए अपने पैर की उंगलियों को कैसे इंगित करें या, जैसा कि सक्रिय श्रवण उदाहरण में है, एक मशाल की तरह जो दूसरे व्यक्ति को अपने लिए उत्तर खोजने के लिए रास्ता दिखाने में मदद करती है। कुछ कार्य परिवेशों में, कोचिंग संबंध अधिक औपचारिक हो सकते हैं – जैसे कि अधिक वरिष्ठ सहकर्मी अधिक कनिष्ठ सहकर्मी के लिए प्रशिक्षक के रूप में कार्य करते हैं। लेकिन, जैसा कि कहा गया है, यह उस तरह से होना जरूरी नहीं है। हम सभी को एक-दूसरे से सीखने के लिए चीजें हैं और हम सभी एक-दूसरे के लिए प्रशिक्षक बन सकते हैं। कोचिंग फीडबैक प्रकार शायद सबसे स्पष्ट रूप से फीडबैक की हमारी परिभाषा के उन्हें समायोजित करने में मदद करने के उद्देश्य से भाग से मेल खाता है। लेकिन अन्य प्रकार भी ऐसा ही करते हैं। इस बात पर विचार करें कि प्रतिक्रिया कितनी सकारात्मक है जो प्रकृति में अधिक सराहनीय है, जैसे – आपके नवीनतम संशोधन पर बढ़िया काम। मैं देखता हूं कि आपने बहुत मेहनत की है और परिणामस्वरूप आपका निबंध बहुत आसानी से पढ़ा जा सकता है – एक शुरुआती लेखक को उनके प्रयास के मूल्य को समझने में मदद कर सकता है और यह सुनिश्चित कर सकता है कि वे भविष्य के निबंध में ऐसा प्रयास करें।। या इस बात पर विचार करें कि आप कैसे जानते हैं कार्यस्थल पर किसी प्रोजेक्ट पर किया गया मूल्यांकन मूल्यांकनात्मक फीडबैक आपको यह निर्धारित करने में मदद कर सकता है कि आपको अपने अगले प्रोजेक्ट में कौन से गुण लाने हैं। और यह हमें हमारे बोनस की ओर ले जाता है। अतिरिक्त फीडबैक प्रकार और शर्तें। तो यहां हम कुछ प्रकारों और शर्तों के बारे में विस्तार से बताएंगे जिन्हें मैंने वर्गीकृत किया है और जिनके बारे में जानना उपयोगी पाया है। तो आप जहां भी हों ये आपके पास हैं, मैंने उन्हें एक पीडीएफ में भी इकट्ठा किया है जिसे मैंने विवरण में लिंक किया है। ठीक है, हम यहां जाते हैं: सामान्यीकृत फीडबैक क्षमताओं का वर्णन करने वाला प्राथमिक शब्द फीडबैक साक्षरता। फीडबैक साक्षरता एक ऐसा शब्द है जिसका उपयोग मैं किसी व्यक्ति की प्रतिक्रिया को प्रभावी ढंग से देने, प्राप्त करने और संसाधित करने की समझ और क्षमता को संदर्भित करने के लिए करता हूं। इस शब्द की जड़ें शिक्षा की दुनिया में अनुसंधान से जुड़ी हैं , जहां इसका उपयोग मुख्य रूप से छात्रों की प्रतिक्रिया प्राप्त करने की क्षमता का वर्णन करने के लिए किया जाता है। मैंने इसके उपयोग का विस्तार किया है, इसे व्यापार जगत में लाया है ताकि हमारे पास समग्र फीडबैक क्षमताओं का वर्णन करने के लिए एक व्यापक शब्द हो। अगली श्रेणी औपचारिकता और समय पर आधारित फीडबैक है। तो निम्नलिखित नियम और उदाहरण सभी उसमें फिट बैठते हैं। नियोजित प्रतिक्रिया। नियोजित फीडबैक किसी भी फीडबैक सत्र को संदर्भित करता है जो पहले से निर्धारित होता है। अक्सर औपचारिक प्रतिक्रिया के रूप में जाना जाता है, इस प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया नियमित अंतराल पर हो सकती है, जैसे त्रैमासिक या वार्षिक प्रदर्शन समीक्षा के दौरान या एक दिन के नोटिस के भीतर भी। औपचारिक फीडबैक सत्र का लाभ यह है कि प्राथमिक फीडबैक देने वालों और प्राप्तकर्ताओं को तैयारी करने का मौका मिलता है। नियोजित फीडबैक का एक उदाहरण होगा: एक ग्राहक अनुभव सीएक्स टीम लीडर अपनी प्रत्येक प्रत्यक्ष रिपोर्ट के साथ 90 मिनट की त्रैमासिक प्रदर्शन समीक्षा निर्धारित करता है। बैठक के निमंत्रण में शामिल किए जाने वाले विषयों का विवरण देने वाला एक एजेंडा शामिल है। विषयों में से एक में लिखा है: विकास के अवसर – वे क्षेत्र जहां आप बढ़ सकते हैं + मैं कैसे बढ़ सकता हूं इस पर आपके विचार। इसे औपचारिक फीडबैक सत्र माना जा सकता है। अनौपचारिक प्रतिक्रिया। अनौपचारिक फीडबैक को अक्सर कार्यस्थल फीडबैक का सबसे सामान्य रूप माना जाता है क्योंकि यह कभी भी हो सकता है और संगठन में कहीं से भी आ सकता है। हालाँकि अनौपचारिक फीडबैक को अक्सर औपचारिक फीडबैक से अलग माना जाता है क्योंकि यह निर्धारित नहीं है, इसमें शेड्यूलिंग और योजना तत्व शामिल हो सकते हैं। अच्छी अनौपचारिक प्रतिक्रिया का लाभ इसकी समयबद्धता है। कभी-कभी, इस प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया को किसी गतिविधि के कुछ मिनट बाद शामिल किया जा सकता है, जिससे बेहतर परिणाम प्राप्त होते हैं। अनौपचारिक फीडबैक का एक उदाहरण होगा: कर्मचारी ए किसी प्रोजेक्ट पर अपने प्रदर्शन के बारे में कर्मचारी बी को फीडबैक देने के लिए एक लंबा ईमेल टाइप करता है। कर्मचारी ए, कर्मचारी बी के अंतरराष्ट्रीय व्यापार यात्रा से वापस आने के बाद ईमेल भेजने की योजना बना रहा है। और यहां एक और उदाहरण है: एक जूनियर डिजाइनर ने एक हितधारक बैठक आयोजित की और उसे कंपनी के नए ब्रोशर का पहला मसौदा तैयार करने का काम सौंपा गया। एक साझा डिजिटल व्हाइटबोर्ड पर डिज़ाइन देखने पर, डिज़ाइन लीड ने तुरंत जूनियर डिज़ाइनर को यह साझा करने के लिए बुलाया कि वे दिशा को लेकर कितने उत्साहित थे। व्हाइट स्पेस का आपका उपयोग शानदार है और यह सुनिश्चित करता है कि दर्शकों का ध्यान हमारे कॉल-टू-एक्शन की ओर आकर्षित हो। महान काम। क्या आप पादलेख में समान डिज़ाइन सौंदर्य को शामिल करने में सक्षम हो सकते हैं? अन्यथा, ऐसा महसूस होता है जैसे दो अलग-अलग ब्रांड टकरा रहे हैं। अनियोजित प्रतिक्रिया। अनियोजित फीडबैक पहले से निर्धारित नहीं होता है और वास्तविक समय में होता है। हालाँकि इसे अक्सर अनौपचारिक प्रतिक्रिया के रूप में संदर्भित किया जाता है, अनियोजित प्रतिक्रिया इस मायने में भिन्न होती है कि यह वास्तव में स्वतःस्फूर्त और तात्कालिक होती है। इसलिए, कर्मचारी ए के सचेत ईमेल को अनौपचारिक माना जा सकता है लेकिन इसे अनियोजित नहीं माना जाएगा। अनियोजित फीडबैक का एक उदाहरण होगा: कई कनिष्ठ सहकर्मियों के साथ एक टीम कॉल पर, सहकर्मी ए, जो अपेक्षाकृत कनिष्ठ भी है, को लगता है कि बातचीत बड़ी चट्टान पर संरेखण प्राप्त करने पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने के बजाय खरपतवार में जा रही है, जो कि थी कॉल का उद्देश्य। टीम, वे कहते हैं, मुझे पसंद है कि हम विवरणों की खोज कर रहे हैं, लेकिन मैं सोच रहा हूं कि क्या हमें पहले समग्र दिशा पर संरेखण प्राप्त करना चाहिए? प्रबंधक सहमत है। बहुत बढ़िया बात। हमें वापस लाने की जागरूकता के लिए धन्यवाद, सहकर्मी ए। वहां प्रबंधक की टिप्पणी अनियोजित सराहनीय प्रतिक्रिया है। प्रबंधक इस अनियोजित फीडबैक का लाभ टीम के सामने सहकर्मी ए के फीडबैक को सुदृढ़ करने और एक सीखने योग्य क्षण बनाने के लिए भी कर सकता है। वे कुछ इस तरह कह सकते हैं: टीम – मैं यह दोहराना चाहता हूं कि सहकर्मी ए का यह कदम कितना बढ़िया था। आगे चलकर, आप खुद को ऐसे कॉल पर पाएंगे कि ‘खरगोश के बिल के नीचे जाओ’ जैसा कि हमने किया था। यह अजीब लग सकता है, लेकिन अगर किसी बड़े विषय पर स्पष्ट निर्णय लेना है, तो आप सहकर्मी ए की तरह बातचीत को वापस केंद्र में लाकर मूल्य ला सकते हैं। वास्तविक समय प्रतिक्रिया। जैसे ही गतिविधि हो रही होती है, वास्तविक समय पर प्रतिक्रिया होती है। इसे योजनाबद्ध किया जा सकता है जैसे कि एक सहयोगात्मक कार्य सत्र में या अनियोजित जैसा कि किसी प्रस्तुति के दौरान दर्शकों से प्राप्त फीडबैक में। योजनाबद्ध वास्तविक समय प्रतिक्रिया का एक उदाहरण होगा: पहले उल्लिखित डिज़ाइन लीड जूनियर डिजाइनर के साथ 30 मिनट की कॉल शेड्यूल करता है ताकि वे ब्रोशर को बेहतर बनाने के लिए वास्तविक समय में काम कर सकें। अगली श्रेणी है: स्रोत स्व-प्रतिक्रिया पर आधारित प्रतिक्रिया। हालाँकि अनौपचारिक प्रतिक्रिया को अक्सर सबसे सामान्य प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया के रूप में जाना जाता है, लेकिन पूरी संभावना है कि स्व-प्रतिक्रिया ही शीर्ष पर है। स्व-प्रतिक्रिया से तात्पर्य हमारे मन में उस प्रतिक्रिया से है जब हम अपने प्रदर्शन की आलोचना, प्रशंसा और तुलना करते हैं। हम उस भाषण की तुलना कर सकते हैं जो हमने अभी एक उत्कृष्ट TED टॉक के आगे दिया था।। या हम जो ऐप कार्यक्षमता बना रहे हैं उसकी तुलना हमारे प्रतिस्पर्धी ने कै से की, उससे कर सकते हैं। आत्म-प्रतिक्रिया सचेत रूप से हो सकती है जैसे कि एक कर्मचारी जिसे सिर्फ अपने त्रैमासिक प्रदर्शन को रेट करने के लिए कहा गया था, जिसे आत्म-मूल्यांकन के रूप में भी जाना जाता है या अनजाने में जैसे कि एक अनुपयोगी और अति महत्वपूर्ण विचार प्रक्रिया जो बचपन में दर्दनाक घटनाओं से संबंधित हो सकती है । सचेतनता और आत्म-प्रतिबिंब के लिए स्थान जागरूक आत्म-प्रतिक्रिया विकसित करने और अप्रभावी अवचेतन आत्म-प्रतिक्रिया को सतह पर लाने में मदद करने का एक महत्वपूर्ण हिस्सा है, ताकि इस पर प्रतिक्रिया करने के बजाय इसके साथ काम किया जा सके। सहकर्मी से सहकर्मी प्रतिक्रिया। कार्यस्थल में, सहकर्मी से सहकर्मी फीडबैक आम तौर पर अपेक्षाकृत समान वरिष्ठता स्तर पर सहकर्मियों द्वारा दी और प्राप्त की गई प्रतिक्रिया को संदर्भित करता है, लेकिन यह किसी भी स्तर और प्रकार के सहकर्मियों को प्रतिक्रिया देने या प्राप्त करने का भी उल्लेख कर सकता है। प्रभावी सहकर्मी-से-सहकर्मी फीडबैक कई प्रमुख स्तंभों पर बनाया गया है, जिसमें मनोवैज्ञानिक सुरक्षा जहां प्रत्येक सहकर्मी अपने विचार साझा करते समय सम्मानित और सुरक्षित महसूस करता है शामिल है। मनोवैज्ञानिक सुरक्षा पर निश्चित रूप से पढ़ने के लिए, प्रोफेसर एमी एडमंडसन की द फियरलेस ऑर्गनाइजेशन नामक पुस्तक देखें – मैंने विवरण में इसे इससे जोड़ा है। सहकर्मी से सहकर्मी फीडबैक के काम करने के लिए फीडबैक की बुनियादी बातों की साझा समझ होना भी महत्वपूर्ण है, और इसमें शामिल है – जैसा कि हम यहां कर रहे हैं – फीडबैक परिभाषा पर संरेखण प्राप्त करना और फीडबैक साक्षरता की एक सामान्य आधार रेखा रखना। सहकर्मी से सहकर्मी प्रतिक्रिया पर अधिकांश शैक्षणिक शोध कक्षा में छात्र-से-छात्र प्रतिक्रिया के माध्यम से होता है। परिणाम यह स्पष्ट करते हैं कि छात्र एक-दूसरे के काम पर फीडबैक देकर बहुत कुछ सीख सकते हैं – कभी-कभी प्रशिक्षक द्वारा दिए गए फीडबैक से भी अधिक। और कुछ हालिया शोध से पता चलता है कि काम पर सहकर्मी-से-सहकर्मी फीडबैक के साथ भी यही सच है, कुछ अध्ययनों से पता चलता है कि कुछ साथियों से प्रतिक्रिया प्राप्त करना किसी एक विशेषज्ञ से प्रतिक्रिया प्राप्त करने के समान ही सहायक या उससे भी बेहतर हो सकता है। सही संदर्भ में, कार्यस्थल पर किसी प्रोजेक्ट के बारे में सहयोग करने और फीडबैक देने से साथियों को अत्यधिक लाभ मिल सकता है। ग्राहक प्रतिक्रिया। ग्राहक प्रतिक्रिया ग्राहकों द्वारा दी गई प्रतिक्रिया है। यह विभिन्न रूपों में हो सकता है, जिसमें ग्राहक संतुष्टि सर्वेक्षण, सार्वजनिक ग्राहक समीक्षा और बीटा परीक्षण शामिल हैं, जिसके तहत किसी उत्पाद या सेवा को सामान्य रिलीज से पहले फीडबैक प्रदान करने के लिए एक चुनिंदा समूह में पेश किया जाता है। कर्मचारी प्रतिक्रिया। कर्मचारी फीडबैक एक व्यापक शब्द है जिसका उपयोग आप कई तरह से सुन सकते हैं। यह आमतौर पर किसी प्रबंधक द्वारा प्रत्यक्ष रिपोर्ट पर दिए गए फीडबैक को संदर्भित करता है, लेकिन यह सहकर्मियों के बीच दिए गए और प्राप्त किए गए किसी भी फीडबैक को भी संदर्भित कर सकता है, भले ही वे संगठन चार्ट पर कहीं भी बैठे हों। इसके अतिरिक्त, किसी संगठन के नेता कर्मचारी फीडबैक का अनुरोध कर सकते हैं, उदाहरण के लिए, एक नई खरीद प्रक्रिया कैसे काम कर रही है। 360-डिग्री फीडबैक। 360-डिग्री फीडबैक जिसे मल्टी-सोर्स फीडबैक या मल्टी-सोर्स पीयर अप्रेजल भी कहा जाता है कर्मचारियों के लिए गुमनाम तरीके से एक-दूसरे को फीडबैक देने और प्राप्त करने की एक प्रक्रिया है। जैसा कि नाम से पता चलता है, इसका उद्देश्य कर्मचारियों को 360 डिग्री से फीडबैक प्राप्त करने में मदद करके उनके प्रदर्शन में सुधार करना है – यानी, जितना संभव हो उतने कोणों से स्वयं-फीडबैक सहित। यद्यपि संभावित नकारात्मक पक्ष कई हैं, प्रस्तावित लाभ और इस पद्धति के इतना लोकप्रिय होने का कारण यह है कि यह कर्मचारियों को फीडबैक परिप्रेक्ष्य की एक विस्तृत श्रृंखला प्राप्त करने की अनुमति दे सकता है, उदाहरण के लिए, विशेष रूप से अपने प्रबंधक से फीडबैक प्राप्त करना, जो केवल एक पक्ष देख सकता है उनके काम। एकत्रित फीडबैक का उपयोग कर्मचारी विकास योजना को सूचित करने के लिए किया जाता है। ठीक है, अगली श्रेणी स्थिति पर आधारित फीडबैक है जिसका अर्थ है जहां देने वाले या प्राप्तकर्ता कुछ पदानुक्रमित संबंध में हैं। ऊपर की ओर प्रतिक्रिया। अपवर्ड फीडबैक उनके प्रबंधक को सीधी रिपोर्ट द्वारा दिया गया फीडबैक है। यह किसी अधिक कनिष्ठ कर्मचारी द्वारा अधिक वरिष्ठ कर्मचारी को दिए गए किसी फीडबैक को भी संदर्भित कर सकता है इसमें स्किप-स्तरीय फीडबैक शामिल है, जो एक कनिष्ठ कर्मचारी और उनके प्रत्यक्ष पर्यवेक्षक के प्रबंधक के बीच होगा। नीचे की ओर प्रतिक्रिया। डाउनवर्ड फीडबैक एक प्रबंधक द्वारा उनकी सीधी रिपोर्ट पर दिया गया फीडबैक है। यह किसी वरिष्ठ कर्मचारी द्वारा किसी कनिष्ठ कर्मचारी को दिए गए फीडबैक को भी संदर्भित कर सकता है। आइए अब सामग्री और दाता/प्राप्तकर्ता की धारणा पर आधारित फीडबैक की ओर बढ़ें। सकारात्मक फीडबैक। सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया से हमें पता चलता है कि हम अच्छा कर रहे हैं। यह विभिन्न रूपों में आ सकता है, एक सहकर्मी की प्रशंसा से लेकर एक स्वचालित डैशबोर्ड तक जो आपके लक्ष्य को पूरा करने या उससे अधिक होने पर नंबरओं को हरा कर देता है। दशकों से, फीडबैक अनुसंधान ने सकारात्मक फीडबैक के लाभों को साबित किया है। प्रभावी सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया विशिष्ट होती है यह महान कार्य से आगे जाती है और कर्मचारियों को उस ताकत की झलक भी दे सकती है जिसके बारे में वे नहीं जानते होंगे। सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया का एक उदाहरण होगा: मुझे यकीन नहीं है कि आप यह जानते हैं, लेकिन आप एक दिलचस्प सार्वजनिक वक्ता हैं। आपकी स्लाइडें स्पष्ट और आकर्षक हैं और विषय के प्रति आपका जुनून झलकता है। मैं विशेष रूप से सराहना करता हूं कि आप अपने दर्शकों को प्रश्नों से कैसे जोड़ते हैं। नकारात्मक प्रतिपुष्टि। नकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया यह है कि हम अपनी कमियों को कैसे देखते हैं, उन क्षेत्रों को जहां हम सुधार कर सकते हैं। यह विभिन्न रूपों में आ सकता है, जिसमें एक मित्र भी शामिल है जिसने हमारी कार्रवाई देखी और टिप्पणी की कि उन्हें लगा कि हम बेहतर कर सकते हैं। इस अर्थ में, नकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया फायदेमंद हो सकती है। हालाँकि, विभिन्न कारणों से हम भविष्य के वीडियो में पता लगाएंगे, लोग अक्सर इसे देने और प्राप्त करने से डरते हैं। इस डर से काम करना चुनौतीपूर्ण हो सकता है, लेकिन जब आप ऐसा करेंगे तो जबरदस्त प्रगति हो सकती है। नकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया का एक उदाहरण होगा: कॉपी की समीक्षा करने पर, मुझे लगता है कि हम अपने लक्षित दर्शकों के प्राथमिक समस्या बिंदु को संबोधित करने में चूक गए। क्या आप फिर से प्रयास कर सकते हैं, इस बार एक्स करने के लिए उनके वर्तमान संघर्ष के प्रति सहानुभूति रखने और हमारे उत्पाद को समाधान के रूप में स्थापित करने के लिए काम कर रहे हैं? संरचनात्मक प्रतिक्रिया। नकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया में नकारात्मक क्या संदर्भित करता है, इसके बारे में भ्रम या गलत धारणाओं के कारण रचनात्मक प्रतिक्रिया मौजूद प्रतीत होती है। यहां रचनात्मक का तात्पर्य सहायकता या उपयोगिता और शायद भविष्य-उन्मुख दृष्टिकोण से है, जो फीडबैक की हमारी प्राथमिक परिभाषा में है। इसलिए मुझे रचनात्मक फीडबैक शब्द के साथ संघर्ष करना पड़ता है क्योंकि यह मुझे फीडबैक फीडबैक जैसा लगता है। फिर भी, अगर हम यह ध्यान रखें कि हम सभी के पास फीडबैक साक्षरता के विभिन्न स्तर हैं, तो यह देखना आसान है कि यह शब्द कैसे सहायक हो सकता है। निम्नलिखित उदाहरण में, कल्पना करें कि क्या रचनात्मक शब्द को नकारात्मक से बदल दिया गया था। क्या वाक्य का अर्थ बदल जाएगा या आपको अधिक परेशानी महसूस होगी? कॉल अच्छी रही क्योंकि इंजीनियरिंग टीम ने रचनात्मक प्रतिक्रिया दी जिसे मैं अपनी अगली रिलीज में शामिल करूंगा। फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड। फीडफॉरवर्ड शब्द का उद्भव यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए हुआ कि फीडबैक भविष्योन्मुखी दृष्टिकोण अपनाए। हालाँकि, प्रभावी प्रतिक्रिया ठीक यही करती है। यह भविष्य के प्रदर्शन को बेहतर बनाने के इरादे से पिछले प्रदर्शन की ओर इशारा करता है। इस अर्थ में, मेरा मानना है कि फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड को फीडबैक के विपरीत के रूप में स्थापित करना समस्याग्रस्त है। फिर भी, रचनात्मक प्रतिक्रिया की तरह, दर्शकों के आधार पर फीडफॉरवर्ड का अपना स्थान होता है। इस तरह से फीडबैक को रीफ़्रेमिंग/रीब्रांडिंग करने से कर्मचारियों को फीडबैक प्रक्रिया में वापस लाने में मदद मिल सकती है, अगर उन्हें अतीत में इसके साथ भयानक या हानिकारक अनुभव हुआ हो। सकारात्मक फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड। सकारात्मक फीडफॉरवर्ड एक वाक्यांश के साथ सकारात्मक प्रतिक्रिया है जो इसे भविष्य से जोड़ती है। सकारात्मक फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड फ़ॉरवर्ड का एक उदाहरण हो सकता है: पिछले सप्ताह अपनी रिपोर्ट में, आपने अपने शोध के मुख्य बिंदुओं पर हमारा ध्यान केंद्रित करने का उत्कृष्ट कार्य किया। महान काम। हो सकता है कि आप अगले सप्ताह अपनी ग्राहक प्रस्तुति में इसे आज़माना चाहें। नकारात्मक फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड। नकारात्मक फीडफॉरवर्ड एक वाक्यांश के साथ नकारात्मक फीडबैक है जो इसे भविष्य से जोड़ता है। नकारात्मक फ़ीडफ़ॉरवर्ड का एक उदाहरण हो सकता है: अगली बार, मुझे लगता है कि अपने दर्शकों पर शोध करने में अधिक समय व्यतीत करना सहायक होगा। लंबे समय के ग्राहकों के रूप में, उन्हें स्पष्ट रूप से उन पहली कुछ अवलोकन स्लाइडों की आवश्यकता नहीं थी। इससे पहले कि आप अगले सप्ताह प्रस्तुति दें, आइए इस पृष्ठभूमि पर चर्चा करने में कुछ समय व्यतीत करें कि कौन उपस्थित होगा ताकि हम वास्तव में उद्घाटन कर सकें। विनाशकारी प्रतिक्रिया। विनाशकारी फीडबैक, फीडबैक की हमारी प्राथमिक परिभाषा के विरुद्ध है क्योंकि यह अंततः या तो मददगार नहीं है या मददगार होने के इरादे से नहीं दिया गया है। हालाँकि इस प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया में मूल्यवान भाग शामिल हो सकते हैं, यह कठोर आलोचना के रूप में आता है जिसमें उपहास भी शामिल हो सकता है जो किसी व्यक्ति के आत्मविश्वास को तोड़ देता है और इस प्रकार प्रतिक्रिया को अपनाना लगभग असंभव बना देता है। विनाशकारी प्रतिक्रिया के दीर्घकालिक नकारात्मक परिणाम होते हैं। हमारी अगली श्रेणी डिलीवरी पद्धति मौखिक फीडबैक पर आधारित फीडबैक है । मौखिक प्रतिक्रिया, जिसे अक्सर मौखिक प्रतिक्रिया कहा जाता है, समकालिक या अतुल्यकालिक बातचीत के माध्यम से दी जाती है। मौखिक प्रतिक्रिया का एक संभावित लाभ, विशेष रूप से समकालिक विविधता का, यह है कि प्रतिभागी मौखिक और गैर-मौखिक इशारों को समझ सकते हैं, जो यह सुनिश्चित करने में मदद कर सकते हैं कि विचारों को स्पष्ट रूप से व्यक्त किया गया है। लिखित प्रतिक्रिया। लिखित फीडबैक लिखित रूप में दिया जाता है और यह फीडबैक को दस्तावेजित करने के एक तरीके के रूप में काम कर सकता है। मौखिक प्रतिक्रिया के विपरीत, जहां मौखिक और गैर-मौखिक इशारों का अनुभव किया जा सकता है, लिखित प्रतिक्रिया में ये तत्व गायब हैं। जैसा कि सारा गेर्शमैन और केसी मैन्क ने हार्वर्ड बिजनेस रिव्यू में लिखा है: इसलिए, जब आप लिखित प्रतिक्रिया देते हैं, तो गर्मजोशी, प्रोत्साहन या कृतज्ञता के स्पष्ट और अपरिहार्य संकेत शामिल करना सुनिश्चित करें। लेखन किसी के प्रदर्शन पर बिना सोचे-समझे प्रतिक्रिया देने की जगह नहीं है जिसका प्रभाव बहुत अधिक हो सकता है या जो आपकी अपेक्षा से अधिक कठोर हो सकता है। दृश्य प्रतिक्रिया। कॉर्पोरेट कार्य संदर्भ में, विज़ुअल फीडबैक विभिन्न प्रकार के विज़ुअल संकेतकों को संदर्भित कर सकता है – जैसे किसी प्राप्त लक्ष्य का प्रतिनिधित्व करने के लिए नंबरओं का हरा होना या वेब डिज़ाइन मॉकअप में डिज़ाइनर के विज़ुअल परिवर्तन । स्वचालित प्रतिक्रिया। व्याकरण संबंधी समस्याएं व्याकरण द्वारा पकड़ी गईं। एक वित्तीय डैशबोर्ड जो मिले मापदंडों के आधार पर समायोजित होता है। एक ऑनलाइन परीक्षा जो यह जानकारी देती है कि कोई उत्तर गलत क्यों है। यहाँ तक कि गर्म चूल्हे को छूने पर भी दर्द का एहसास होता है। ये कई स्वचालित/स्वचालित प्रकार के फीडबैक में से कुछ का प्रतिनिधित्व करते हैं जिन्हें हम किसी भी दिन अनुभव करते हैं। अतिरिक्त प्रतिक्रिया प्रकार प्रोत्साहन। प्रोत्साहन एक प्रकार की प्रेरक प्रतिक्रिया है जो प्राप्तकर्ता को सशक्तीकरण के एक मजबूत स्थान पर जाने में मदद कर सकती है। उदाहरण वाक्यांश इस प्रकार हो सकता है: मैंने आपके प्रदर्शन के बारे में इस फीडबैक के बारे में सोचने में बहुत समय बिताया क्योंकि मैं आपको इस संगठन में एक चमकते सितारे के रूप में देखता हूं। आपको यह विशेष सौदा नहीं मिला, लेकिन आपके कौशल और जुनून के साथ आपके पास बहुत अधिक संभावनाएं हैं और मैं आपको भविष्य में कहीं अधिक बड़े और बेहतर सौदे हासिल करते हुए देख रहा हूं। रचनात्मक प्रतिक्रिया। रचनात्मक फीडबैक आम तौर पर कम जोखिम वाले माहौल में दिया जाता है, जहां फीडबैक प्राप्तकर्ता को अपना काम दोबारा करने या फिर से सबमिट करने का मौका मिलता है। इस अर्थ में, रचनात्मक फीडबैक से तात्पर्य उस प्रकार के फीडबैक से है जो यह आकलन करने के लिए समय के साथ दिया जाता है कि कोई शिक्षार्थी या कार्यकर्ता कैसे विकसित हो रहा है। रचनात्मक फीडबैक योगात्मक फीडबैक से इस मायने में भिन्न होता है कि योगात्मक फीडबैक अंत के करीब आता है और आम तौर पर यह बताता है कि शिक्षार्थी ने कितना सीखा या कार्यकर्ता ने कितना विकास किया। योगात्मक प्रतिक्रिया। योगात्मक फीडबैक यह है कि हम कैसे जानते हैं कि हमने किसी परीक्षा या प्रोजेक्ट में कैसा प्रदर्शन किया – कुछ ऐसा जो अंत तक पहुंच गया है। उदाहरण के लिए, कक्षा में, एक योगात्मक मूल्यांकन आम तौर पर सभी पाठ्यक्रम सामग्री को मापने का प्रयास करता है। इस प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया शिक्षार्थियों और श्रमिकों को यह समझने में मदद करने के लिए महत्वपूर्ण है कि उन्होंने अंतिम या अन्यथा पूर्ण परियोजना पर कैसा प्रदर्शन किया। आलोचना। आलोचना को एक प्रकार की प्रतिक्रिया माना जा सकता है जो केवल सुधार किए जाने वाले क्षेत्रों की ओर इशारा करती है। यह मार्गदर्शन या भविष्य-उन्मुख लेंस प्रदान किए बिना पिछले प्रदर्शन को संबोधित करता है और आलोचना करता है। फीडबैक-सीकिंग बिहेवियर के अन्य फीडबैक शब्द आपके सामने आ सकते हैं। फीडबैक-मांग व्यवहार एफएसबी से तात्पर्य है कि कैसे व्यक्ति दूसरों के कार्यों को पढ़कर यह अनुमान लगाते हैं कि इसका क्या मतलब है या स्पष्ट रूप से दूसरों से फीडबैक मांगते हैं। 1983 से, डॉ। सुसान एशफ़ोर्ड और अन्य लोग फीडबैक प्राप्त करने वाले व्यवहार पर शोध कर रहे हैं । संगठनों में, फीडबैक मांगने वाले व्यवहार से आम तौर पर प्रदर्शन और बातचीत संबंधी फीडबैक प्रक्रिया में सकारात्मक सुधार होता है। ध्यान दें: आपको अप्रत्यक्ष प्रतिक्रिया मांगने वाला व्यवहार भी मिल सकता है । यह किसी विशेष क्षेत्र में सुधार के लिए जानबूझकर दूसरों के व्यवहार का निरीक्षण करने के प्रयासों को उजागर करने के लिए दूसरों से पूछने प्रत्यक्ष प्रतिक्रिया मांगने को कार्यों को पढ़ने अप्रत्यक्ष प्रतिक्रिया मांगने से अलग करता है। प्रतिक्रिया उन्मुखीकरण। ह्यूमन रिसोर्स मैनेजमेंट रिव्यू में मैनुअल लंदन और जेम्स स्मिथर के क्लासिक 2002 पेपर के अनुसार, फीडबैक ओरिएंटेशन ।।। किसी व्यक्ति की फीडबैक के प्रति समग्र ग्रहणशीलता को संदर्भित करता है, जिसमें फीडबैक के साथ सहजता, फीडबैक लेने की प्रवृत्ति और इसे ध्यानपूर्वक संसाधित करना और उस पर कार्य करने की संभावना शामिल है। व्यवहार परिवर्तन और प्रदर्शन सुधार का मार्गदर्शन करने के लिए फीडबैक । नोट: क्या आप एक फ्रीलांसर हैं? फ्रीलांसर अपना फीडबैक ओरिएंटेशन कैसे विकसित कर सकते हैं, इसके विवरण में मेरे द्वारा लिंक किया गया लेख देखें । और यह एक समापन है, टीम। यदि आपको यह वीडियो उपयोगी लगा, तो और भी वीडियो आ रहे हैं।।। इसलिए सूचना पाने के लिए सदस्यता लें। लेकिन वास्तव में मुझे जो अच्छा लगेगा वह यह है कि आप दूसरों के साथ अपने संबंधों के बारे में जो भी अंतर्दृष्टि यहां पाते हैं उसे लाएं, और निश्चित रूप से आपके पास जो भी प्रतिक्रिया हो उसे मुझे प्रदान करें। आप और आप जिनसे प्यार करते हैं वे अच्छे रहें।
Feedback Definition Diagram View Full Feedback Definition Diagram

The Origin Story

Defining “The Gap”

Most of us view feedback as simple “advice” or “criticism.” But to truly master it, we must look to systems theory.

In 1983, Professor Arkalgud Ramaprasad moved the definition away from judgment and toward calibration. His framework focuses on one thing: closing the distance between where you are and where you want to be.

“Feedback is information about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way.”

Arkalgud Ramaprasad (1983), Behavioral Science
Free Resource

The Feedback Definition Guide.

Get the complete breakdown of feedback definitions, types, and examples in one easy-to-navigate PDF. Perfect for printing, sharing with your team, or keeping as a quick reference.

Download the PDF
Real-World Application

18 Examples of Feedback

📊 Evaluative Where you stand.
  • 1 At the end of the quarter, you drove 10% fewer marketing leads than forecasted.
  • 2 A direct report tells you: “You are the best leader I’ve ever worked with.”
  • 3 You did not meet the qualifying standards to participate in the Boston Marathon.
  • 4 You moved to #5 on a Duolingo leaderboard.
  • 5 Your formal bid in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) was selected.
  • 6 Your manager says you are in the top 5% percent of all performers.
The Insight

Notice the variation. A vague “best leader” comment is still evaluative because it implies a comparison. Evaluative feedback always contains a data point.

💚 Appreciative Value & recognition.
  • 1 Your basketball team’s center points to you in gratitude after that great pass.
  • 2 Your grandparent says, “I am so grateful for all you’ve done for us.”
  • 3 Your teacher praises you in class for always asking great questions.
  • 4 Upon returning from a dangerous military mission, one sergeant hugs another.
  • 5 A patron at the restaurant where you work leaves you a great tip.
  • 6 A colleague recognizes you in a Slack channel for going above and beyond.
The Insight

Appreciation can be spoken or unspoken. While often viewed as “fluffy,” specific appreciation improves satisfaction more than negative feedback.

🧭 Coaching How to improve.
  • 1 A colleague suggests taking a course on “Omnichannel Branding” to improve your visuals.
  • 2 “Here’s what worked for me when I was in a similar position,” a colleague begins.
  • 3 An experienced ballet teacher offers advice on how to improve your grand plié.
  • 4 Through active listening, a teammate helps another discover the true cause of failure.
  • 5 “I noticed each time you looked down, it took energy away. Are you open to working together?”
  • 6 “The last two projects went over budget. Here are principles I use to ensure this doesn’t happen.”
The Insight

Coaching is the “helping them adjust” part. It can be directive (“do this”) or supportive (“let’s find the answer”), and doesn’t require a boss-employee relationship.

Chapter 2

Feedback Myths & Research

Now that we have clearly defined constructive feedback and most related terms, let’s address some common myths about feedback communication. If you’re like me, you may have believed in some of these myths.

Once we bring awareness to them, we can begin to change our own behaviors, and we can begin to spot them in the various dimensions of our lives — at work, while pursuing our hobbies, and even in our personal relationships.

  • Positive feedback isn’t helpful
  • Receiving negative feedback is bad
  • When to give feedback (Timing)
  • Who holds power in the feedback relationship
  • The purpose of feedback

While this video briefly highlights some of the classic research articles and papers from feedback experts, in the text below you will find additional links to studies and research.

Hi there, fellow feedbackers. Cameron Conaway here.

Today, let’s address five fairly common feedback myths that I’ve seen either directly exhibited or more subtly pervading work environments.

Myth number one – positive feedback isn’t helpful. If I had to pick one myth to dismantle, it would likely be this one because positive feedback positively impacts so many lives and entire work cultures could immediately and dramatically improve if folks dismantle this one. Okay, so this myth has kind of a single root with several branches coming off it. The root is some ignorance around positive feedback’s ability to highlight a gap, right. One branch, as mentioned in this Harvard Business Review article, is that people believe positive feedback is optional.

As the authors put it, quote – we can only conclude that managers feel that it’s their job to tell their direct reports bad news and correct them when they make a mistake, but that taking time to provide positive feedback is optional – end quote. They continue on to say – we think this is a mistake. Our research suggests that colleagues place a great deal of emphasis on receiving positive feedback and that it colors their relationship with one another even more than does negative feedback, end quote. In my own article at HBR I wrote about how I’d spent years really as an undergraduate writing student getting my papers filled with negative feedback in red pen. The feedback taught me plenty about my weaknesses – it highlighted those gaps – but I rarely received specific feedback that showed me my strengths.

And if you think about it, not knowing your strengths is also a vital gap to address, in many cases it’s actually far more important than shoring up your weaknesses. So when one professor gave me specific positive feedback by showing me an example of something I did exceptionally well – and then he actually compared it to what authors that I admire had done – it not only highlighted a gap, I mean really I truly had no idea I was doing anything particularly well, it also improved my confidence to the point that I pursued writing as a career. And although, you know, it was challenging and didn’t bring a sort of uh financial stability – the career led to mind opening kind of global explorations that expanded my perspective on just about everything and allowed me to spend time with and learn from amazing people around the world. And how amazing that all of this arose, essentially, because a single piece of positive feedback um kind of opened the door to my confidence in such a way that I was able to make a career choice.

The academic research on positive feedback spans decades, team, and to the point where the profound power of positive feedback runs kind of through all of it. This 2020 piece here in Frontiers in Psychology opens with a description about how quote – Positive feedback has been found not only to enhance performance, and here they cite the classic 1996 work from Kluger and DeNisi, but also to be an efficient intervention to manipulate self-efficacy. So, team, what that last part essentially means is that when someone receives positive feedback it has longer term downstream impact such as protecting that person from stress and also improving their self-confidence. The paper then goes on to highlight its own study with a sample of 102 participants in which the results suggest something I find completely fascinating, right. So positive feedback may even increase flow state – that ability of people to be fully focused on a single activity. This could be because as positive feedback can both improve confidence and alleviate stress it allows the receiver of it to generally feel good about their work and to less frequently be pulled out of flow state – kind of due to their inner critic or other self-doubting mechanisms – so when we pair these types of positive feedback specific findings with the more generalized feedback studies and lit reviews that are out there, like this one from David Nadler in 1979 which, citing the 1956 research of Ammons, states, quote, The research on feedback and individual performance generally indicates that feedback enhances rates of learning, that it affects motivation in a generally positive manner, that the more specific it is the greater the impact, the greater the delay between performance and feedback the less the effect, and that when feedback is decreased performance sometimes decreases, end quote. Put all that together and the case to give feedback, particularly specific positive feedback, becomes quite strong. It really can do everything from helping improve employee satisfaction and development to promoting a culture of appreciation, which many employees, arguably most, are looking for.

Speaking of showing appreciation, I’d like to pause there for a moment because this is kind of another branch off the root. So you may have seen this – a person puts their tough card on the table. And by that I mean they’ve equated positive feedback, even appreciation, with weakness and they want you to know that they can take whatever harsh feedback you can serve up.

So coupled with this – that person often also usually holds kind of an erroneous notion that positive feedback is nothing but empty fluff, you may have even heard them say that. Again, our root here is the ignorance around just how impactful positive feedback can be, and maybe even what it is. Yes it can be meaningless and insincere fluff if it’s simply a comment like good job, right. But truly effective positive feedback is specific; it’s something like this: Hey I appreciated the way you steered our team discussion out of the weeds and back to gaining a better understanding of our customers primary pain point – without that we may have come up with a solution to a problem that wasn’t even the problem. So, you know, when you said hey team can we pause here for a moment and come back to our purpose, that allowed everybody time to regroup and get back to our primary intentions. So well done and thank you so much.

Myth number two – receiving negative feedback is a bad thing. Okay, so let’s be real here. Losing your job is a bad thing. Being expected to fulfill the expectations of your role plus that of a colleague who left the company, yes, likely a bad thing. Being ridiculed in front of your peers – definitely a bad thing. But receiving feedback as we are defining it here, quote: a response to a person’s activity with the purpose of helping them adjust to become more effective. Feedback comes in various forms, including evaluative (how you did and where you are), appreciative (how you are valued and recognized), and coaching (how you can improve) – probably is not a bad thing. And hey those three forms of feedback come from this book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. I found those groupings to be incredibly helpful. So all that said, feedback may be a poorly delivered thing and it may be a hard thing.

Now before we dive in, I want to validate how you may have felt about feedback in the past – including how your body may have experienced it – sinking feeling in the stomach, tight jaw, sweaty palms, and more. Indeed if in the moment you received feedback you thought you were losing your job or that you were a failure, then it all likely felt like a very bad thing. But that feeling, while very important, doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad thing, right. Many variables come into play when we receive feedback. We often think it is purely about the words coming from the feedback giver, which can be complex in and of itself, but the human condition often adds other layers of complexity. We know from the work of Professor Carol Dweck that those of us with a fixed mindset, that is those who are inclined to believe that their intelligence and abilities are fixed, tend to experience receiving feedback as if they failed a critical test.

After all, right, if you believe your qualities are fixed you’ll likely work hard to portray them as perfect and feedback rattles this sense of perfection – often causing the feedback receiver to become defensive, even ignore great feedback, and generally feel pretty terrible. Those with a growth mindset, that is those who are inclined to see their intelligence and abilities as qualities that by their nature can be improved through effort, tend to experience receiving feedback as a valuable and even exciting opportunity to grow. Another variable has to do with the narratives we create. So, many years ago, I received feedback from my manager about how I needed to get more disciplined with how I was managing projects. It was, it was good and helpful feedback, but because my manager had missed our last few one-to-one meetings and during that time had promoted a colleague I considered my co-lead, I couldn’t see the feedback through the narrative fog I had created. I was convinced this was it – that this feedback about project management was me being put on notice, and so I operated for weeks in total terror, I mean pure anxiety and fear. And then one day my manager asked me if I had a second to chat. You can probably imagine that my heartbeat was in my throat when they told me I was a high performer being promoted, right. And that I’d soon be managing a larger team. So you can probably also imagine my shock there. I share this story, team, because the next time you’re on the receiving end of feedback – just try to take steady breaths to center yourself. It seems like a small action but it can really put you in a position to receive feedback for what it really is. So if you’ve received great negative feedback there’s a good chance you’ll be able to grow from it and it likely means someone cared enough about your development to thoughtfully give it to you even though they may have felt uncomfortable doing so.

Myth number three – you should wait until quarterly reviews to give feedback. This myth has proved remarkably resilient even with the pace of technological change, the increased adoption of agile methodologies, and seemingly real-time everything. But it still must be said – delaying feedback can negatively impact a person’s growth and future performance and it may, depending on how that person may have been able to improve if they had received it, even set them up for failure. Check out this video I worked on for Harvard where I share a real story about this. Still, many feedback givers, particularly managers, wait until the quarterly development discussion to provide detailed feedback. These type of managers take notes throughout the quarter and then kind of dump all of them out during the quarterly review in a way that, number one, can be overwhelming for the receiver and, number two, is usually so removed from the incident that the feedback receiver finds it hard to see the feedback as actionable. So why does this myth persist? First, because very few people receive comprehensive feedback training. For reasons I’ll explore in a future video, there’s a big assumption in the corporate world and beyond that people all have a shared understanding of what feedback is, know how to effectively give it and receive it, and therefore you know don’t need any training on it. The feedback delay, in my experience, also happens for a few other reasons.

First, and this especially seems to be the case for middle managers, they believe they are too busy to deliver timely, thoughtful feedback. And middle managers, indeed, are often loaded and busy as they are often expected to serve as high level contributors and great people managers. And so delaying, they believe, or maybe they just rationalize, and I’ve done this myself, delaying gives them time to prepare. Related to this, another cause for delay is that the giver has time to kind of build a case. In this sense, feedback is positioned like a prosecution with the receiver becoming kind of like an opponent of some sort. Depending on the situation, I can see why a giver may want to see a few examples before feeling something is important enough to bring up, but holding it all until a rather arbitrary date likely hurts all involved – it hurts the manager who has to allocate a portion of their mind space to retaining and remembering all of this information and who also doesn’t get the benefit of the potentially improved performance of their teammate; it hurts the receiver whose development is put on hold; and it hurts the business because again employee development is put on hold. Lastly, I believe it’s also delayed because giving negative feedback can be incredibly stressful and it temporarily feels far better to delay stress rather than step into it. I think as humans, we’ve all felt an inclination to move away from pain even if some part of us might know it’s important for healing, for example.

On this topic, I often think about my long ago days as an MMA fighter and one of the first lessons came from my boxing coach who taught me that to slip a punch and be in a great position to land a counter punch I had to actually move toward my opponent’s punch not away from it. I mean this took me so long to understand – and probably over a decade before I could do it decently – because it was my instinct to step back to move away from an incoming punch rather than step forward towards it at an angle, but in doing so I was simply moving away from punch, and that’s it. I wasn’t in a position to do anything offensively or use my opponent’s energy in any way – and as we see again from this survey at Harvard Business Review, quote: One of the most difficult parts of a manager’s job is giving feedback. In a survey of 7,631 people, we asked whether they believed that giving negative feedback was stressful or difficult, and 44 percent agreed.

When talking with managers about giving feedback, we often hear comments such as I did not sleep the night before, I just wanted to get it over quickly, my hands were sweating and I was nervous, and they don’t pay me enough to do this job. We find that because of this anxiety, some managers resist giving their direct reports any critical feedback at all. When we asked a different group of 7,808 people to conduct a self-assessment, 21 percent admitted that they avoid giving negative feedback, end quote. Delaying it until a quarterly development discussion allows managers to kick the can down the road a bit, to get out of the way of the stress rather than use it as an opportunity to grow themselves and their teammate, but if you’re like me – out of sight is not out of mind.

When I’ve delayed or postponed feedback, for fear that it may be a challenging conversation, I found myself still thinking about it – it was like an unused app burning energy in the background of my mind. So my advice: try to give feedback as close to the behavior or performance you will be commenting on as possible. Of course, you know, use your discretion because there are exceptions here. You’ll likely want to wait to give direct individual feedback until after you’ve left a group setting, right. And of course you don’t want to rush the stage after your colleague gave a fantastic presentation just to quickly give them some absurdly minor negative feedback.

Myth number four – the feedback giver has all the power. If you’ve ever spent time reading popular articles on how to effectively receive feedback, you’ve likely noticed a condescending tone. Some entire articles on this topic can basically be summed up as: make eye contact, smile, say thank you. It’s as though being perceived as effectively receiving feedback is more important than actually receiving it – stay tuned for a video all about the art and science of receiving feedback. On that, well, your gut sense on those condescending tones was onto something.

This tone, it’s even apparent throughout the decades of academic research on feedback. There exists an underlying assumption that the giver is the manager and in some cases a kind of all-knowing keeper of wisdom manager, and the receiver is a very junior colleague who desperately needs a manager’s help. This, of course, is one plausible scenario, I guess, but there are countless others – and even this hierarchical example – that more powerful manager may be higher up in the company but what if they’re among that 21 percent who find giving negative feedback so immensely stressful that they completely avoid it? I see the receiver-giver relationship as far more balanced, with the receiver in many cases holding more power in the relationship. If you think about it, part of why managers are stressed about giving negative feedback is they are quite scared of what the receiver’s response will be, so the receiver has a bit of power there. And if we keep in mind that feedback flows in all directions, not only from the top down, it’s clear that power isn’t held by one party. And additionally, and to come back to the research, we’ve known since this piece in 1983 about what’s called Feedback Seeking Behavior – FSB for the cool cats – this is where the receiver makes the first move by literally asking for feedback. In some ways, this puts even more power into the receiver’s hands. And, lastly, for a great read on the vital role of the feedback receiver – and I think it’s a read that will shift your perception of power in the feedback relationship – check out the book I mentioned earlier: Thanks for the Feedback. I’ll link to it in the description as well.

Myth number five – feedback isn’t future focused. I’ll try to keep this one brief. Here again is our definition of feedback. Notice that the purpose is helping someone adjust to become more effective, that in itself of course means more effective in the future. Notice also that one of the three feedback forms is referred to as coaching, which is about helping someone improve in the future. Additionally nearly all of the research on what makes feedback effective points to its capacity to improve future performance. And yet, the term feed-forward has entered the scene, with some folks so passionate about it that they no longer use the word feedback.

The term feedforward arose to ensure feedback takes a future oriented approach, but effective feedback, however, already does precisely that – it points to a past performance with the intention of improving future performance. So in this sense, I believe it’s problematic to position feed forward as the reverse of feedback, which I’ve heard people say. Still, like the term constructive feedback, feed-forward, I think has its place depending on the audience. Reframing or rebranding it… rebranding feedback in this way can also help pull employees back into the feedback process if they’ve had terrible or even harmful experiences with in the past. I believe this new term seems to have entered the scene at least in part because most of us do not have a shared definition of feedback or, as previously mentioned, a nuanced and shared understanding of what it is and how it works. Effective feedback is already future-focused, but if feed forward helps remind you to more directly link the observed behavior with a future one, right on, cool, do your thing. And so that’s a wrap on our five feedback myths. I’m so grateful for your time and I hope some of what I shared has been helpful. I’ll be releasing more feedback videos similar to this, and of course I’d love your feedback on all of them. I’d also love to learn from your own feedback wisdom, so feel free to share that as well. Oh and in the description you’ll find links to books, articles and a feedback glossary I created.

May you and those you love be well.

Prof. Conaway’s Research Corner ARCHIVE
Here’s a look at some of the feedback research that has shaped my thinking. Many of these are behind paywalls (institutional access required). If you’re curious but stuck, please email me at feedback@cameronconaway.com.
1979
Consequences of individual feedback on behavior in organizations
Journal of Applied Psychology
View Source →
1979
The effects of feedback on task group behavior: A review of the experimental research
Organizational Behavior & Human Performance
View Source →
1983
Feedback as an individual resource: Personal strategies of creating information
Organizational Behavior & Human Performance
View Source →
1983
On the definition of feedback
Behavioral Science
View Source →
1984
The performance feedback process: A preliminary model
Organizational Behavior & Human Performance
View Source →
1996
The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory
Psychological Bulletin
View Source →
2002
Feedback orientation, feedback culture, and the longitudinal performance management process
Human Resource Management Review
View Source →
2003
The Role Of Gender In The Construction And Evaluation Of Feedback Effectiveness
Management Communication Quarterly
View Source →
2007
The Power of Feedback
Review of Educational Research
View Source →
2010
The Development and Validation of the Feedback Orientation Scale (FOS)
Journal of Management
View Source →
2012
Why receiving feedback collides with self determination
Advances in Health Sciences Education
View Source →
2013
Beyond individualism: professional culture and its influence on feedback
Medical Education
View Source →
2015
Age differences in feedback reactions: The roles of employee feedback orientation on social awareness and utility
Journal of Applied Psychology
View Source →
2017
How empathic concern helps leaders in providing negative feedback: A two‐study examination
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
View Source →
2021
What feedback literate teachers do: an empirically-derived competency framework
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
View Source →
2021
Performance feedback interviews as affective events: An exploration of the impact of emotion regulation…
Human Resource Management Review
View Source →
2022
Honest feedback: Barriers to receptivity and discerning the truth in feedback
Current Opinion in Psychology
View Source →
2022
Feedback literacy: a critical review of an emerging concept
Higher Education
View Source →
2023
Feedback orientation: A meta-analysis
Human Resource Management Review
View Source →

Chapter 3

Common Feedback Barriers

Hi there, Team. Cameron Conaway here. Today, let’s cover three foundational but rarely-discussed barriers that prevent us and our organizations from leveraging the power of effective feedback at work. We’ll approach these three barriers from two interrelated angles. The first will be from an individual level, because we know from mountains of research that feedback is vital for our personal growth and for the growth of our teammates. And the second angle will be organizational, because if an organization isn’t successful at seeking and receiving feedback, it likely won’t be around very long.

So here are the three common feedback barriers we will be addressing, starting at the individual level where we all have agency and building towards the larger organization where our agency, when we propel it into action, can create impact:

Number 1: Underdeveloped Feedback Literacy
Number 2: A Neglected Feedback Culture
Number 3: The Lack of an Organizational Feedback System

So let’s dive into Barrier Number 1: Underdeveloped Feedback Literacy. If you watched What is Feedback?, you may recall our definition of feedback literacy. We talked about it as referring to an individual’s understanding of and capacity to effectively give, receive, and process feedback.

But we didn’t address how it’s not only possible, but actually vital to create a feedback literacy development plan for ourselves. Because although developing all aspects of our feedback literacy takes being in relationship with others, we have individual agency, we have the ability to chart our own course for developing in this way.

Let’s explore this Feedback Literacy venn diagram to see how it all works.

As we see here, our feedback literacy is at the core and develops where these three circles intersect. Let’s take a look at each, starting with Intrapersonal. Intrapersonal refers to those skills within our self, or within our own mind. This includes all of those qualities that make up self-awareness, open-mindedness, and emotional intelligence – that ability to skillfully experience and manage our emotional states. As you may also recall from our What is Feedback? video, Intrapersonal would also include the way we talk to ourselves, which would include Self-Feedback… “the feedback in our minds as we critique, praise, and compare our performance.” As you can likely see here, these internal skills and states serve as the foundation for effectively giving, receiving, and processing feedback. For example, if we are overwhelmed with anger… and perhaps especially if we are filled with anger but not aware that we are, there’s a good chance that we will struggle to both receive negative feedback and process how it feels and what it means.

For a deeper exploration of what I mean by processing feedback, see my article in Harvard Business Review on that topic.

Similarly, if your mind is flooded with harsh inner chatter about a mistake you made earlier in the day, you will likely struggle to provide your teammate with the clear and empathy-led feedback they deserve. Improving your ability to recognize, be with, breathe through, and understand the roots of a felt emotion will help keep you receptive and grounded during challenging feedback conversations. The great part with intrapersonal skills development is that there’s no shortage of ways to improve. From practicing meditation and journaling to working with a licensed therapist and a career coach – all can help us gain new perspectives, develop self-awareness, and build the skills we need to effectively navigate and leverage what’s going on in our inner world.

As a point of comparison, let’s now jump over to Interpersonal. If Intrapersonal is within, we can think of inter-personal as meaning between… that is, between yourself and others. So this includes all of the many skills that account for being in relationship with others – including all elements of verbal and nonverbal communication. Not all feedback at work happens while in relationship with other humans (for example, we also receive automated feedback from machines), but much of it does, so these interpersonal qualities are vital for being an effective communicator whether you are giving feedback or receiving feedback. As with intra-personal skills development, you can develop your interpersonal skills. One way is by setting specific goals for the aspects you want to improve and then consciously observing and learning from others. You can also request feedback specifically about your interpersonal interactions. And it’s also possible to improve your skills in this regard by watching and learning from recordings of your performance. As you can likely tell, there are plenty of intersections between intra and inter-personal development. For example, in a communications class I took as part of an Executive MBA program, we were tasked with recording one of our performances. Phew. The first few times I watched my performance, it was actually hard to look at the screen. I was judging myself so harshly – everything from the color of my teeth to the sound of my voice. But we had a self-reflective writing exercise that was attached to this assignment, and this exercise allowed me to slow down enough so that I was able to bring awareness to my harsh inner chatter and realize how it was actually a significant barrier standing in the way of my goal of improving. In this sense, I had to slow down before I could wake up. I wasn’t able to tease out ways I could improve interpersonally until I brought that intrapersonal self-awareness to the monologue going on inside me, and then calmed it down. After that, I was in a better position to view the recording as purely an opportunity to grow.

Lastly, let’s head over to Experiential. This one is simply about the feedback experiences we have across our personal and professional lives. This intersects with intra-personal because experience is what we reflect on and learn from, and it intersects with interpersonal because many of these experiences happen in relation with others. One tip I call out here is that we need not be passive recipients in the feedback process. I’ve met with many folks at various stages of their career who felt that they didn’t have effective feedback relationships modeled for them and therefore weren’t able to get the feedback experiences they deserved. While this modeling is vital – and we’ll briefly cover this in Barrier #2 – getting disciplined about seeking feedback from others can ensure you are at least getting opportunities to flex this Experiential muscle. And, you may find, that the more you ask others for feedback, the more others begin to feel comfortable asking you for feedback… so by you making the first move you create a type of feedback loop for your feedback literacy development. This is one incredible way you can take your individual agency and begin to change the feedback culture.

And with that as a transition, let’s move to Barrier Number 2: A Neglected Feedback Culture.

So one way to think about a culture at work, and in our focus here, a feedback culture, is as the soil upon which effective feedback is either neglected or cultivated. Like the soil of our earth, the culture exists whether or not we intentionally try to shape it, right? So a neglected feedback culture, then, is one that is not intentionally cultivated. To continue with the soil metaphor, in such a culture, weeds and other invasive qualities may sprout. This can include toxic cultural elements, such as managers belittling colleagues rather than providing helpful feedback. In many cases, neglected feedback cultures are actually feedback-averse cultures. By this I mean cultures where feedback is generally avoided, which means employees aren’t receiving comprehensive feedback training and new employees aren’t seeing healthy feedback relationships modeled for them. And if this culture is neglected at the people-level, there’s a good chance there’s neglect at the organizational level, where the organization itself is not effective at seeking and receiving feedback. A healthy and effective feedback culture, however, is built with intention. It’s a garden that is pruned and nurtured and generally cared for – with the result being colleagues at all levels who are number one, working to build their own feedback literacy and number two, feel psychological safe enough to give and receive feedback regardless of where they sit in the organization’s hierarchy. So what barriers get in the way of cultivating an effective feedback culture and, more importantly, what can we do about them?

One barrier, and it may seem like a refrain here, but it’s awareness around the importance of feedback. In my previous videos, I highlighted the overwhelming evidence on the importance of feedback, so I’ll hold on that for now and encourage you to go check out the links I provided in the descriptions of those YouTube videos. One other element has to do with lack of awareness on the categories of feedback, especially because many who are new to learning about feedback often tend to think of it as purely an exchange of information, usually from a manager to a more junior colleague. So let’s address this barrier with a quick tour of the Workplace Feedback Categories diagram which can be a helpful tool because it allows us to step back to see a fuller picture of the various feedback dynamics.

Let’s begin at the top. Internal refers to both the feedback happening internally in our minds and the feedback kept internally in our organization. So if we work down the left side, this covers the self-feedback in our minds, the individual feedback we receive from our colleagues at work, the customer feedback we receive directly from our customers, and market feedback. Market feedback in the internal sense is about the effects on our business that we experience based on what’s happening in the market. For example, even before it’s a major topic of public discussion, we may begin seeing signals of labor market strength as employees seem to be asking for raises at a higher rate than usual. If we move to External at the top right, we begin with Sought. This is feedback outside of our organization that we intentionally seek. So at the Individual level, this could be feedback you seek by asking an industry leader if they are open to serving as a mentor for you. At the Customer level, this could be feedback about some part of your organization that you see posted on public sites like LinkedIn, G2, Yelp, Reddit forums, or elsewhere. Similarly, external market signals could be a result of publicly-known market shifts that maybe haven’t impacted your business yet – such as the Federal Reserve changing interest rates or a tense geopolitical situation that may have an impact on your supply chain strategy.

As you see, there can be barriers at every level here. For example, a company may be one of those rare few who offer their employees training on feedback communications, but they may be missing the boat when it comes to having a strategy for listening to the external market signals that could seriously disrupt their business model. Based on my experience and review of the decades of feedback literature, one way to move from feedback category awareness to real action is to pair our category diagram with a Feedback Growth Pyramid – something like this. Approaching each category through the lens of Culture, Training, and Event can ensure we are addressing each barrier holistically. Culture and Training we’ve touched on, but by Feedback Event I mean real opportunities to engage in various feedback dynamics. In this sense, an event would align with the Experiential section of our Feedback Literacy diagram. For example, a feedback event could be receiving feedback from a manager – this would be an event for both the manager giving and the employee receiving. Here’s an example of one way to pair the diagram with the pyramid. Let’s consider individual feedback at both the Internal and External level. You might come at this with questions informed by the pyramid, such as:

“How might we improve our culture so that employees are getting the effective feedback they need?” Or… “Are we training employees across our organization how to seek feedback from those outside of our organization so that they are staying at the top of their field?” Or “What feedback training are we providing our new people managers?”

And, last but not least, we could ask: “What feedback events do our employees have a chance to participate in?”

If the answer to that question is none, or not many, or even I have no idea… one potential solution could be to roll out weekly feedback-oriented check-ins between managers and employees and a quarterly performance review framework to ensure all parties have a chance to give and receive feedback. Another solution could be creating feedback workshops whereby more junior colleagues who have been identified as future people managers could get an opportunity to practice how they give feedback – and to get feedback on how they give feedback.

At this point, if you’re hungry to be more intentional about changing your organization’s feedback culture, I’d recommend reading up on a few change management principles. I’ve included a link in the description to an in-depth page on change management – and, if you’re new to this field and in a hurry, I’d recommend jumping right to the John Kotter framework on that page.

Speaking of change at the organizational level, that leads us to our third feedback barrier: Number 3: Lack of an Organizational Feedback System.

We’ve highlighted the importance of building feedback literacy, and the importance of understanding the feedback categories, but even with all the awareness in the world – it can be a tremendous challenge for an organization to figure out how to collect, classify, and effectively communicate received feedback to the most relevant stakeholders. This is where the 3Cs of Organizational Feedback Systems come into play. Let’s briefly work through this visual.

Step 1 here is about collecting feedback from various sources. One metaphor that may be helpful here is to think about all the tributaries that feed into a river. The goal here is to map out all the most important feedback tributaries and to create a process for how they are being monitored. For example, if we think about collecting customer feedback – those tributaries would include the internal feedback our customers send us privately (and ensuring they have easy ways to do so) and it would include monitoring the most important areas where they are providing public feedback.

From there, we can move to step 2 – which is to ensure all that feedback flows into a central place where it can be seen in aggregate. This could be a Slack channel, for example. Once there, it’s helpful to Classify it. For example, is this External feedback about a particular product or service? Is it positive or negative feedback? You can get as detailed as is helpful here. For example, it may be helpful to note if it’s coming from a Fortune 100 customer who you have a significant deal with as opposed to a customer from a small business who is simply on a free trial. We then move to Step 3, Communicating. Some organizations end at Step 2, thinking that the feedback river is enough, but the river contains everything and can be an overwhelming source of information to the point where it’s irrelevant for many people who are receiving it.

The river metaphor continues here, as Step 3 is about creating feedback lakes from the river, that is, ensuring that the classified feedback is routed to the most appropriate people or teams. As in our example, a batch of feedback from Fortune 100 customers on a particular product could be routed to the product team responsible for that product, to the enterprise technical sales team who can follow up directly with their customer points of contact, and perhaps to the marketing team who can determine if and how to respond to the public feedback.

So, team, that’s a wrap on addressing three foundational barriers to effective feedback at work. We covered a lot of ground here and I hope it was helpful in getting you to step back and see a fuller picture than most of the feedback articles out there provide. I’m always open to your questions and to your feedback and I’m happy to go deeper into particular areas you want me to address in future videos. Thank you, and may you and yours be well.

If you’ve made it this far, it’s at least partly because you know how challenging workplace feedback can be. In the next video, we will identify some of the most common barriers to effectively giving and receiving feedback at work. We’ll cover why these barriers exist, their negative impact on personal and organizational success, and how we can begin to counter their forces.

Along the way, we will develop our understanding of the Workplace Feedback Categories as depicted in the following framework.

Workplace Feedback Categories Diagram
Figure 1: Workplace Feedback Categories (Click to Expand)

As we highlight the common categories across our framework, we will discover why pairing this framework with the Feedback Growth Pyramid is vital for breaking through the barriers.

Feedback Growth Pyramid
Figure 2: Feedback Growth Pyramid (Click to Expand)

After all, while understanding and awareness of barriers is a necessary first step, driving positive change is our ultimate goal.

Feedback Literacy Diagram
Figure 3: Feedback Literacy
3Cs Organizational System
Figure 4: The 3Cs of Organizational Systems
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Chapter 4

How to Give Feedback

Upon reviewing both the academic literature and more informal surveys and studies, a few concepts stand tall as it relates to giving constructive feedback.

While “how to give feedback,” of course, depends on the unique variables present in any given situation, below we provide universal principles you can apply to just about every situation.

01

It can have a tremendous impact on someone’s life and workplace performance.

02

Those giving negative feedback often experience tremendous anxiety.

03

It is often mired in unhelpful hierarchical and/or power dynamics.

04

Not giving it can be a primary reason why employees leave.

05

It’s widely regarded as a vital element of organizational success.

06

Most employees understand its importance and want more of it.

07

Influential leaders unanimously agree that constructive feedback is critical.

Some have claimed that feedback is the favorite word of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who views meeting people on the ground as not only a political act but a way to get honest feedback. For Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, candid feedback is one of the top three ingredients of an innovative organization.

For music superstar Taylor Swift, meaningfully responding to the feedback her fans give is one reason why those fans adore her. For former U.S. President Barack Obama, listening and remaining open to feedback from multiple perspectives helped him make better decisions in the most challenging moments.

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Hi there and welcome to Module 4 in our Constructive Feedback course. In this module, we’ll look at how we can give feedback more effectively. If you’ve made it this far in the course, you’ve already improved your ability to give feedback. As mentioned throughout our time together, there’s significant overlap across the various feedback dimensions. For example, by understanding what feedback is, why it’s important, where we get challenged by it, how to receive it, how to process it, and how to use it – all areas we’ve covered so far – you’ll be in a far better position to give great feedback to others. If you recall, we kicked off our modules with receiving feedback for precisely this reason. In many ways, learning how to receive serves as the foundation for how we can give. We will now build on that foundation, occasionally circling back to a few topics we’ve covered to ensure we understand them. Let’s remind ourselves of the feedback definition now: “Feedback is a response to a person’s activity with the purpose of helping them adjust to become more effective. Feedback comes in various forms, including evaluative (how you did and where you are), appreciative (how you are valued and recognized), and coaching (how you can improve). And let’s recall just how challenging giving feedback can be. The Harvard Business Review article highlights that 44% of managers say feedback was stressful or difficult, 21% avoid giving constructive feedback altogether, and a whopping 37% even avoid giving positive feedback – which research has proven is often more effective than negative feedback. And let’s also recall the two-year study published in Fortune which found three insights. Number one: employees who don’t get clear feedback quit. Let me repeat this one: Employees who do not get clear feedback quit. So keep in mind here that despite what you may think, studies point to employees actually wanting your feedback so long as it is clear, comes from a good place, and they respect where you are coming from with it. For example, I am in no position to give feedback to Steph Curry on how to shoot a basketball. So it’s critical here to check your ego at the door. You don’t need to give feedback to someone just because you think it’s your role to do so. You should only give it when you think you have a gift to offer. Number two: not all feedback is equally effective. For example, as a giver to a far more junior direct report, you may be providing task-specific feedback but not feedback that may be helpful for helping them navigate their career. Similarly, you may be providing plenty of negative feedback but the primary challenge holding your direct report back is that they don’t have a sense of their strengths – which you can help change by delivering highly specific positive feedback. Lastly, I’d argue here that the most effective feedback comes from a giver who both cares a great deal about the receiver’s development and has had enough deep one-to-one conversations with the receiver to have a sense of what they want. And number three: high-quality feedback isn’t distributed equally. We covered this in earlier modules, but it’s important to keep positionality in mind here. The research shows that women tend to get far less helpful constructive feedback than men, and black women in particular get even less. This impacts their professional development, their ability to receive promotions, and generally their overall career, so as a feedback giver you have a responsibility to understand both systemic biases and your individual biases. We don’t have time to cover this massive topic here, but a good start is to begin learning about both social identities and biases that humans in general contain, and doing the inner work of excavating your own biases. Lastly, let’s also remind ourselves of when feedback is effective – it’s effective when the setting it takes place in feels psychologically safe, and we know that psychological safety takes time to build. This is is about ensuring each party feels heard, feels valued, and feels safe enough to share their thoughts, their ideas, and even their disagreements and mistakes without fear of negative consequences. So perhaps your number one job as a feedback giver, if possible, is to put the work in to build this kind of relationship – or at the least to try to objectively see if this description of psychological safety applies to your team. In my experience, this type of culture doesn’t just arise; it’s built intentionally by mindful leaders. If you haven’t started yet, begin now. If you don’t know where to begin, get Amy Edmondson’s book immediately. The link is in the description. We know that the feedback relationship can also be effective when the mindsets of the giver and the receiver are positive and aligned – which means the foundation here is built on trust and a shared goal of improvement. Lastly, we know that feedback can be effective when it goes beyond calling out a past behavior. In fact, based on our definition, that actually isn’t even feedback. So the kind of feedback we’re talking about is by its nature constructive. That is, it’s pointing to a past behavior but also lighting a torch to help point towards future improvement. As we highlighted earlier, telling people they are missing the mark is not the same as helping them hit the mark. And, lastly, we know feedback has a chance to be effective when the feedback giver grants the receiver time to process it – and even helps them integrate it into their workflow. If you are a giver who has just delivered what may be very challenging feedback for the receiver to hear – and it takes empathy to recognize this – a great next move will be to ensure you and the receiver are on the same page about what it means. And then grant them some space to make sense of it. Additionally, while the actual feedback conversation is important, perhaps just as important is how the feedback giver checks in or otherwise follows up to see if they can do anything to help the receiver make progress on it. And, as we covered, we know feedback is most effective when it falls within the Learning Zone of our matrix here. Remember to consider the axis. If the feedback is delivered with true empathy for the receiver and with a high degree of helpfulness, there’s a far better chance it will land well for the receiver and therefore have a chance to positively impact their professional development. One way to build or at least center this sense of empathy and recognize the important role you play as a feedback giver is to think about an Employee Hierarchy of Needs. There are many variations out there, but here’s how I often think of it. At the bottom, the base for most of us, is the need for survival, for a paycheck. After that it may be a sense of security, security that the paycheck will be there next week, but also a sense of security by way of the culture – of how the employee feels and is treated within it. Next is a sense of belonging – again belonging to that workplace culture, a culture that in many ways can be shaped by the way feedback is given. Next is a sense of growth and importance. Again, two elements that can be impacted by the feedback relationship. And lastly at the top of the pyramid we have growth and a sense of fulfillment, yet another area that can be impacted by feedback experiences. Feedback givers can certainly have an impact on the top four parts of this employee hierarchy of needs pyramid, which makes sense considering that Fortune article which highlighted the role feedback plays in whether employees stay or leave their organization. Okay do you have a grasp of all that? If so, here’s a big picture way to think about giving constructive feedback that has impact. This tip is about giving feedback that has an ongoing impact on someone ‘s life or professional development. Giving feedback is a gift. Yes, I know that is a phrase often about receiving feedback, but think about it. As a feedback giver you have the immense honor of shaping the direction of a person’s improvement, even their entire career. As that last part should have suggested, giving feedback is also an immense responsibility. As such, it can be helpful, especially when preparing to give feedback in a planned feedback session, to think into the future about not only how you hope this feedback will land but also what the feedback receiver may be able to do with it. I’ll repeat: feedback receiver. So I think about this as Impact After Receipt (IAR). It’s a concept I came up with that is inspired by the National Football League metric of Yards After Catch, or (YAC). As it sounds, this metric is about how many yards a football receiver gets after they’ve caught the pass. While it can be easy to think about this as purely the receiver’s speed or skill in outmaneuvering those trying to make a tackle, many other elements are at work here. One element involves the quarterback who had to throw a pass in such a way that the receiver has a chance to do something with it. Often, this means the pass was thrown not to where the receiver is but to some combination of where they are going and where they might be able to go. Think about it. Which receiver is likely to get more yards after the catch? This receiver that needs to dive towards the ground just to make the catch or this one who is able to make the catch in stride and with an open field ahead of them? So think about that the next time you step into an important feedback conversation. Ask yourself: What might the Impact After Receipt be of this one? Depending on context and many other factors, not all feedback you give needs to have a high IAR, but as a feedback giver you should try to bring awareness to those moments when you have the chance for IAR. You might think to yourself: If, years from now, the feedback receiver were to take some kind of Likert Scale based on what I’m about to share, how might they respond to the following question? The feedback I received today positively shaped my professional development. Ultimately, thinking about Impact After Receipt is an act of care – it helps us bring greater thoughtfulness to how we give. After all, for feedback to be a great gift for the receiver it should be a gift that provides ongoing value. Next, let’s talk about the profound role of positive feedback. As mentioned earlier, a whopping 37% of managers studied in one survey do not give positive feedback despite the the rather overwhelming amount of research on how doing so not only improves employee morale and performance but helps point out their strengths so they can double down on them. In my video on taking an evidence-based approach to debunking five feedback myths, I opened by debunking the myth that positive feedback is not helpful. To reiterate what I said over there: Positive feedback positively impacts so many lives and entire work cultures could immediately and dramatically improve if leaders started giving more of it. Okay, so this myth has kind of a single root with several branches coming off it. The root is some ignorance around positive feedback’s ability to highlight a gap. One branch, as mentioned in that Harvard Business Review article, is that many managers believe positive feedback is optional. As the authors put it: “We can only conclude that managers feel that it’s their job to tell their direct reports bad news and correct them when they make a mistake, but that taking time to provide positive feedback is optional.” They continue on to say: “We think this is a mistake. Our research suggests that colleagues place a great deal of emphasis on receiving positive feedback, and that it colors their relationship with one another even more than does negative feedback.” In my own article at HBR, I wrote about how I’d spent years as an undergraduate writing student getting my papers filled with negative feedback in red pen. The feedback taught me plenty about my weaknesses – it highlighted those gaps – but I rarely received specific feedback that showed me my strengths. And, if you think about it, not knowing your strengths is also a vital gap to address. In many cases, it’s actually far more important than shoring up your weaknesses. So when one professor gave me specific positive feedback by showing me an example of something I did exceptionally well – and then he actually compared it to what authors that I admire had done – it not only highlighted a gap, it also improved my confidence to the point that I pursued writing as a career. The academic research on positive feedback is vast. This 2020 piece here in Frontiers in Psychology opens with a description about how “Positive feedback has been found not only to enhance performance” and here they cite the classic 1996 work from Kluger and Denisi, “but also to be an efficient intervention to manipulate self-efficacy.” So, team, what that last part essentially means is that when someone receives positive feedback it has longer term downstream impact – such as protecting that person from stress and also improving their self-confidence. The paper then goes on to highlight its own study with a sample of 102 participants in which the results suggest something I find completely fascinating. Positive impact may even increase flow state – the ability of people to be fully focused on a single activity. This could be because, as positive feedback can both improve confidence and alleviate stress, it allows the receiver of it to generally feel good about their work and to less frequently be pulled out of flow state due to their inner critic or other self-doubting mechanisms. Put all that together and the case to give feedback, particularly specific positive feedback, becomes quite strong. It really can do everything from helping improve employee satisfaction and development to promoting a culture of appreciation, which many employees, arguably most, are looking for. Speaking of showing appreciation, I’d like to pause here for a moment because this is kind of another branch off the root. So you may have seen this: a person puts their tough card on the table. And by that I mean they’ve equated positive feedback, even appreciation, with weakness – and they want you to know that they can take whatever harsh feedback you can serve up. So coupled with this, that person often also usually holds kind of an erroneous notion that positive feedback is nothing but empty fluff. You may have even heard someone say that. Again our root here is the ignorance around just how impactful positive feedback can be, and maybe even what it is. Yes, it can be meaningless and insincere fluff if it’s simply a comment like “good job” right? But truly effective positive feedback is specific; it’s something like: “Hey I appreciated the way you steered our team discussion out of the weeds and back to gaining a better understanding of our customer’s primary pain point. Without that we may have come up with a solution to a problem that wasn’t even the problem. So, you know, when you said Hey team, can we pause here for a moment and come back to our purpose – that allowed everybody time to regroup and get back to our primary intention. So well done and thank you so much.” Let’s now talk to the role of time as it relates to giving feedback. By that I mean it’s important, particularly if you are a people manager, to provide a mix of planned feedback and unplanned feedback. Why? Because sometimes having a planned feedback session – whether you give a few days notice or it comes during a quarterly performance review – provides a sense of structure and long-term commitment. While unplanned feedback can provide the ongoing in-the-moment feedback we all need to stay on the growth path. Keep in mind that feedback delivered during a quarterly performance review should never shock the receiver. There should be feedback touchpoints between you with enough frequency that the quarterly review can be seen as a chance to go deep rather than surface something new. Lastly, and although these are generalities, I found these DOs and DONT’s about giving feedback helpful as a manager, as have many of the people leaders I’ve worked with. First up: do give feedback as close to the observed behavior as feels reasonable. Use your discretion here. Obviously you wouldn’t want to give negative feedback immediately after an incredible performance, nor would you want to wait too long – delivering it so far into the future that the receiver missed many opportunities where they could have used it. And our don’t here, of course, is don’t hold the feedback until an arbitrary date like a quarterly review. As I tell here in this feedback failure story, I’ve made the mistake of delaying feedback to the point where it seriously impacted the career of my colleague. Don’t make that same mistake. Next up: as a feedback giver, do encourage feedback from your direct reports. As a giver, particularly if you’re a manager, you have a great opportunity to model what asking for and receiving feedback looks like. In doing so, you’ll also let your colleagues, who may be more accustomed to receiving feedback, have a chance to practice how they give it. However, as you encourage your direct reports to give you feedback, don’t pressure them to give it in the moment. Again, this comes down to your empathy. If we continue with the people manager role, recognize that there might be differences in power between you and the receiver. It may be exceptionally scary for them to provide feedback to you, as they may think whatever they say could jeopardize their relationship with you or even cost them their job. So provide them space to think about it and work to create the safest possible relationship. At the time of the conversation, you might open by saying something like: “I am so grateful for your time here. I’m always looking to improve and I’m excited to hear any thoughts you may have about how I can.” Another do: do create a safe, empowering environment where your direct reports can ask for feedback. Again, in my experience, two great ways to set the stage here. First, to ensure you have real and heartfelt one-to-ones with your direct reports. Get to know them. Share a glimpse into your life outside of work, and try to make some space to talk about things other than work. Second, you can model this behavior where it makes sense – asking them for their feedback. On the don’t side: if your direct report does ask you for feedback, don’t feel the need to talk just to talk. If you don’t have any feedback in that moment, ask for more time. Similarly, if they are asking for feedback on something that is wildly outside of your domain, state that and try to refer them to an expert you know on that topic. Another do: and this one should be obvious by now but, wherever possible in the feedback relationship, lead with empathy, helpfulness, and kindness. If you feel agitation or even anger leading the way, it may not be a great time for you to deliver constructive feedback. That said, the don’t here is don’t use kindness to mask direct feedback. Feedback that dances around the topic is not likely to be helpful and is not likely to be clear. As Brené Brown puts it: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. And, often when it comes to giving constructive feedback, direct is often the best path to being clear. Next up: an obvious one if you’ve watched the previous modules, is do create time for your direct reports to process the challenging feedback. On the other side, don’t expect their immediate acceptance and smiles. Many of us in the privileged position of being able to frequently give feedback have been conditioned by countless articles and even academic papers that receivers should be immensely grateful and immediately accept everything we just said. Hold those expectations lightly. In fact, it’s often best to leave your expectations behind entirely and show up to the feedback conversation with an open heart and the courage to work with whatever unfolds. Next up: and this is one we often forget – do promote self-feedback for your direct reports. Encouraging and again modeling what it means to be a self-reflective manager can help them lean into doing the same. On the don’t side, don’t, in your attempt to encourage them to be self-reflective, don’t force them into demoralizing comparisons. If there’s a colleague or person in the world who you think they could learn from, rather than framing it harshly like “You really need to learn from Everett. He’s your same pay grade and he never messes it up like this.” You can shift it to something like “I see your audience engaged when you shift attention from what’s on your slides to more extemporaneous sharing your story. It makes me think you and Everett could partner up to improve each other’s presentations as I know he could use some help on the slides and I think he may have some great tips for you on how he goes off script.” Our final do here is do continue being a student of communications. That’s the game we’re in as feedback givers. You are doing this by taking this course, you can do this by continuing to put your feedback reps in at work, and you can do it by reading many of the great books out there – including Nonviolent Communications, Dare to Lead, Thanks for the Feedback, and The Fearless Organization. All of which I’ll link to in the description. And our final don’t – don’t think you’re all good and that you’re the feedback guru just because you read a few good books. I learn something new every day about feedback and I invite you to stay on the same journey. One final tip about giving feedback: it’s important to consider feelings. Yes, by that I mean: how do you want the feedback receiver to feel after you’ve delivered the feedback? Check out this wheel to be reminded of our complexity of human emotions. Do you think constructive feedback is more likely to be adopted and set the recipient on a growth path if after they receive it they feel, say, inspired and respected or if they feel exposed and frustrated? Not all, not nearly all, of what they may feel in a feedback session is under your control, but you do play a role here and it’s important to keep that in mind. For more information about the fascinating and complex landscape of our emotions, check out the Atlas of Emotions (atlasofemotions.org), a collaboration between the Dalai Lama and emotion scientist Dr. Paul Ekman. Well team, that’s a wrap on Module Number Four: Giving Feedback. I’ll see you over in the next module.
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In my life, feedback has been 0/4

Empowering
Belittling
Affirming
Confusing
Harsh
Vague
Transformative
Necessary
Anxiety-Inducing
Rare
Frequent
Unfair

“Feedback is not merely a transaction of words; it can be the mirror through which we view our potential. To master it is to commit to a lifelong excavation of the self—wringing wisdom from every experience until growth becomes inevitable.”

See More Feedback Quotes
05

How to
Receive
Feedback

I’ve had a very nonlinear career journey — ranging from being a mixed martial artist paid to get into a cage to fight another human to being a poet and investigative journalist covering human rights issues.

Entering these different fields has allowed me to see feedback from all sorts of angles, and I’ve come to realize that receiving feedback is how I’ve improved in every element of my life.

In mixed martial arts, feedback could be a literal punch in the face. In poetry, feedback could be somebody writing in red pen all over a poem I just put my heart and soul into. During my time as a team leader at Cisco, great feedback came from all parts of the organization.

In each of these fields, I was able to see what excellent and terrible feedback looked like, including the gray in between.

“There is a substantial literature on how to deliver feedback to change performance. However, to date no research has been conducted on teaching employees how to effectively receive feedback.”
Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 2020

Despite all of the research I’ve done and the experiences I’ve had, I still feel my heart racing with anxiety when I need to step into a quarterly performance review.

Part of what fascinates me about constructive feedback communication is precisely this struggle — no matter how much I think I understand, there’s always something to learn. It continues to challenge me in ways that help me understand myself and what it means to be human.

4 As of Receiving Feedback
Figure 5.1: The 4 A’s of Receiving Feedback
Hi there and welcome to Module One in our Constructive Feedback course. Let’s now work through How to Receive Feedback Effectively. I want to start this module by acknowledging that many of us feedback receivers have received some pretty condescending advice in this regard, mostly through the many popular articles out there telling us, essentially, that receiving feedback is mostly about smiling, saying thank you, and making eye contact. If you’re lucky, you may have found an article talking about active listening. In essence, these articles put the feedback giver on a pedestal and speak down to us feedback receivers. They make it appear as though being perceived as receiving feedback is more important than actually receiving feedback. Unfortunately, this power dynamic also plays out across much of the academic literature about feedback. Consider this quote from a paper in 2020: “There is a substantial literature on how to deliver feedback to change performance, however to date, no research has been conducted on teaching employees how to effectively receive feedback.” Now, to be fair, there is research out there about receiving feedback – particularly in helping students do so – but the authors of this paper highlight a significant gap in the literature and I wanted you to be aware of it. So if you’ve received such condescending advice or otherwise just haven’t found practical insights to help you receive feedback, welcome. We’re going to take a far different approach here. Now I know we’ve talked a lot about the perils of making assumptions in this course. But I am going to assume that, generally, you know how to interact with other human beings. With that assumption made known, let’s now explore how to receive the feedback we need to improve as professionals. In my experience, effectively receiving feedback and being able to sustain our ability to do so over a long period of time comes down to two parts. The first is the ability to consciously cultivate curiosity and a growth mindset. There are several elements worth exploring here. First, let’s look at consciously cultivates. Team, this is about intentionally making an effort to do the inner work it takes to change your mind’s habits. As such, it means developing self-awareness. You can do this through various means, including journaling, meditation, and even therapy, but you may find it quite difficult to begin to develop an inner world that better serves you if you aren’t first taking the time to explore how it’s serving you right now. Let’s now look at curiosity. Earlier in this course, we mentioned Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s long-time trainer. Tim has a quote that has stuck with me for some time now. He said, “Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.” I’ll say that again. “Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.” Now, as with all quotes, this may not apply to every situation, but in my experience there’s a truth in there as it relates to receiving feedback. For example, how is it that the greatest artists and musicans and mathematicians and scientists and writers and athletes… how is it that the folks who have reached greatness in their field keep working on their craft day in and day out – which is often what it takes to be great? One might say, as Tim’s quote does, that they are obsessed. But what’s behind that obsession? If you peel that layer back, you’ll find a lot of things, I mean a lot of things, but very often one of them is relentless curiosity. It’s this curiosity that allows us to care about the small details. Yes, one might say to sweat the details, rather than only look at the larger pictures. In this sense, those considered the great of their domain – whether it’s a sushi chef or a fashion designer – tend to see their craft as a mosaic in which they are fascinated and curious by every piece that goes into it. So, as feedback receivers, we can build a similar mindset. We can set out on this path. Wee might ask: “What is it that I want to improve in?” And then a follow-up question would be: “If what we want to improve in we’re a mosaic, how many of the pieces that go into it are we aware of? And of those pieces we know, how are we working to improve in them?” Lastly, let’s look at growth mindset. As I covered in a video on the Five Feedback Myths, many variables come into play when we receive feedback – and one of them has to do with whether we are more inclined to have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. We know from the work of Professor Carol Dweck, you’ll find a link to her book titled, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in the description, that those of us with a fixed mindset – that is those of us who are inclined to believe that our intelligence and abilities are fixed – tend to experience receiving feedback as if we failed a critical test. After all, if we believe our qualities are fixed we will likely work hard to portray them as perfect, and feedback rattles this sense of perfection, often causing us feedback receivers to become defensive, even ignore great feedback, and generally feel pretty terrible. Those with a growth mindset, that is, those who are inclined to see their intelligence and abilities as qualities that by their nature can be improved through effort, tend to experience receiving feedback as a valuable and even an exciting opportunity to grow. Billie Jean King’s quote from earlier in the course about how she sees every mistake as feedback is a great example of a growth mindset. As with curiosity, for many of us it takes work to shift our mind into this new way of being. The second part to effectively receiving feedback is about applying these qualities to serve a continuous pursuit of personal and professional development. We can spend all the time in the world shifting our mind’s habits to better serve us, and this indeed can have a host of benefits, but we also need to bring these mindset shifts out into the world and into our relationships. For the late Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant, this meant going to what he called “GOAT Mountain,” with GOAT standing for Greatest Of All Time. Kobe approached six all-time great basketball players and sought feedback about how to improve. He picked their brain about every minute detail of the game, from their mindset to what they ate. In other words, Kobe had cultivated a growth mindset and then put a disciplined plan in place for how to use this mindset to go around collecting the most constructive feedback he could find. So if we were to label these two parts of receiving feedback, it might look like this, with the first part being about Mindset and the second about Action. The next point I want to highlight here has to do with where feedback comes from. Too often, I see folks who are early in their journey of taking feedback seriously seem to think it only comes from their manager. With this lens, it’s easy to become a passive feedback receiver, which is exactly the opposite of what we want. So, first up, you could receive feedback from yourself. You may have noticed your mind can be incessant about calling attention to areas where you aren’t good enough or don’t stack up to others. Again, through cultivating self-awareness and mindfulness, you can begin to leverage this self- feedback for your benefit rather than letting it spiral out of control into harsh and unhelpful looping criticism. Additionally, you can receive feedback from your body. We tend to think the mind is the only place wisdom can arise, but our body is a teacher. In one obvious example: it’s not our mind that tells us there’s something off about how we are sitting at work. It’s our body, often through an ache in the neck or back. We’ll explore the body in a bit more detail later in the course. And second, you can receive feedback from others. But I want you to expand your sense of what others means here. Others can be your manager, but it can also be any of your colleagues, or your friends and family members, or automated systems and bots. Others simply means from anyone or anything outside of yourself. And keep in mind that others doesn’t necessarily mean someone says something to you. You can seek feedback from others through what’s called “Indirect Feedback Seeking,” which simply means observing some qualities in others, comparing that to your own, and using that comparison as a point of feedback for how you might be able to improve. So now that you have a sense of the Mindset and the need for Action as a feedback receiver, and where feedback comes from, let’s ensure you are looking out for the right things – in other words, let’s ensure you have a sense of what Effective Feedback typically looks like. At a high level, feedback is most effective when it takes place within a relationship that feels psychologically safe. Psychological safety comes from the work of Amy Edmonson, and in a team environment it essentially means all members of the team have a shared sense that it’s safe to ask questions, bring up concerns, disagree, put forth ideas, and even admit mistakes. In other words, these important forms of communication have not just a place but a valued place and they aren’t met with negative consequences. It takes a lot of work to build such an environment for feedback, and we’ll cover some of that in Module 6. Feedback is also typically effective when the mindsets of the feedback giver and the feedback receiver are positive and aligned. As in: both parties are stepping into the relationship with respect and empathy for each other, with a pure intention, and with the goal of development. As you can likely guess, effective feedback is specific and constructive – not just a call out. As one article in Harvard Business Review puts it: “Telling people they are missing the mark is not the same as helping them hit the mark.” What you’re looking for in effective feedback is not overly vague statements like great work, or even “You need to improve your project management skills,” but the next level that come after these statements, something like: “Here are a few things I loved about your latest effort” or “The latest projects you’ve been working on missed our deadlines. Is there anything I can do to help? How would you recommend we improve in this regard?” And as we will cover in future modules, feedback is most effective when the receiver has time to process and integrate it into their life or workflow. Here’s a way, inspired by Edmondson’s work, to visualize when feedback coming your way might be the most effective kind. We have helpfulness on one axis and empathy on the other. Typically the best feedback is upper right. It’s very helpful and it’s delivered by a person who can truly understand what the receiver needs and is sensitive to how the receiver may need feedback to be delivered. As you can see from the Maybe Learning Zone, learning can still happen with feedback that isn’t delivered from that place of empathy but it can just as likely be disregarded due to the poor delivery or lack of trust that may arise based on how it was delivered. A related point to note here: a 2017 study showed that leaders who scored higher on empathy tests were better at giving constructive feedback but, get this, a 2022 study showed that their own performance was less effective after delivering feedback because doing so took an emotional tool on them. You’ll also notice here that feedback that isn’t very helpful and isn’t delivered with empathy is more likely to cause anxiety than any kind of professional development. And that feedback that is pure empathy without much helpfulness, as can often be the case with feedback givers who are conflict-averse, isn’t likely to achieve anything great as it will mostly be keeping things comfortable and as they are. Okay, let’s switch gears a bit and think about being in the moment of receiving constructive feedback. What can you do? How can you best handle that moment? Should you smile and say thank you and all that? Well, here’s how I see it. The first thing you should do is bring attention to your breath. Receiving feedback can stir emotions. Coming back to our breath before, during, and after receiving feedback can help us receive it with grace and feel grateful for the gift – even if it’s a gift we may choose not to use. The second thing you can do is feel into your best self. You know who that person is. Bring them out. Don’t worry about smiling or performing certain acts, just consciously bring your best self to the experience and you will know what to do. You’ll likely leave the conversation feeling far better about how you showed up. Lastly, and sort of a bonus tip here: When feedback comes out of nowhere it can be helpful to have what I call a Feedback Fallback Phrase. This is a phrase you can use after you’ve received feedback you need time to process. If you receive feedback about fixing a typo, for example, you don’t really need a feedback fallback phrase. A simple: “Thank you for catching that. I’ll make the edit as soon as possible will suffice.” But for feedback that feels challenging, perhaps because it brought forth your defensiveness or because you aren’t sure you agree with it, it can be helpful to have a phrase that quickly acknowledges receipt of the feedback, grants you space to process, and doesn’t immediately agree or disagree with the feedback. Something I’ve used in the past is: “Got it. I hear what you’re saying and I’ll get back to you on that.” As you approach your journey of receiving feedback, it can be helpful to use what I call The Four A’s of Receiving Feedback. The first A is for Aspire. This is a reminder to keep aspiring by centering your development through curiosity and a growth mindset. If you feel yourself starting to stagnate or otherwise get complacent, come back to this one. The next A is for active. This is about pairing your receiver’s mindset work with action, and it’s also about practicing active listening in the moment when you are receiving feedback. If something isn’t clear to you, ask questions about it. One type of active listening you can practice is called reflective mirroring, where you restate in your own words what you think the feedback giver means. By active listening, you are taking a proactive role in ensuring you fully understand the feedback you just received. The third a, because it’s that important, is Ask. This is a reminder to be a constant feedback seeker, to go get what you need. Ask for clarity. Ask for what you think you need. And put yourself in a position to get what you don’t yet know you need. And lastly we have Accept. Consider this a reminder to eventually accept what you received so you can move on. To accept doesn’t necessarily mean to adopt the feedback, it just means you’ve reached what seems like a final level of clarity and you are now ready to move it to the processing phase, which we will cover in the next module.
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Chapter 6

How to Process
Feedback

Hi there and welcome to Module Two in our Constructive Feedback course. Processing feedback happens as we receive feedback and is the period after where we determine what to do with it. If you’ve received challenging feedback, this processing step is especially important. In this module, we will explore and expand upon my article at Harvard Business Review titled The Right Way to Process Feedback. While I’m not sure of the editorial choice of referring to the way I’ve come up with as “the right way,” you might think of “right” as meaning “appropriate,” as in the right tool for the job. The article resonated with thousands of leaders from seemingly every sector from fighter pilots and yoga instructors to senior business executives and academics. And since the article’s publication I’ve seen many folks now speak to the three elements of feedback: giving, receiving, and now processing. Before we dive in, and to keep centering our theme of understanding the why behind feedback, why did an article on processing feedback resonate with so many people from so many different industries? I think this is partly because the article brought to the main stage a third and critical layer to our understanding of feedback. As we’ve covered, there’s no shortage of content out there about how to give feedback and receive feedback, but mentions of processing feedback rarely get any attention – let alone featured in this way. Additionally, despite my searching, major business Publications like Harvard Business Review haven’t highlighted a process for processing feedback until this piece. This is all the more important because, as Angela Duckworth said, the active processing is as essential as its immediacy. In other words, it’s just as important to be able to process feedback as it is to receive feedback in a timely manner. As I shared in this video, my thinking about processing feedback arose not from some intellectual exercise but because I was really struggling with feedback I had received from my former manager. Long story short, it was stressing me out beyond belief – to the point where I couldn’t sleep and felt sick to my stomach. As I wrestled with this feedback, and allowed it to surface during my meditation practice, I was able to bring awareness to the parts of my thinking that were allowing me to gain some insight into it. And this eventually became The Six Ps of Processing Feedback, which I wrote about in the article. So let’s explore each of those a bit. The first is Poise. So Poise is about holding the feedback you received with neutrality and grace – both in the moment you receive it and thereafter. For anybody who has received constructive feedback that maybe touched on a sore spot, this is easier said than done. Many of us tie some of our personal identity to our work, our performance, and so getting constructive feedback – even if it’s delivered well – can feel like a personal attack and make us want to react. But here neutrality and grace work in tandem to protect you. What does this mean in practice? Step into a feedback session with neutrality – neither enthusiastically agreeing with the feedback nor forcefully rejecting it. You might recall our feedback fallback phrase from the previous module. What this phrase did was allow us to respond to the feedback but do so without either emphatically agreeing or disagreeing with it. In other words, with the neutrality we are talking about here. This approach, in my experience, allows me to be a better listener instead of simply trying to hear the other person with an intent to respond. Also, because I tend to be a bit conflict averse, this approach usually stops me from wanting to please by showing my agreement even before I fully understood. But what if you feel a sense of agreement or disagreement arising within you? That’s fine and natural, but my advice in that moment is to bring awareness to what you’re feeling. There’s no need to act on it yet. If you have questions about the feedback, ask them, but try to do so from that neutral position. One way to do this is through what’s called, reflective listening or mirroring, an important practice we touched on in the previous module. Basically you restate what the feedback provider said but in a slightly different way. For example, if they say you need to get better at delegating tasks more effectively, you might ask something like, “Okay, what I hear you saying is that you think I’m getting stuck in the weeds of work my team could be doing, and that this is limiting my time to think strategically. Is that correct?” The second P is about Process. Avoidance, negative mulling, and immediate acceptance of the feedback usually only prolong processing it and can lead to the feedback’s potential usefulness disintegrating or being held with disdain. This can turn even great feedback into a kind of hardened Play-Doh that is tough to work with. Processing feedback is about metabolizing it. This demands time, sometimes even a week or more depending on the content and nature of the feedback you received, and in my experience doesn’t happen in the moment you receive it. I believe it’s critical to let feedback run through both your body and your mind. That means feeling your feelings and investigating why you may be feeling them. Why is running it through your body important? As books like The Body Keeps the Score have made apparent, our bodies contain an ancient wisdom we fail to gain access to if we don’t listen to it. In the example I shared around challenging feedback from my manager, I tapped into my body by lying flat on the floor, arms and legs extended. This is also known as savasana or the corpse pose in yoga, and it can help bring about a state of awareness and relaxation that calms the nervous system. From that state, I brought to mind the feedback I received. I felt my temples pulse and my fingers start to move from open to more closed, almost beginning to form a fist. It was fascinating – as I observed my body without judgment and without trying to change how it was expressing itself – I realized why this feedback was so challenging. It actually made me feel like my core values were under attack, core values instilled in me by my mother when I was a young boy. I was literally willing to fight to hold on to these values, and the feedback I received was telling me to do the opposite. So the next time you get feedback and are struggling with it, the most helpful thing you can do might just be to lie down and bring mindful awareness to what happens next. What might your body be trying to tell you? Notice if your jaw, fingers, or stomach begin to contract. Notice any changes in your breath and bring awareness to those changes. Keep an open mind and know that tension may not equate to disagreement with the feedback. You may be feeling tense simply because the feedback is spot on, and you’re feeling a bit embarrassed that you didn’t see it for yourself. The goal is to begin working on your feedback devoid of judgment and with an awareness of and gentle investigation of the emotions it may be bringing to the surface. One final note here: if you are at all interested in this type of body-based work, I’d recommend checking out a therapeutic approach called Somatic Experiencing. I’ve worked with a therapist trained in this approach and it dramatically improved my life. The third P is about Positionality. This is where we consider the feedback provider’s motives, position, and intent. When I asked my LinkedIn connections for advice on how they process feedback, Eleanor Stribling, a group product manager, said “We often think of feedback like a mirror on our behavior, but it’s primarily reflecting the needs, values, and impressions of the person giving it.” So you might ask yourself: do you believe the feedback giver genuinely wants to help you? Do you trust them? Gaining a better understanding of where the feedback provider is coming from and how you feel about them will help you develop the objective mindset necessary to work with potential dissonance like great feedback coming from someone you don’t trust. Positionality can go as deep as you find valuable to take it. For example, it could be helpful to understand where the feedback provider is positioned in the organization’s hierarchy, and where they may be feeling pressures. And, although controversial, it could also be helpful to understand your own and their positionality in terms of social identities such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, and location. Feedback research has pointed to a few interesting insights, such as how Black women are nine times more likely to receive non-actionable feedback at work and that women are 20% less likely to receive actionable feedback than men. So positionality as it relates to our social identities matters here, whether we want it to or not – it literally impacts the quality of the feedback we get and therefore our professional development and potentially our career progression. The fourth P is Percolate. This is about running the feedback you received through a simple decision tree, a method to bring consistency and structure to your decision-making process if you feel all over the place and you’re thinking the visual format of a decision tree can help you remain focused as you logically progress through a few critical questions. Here’s what mine looked like. You’ll see I started with “Do I trust the motives of the person who delivered the feedback?” After the body work it was clear that this was very important to me. Regardless of your answer, you can move to another important question: “Does the feedback align to your personal values and professional goals?” Note there are actually two important parts to that question. It will take some deep thinking to understand what your values are and what your professional goals are. Most of the more junior folks I’ve worked with have a great sense of their values but aren’t quite sure of their professional goals. If that’s the case for you, that’s totally fine. In your case, I’d recommend leading this question with a focus on on your values and go from there, making sure that at some point you keep thinking through your professional goals. From there, the decision tree continues, this time split out into a few scenarios. If no to any part of the previous question was the answer, I highly recommend sharing the feedback you received with a trusted colleague or mentor – someone who sees you and can be real with you. I was fortunate enough to have a person like this in my workplace and when I shared the feedback with them their response validated everything I had been feeling. This validation meant the world to me and ultimately was the final signal I needed to discard the feedback entirely. If your answer was yes, you trust the feedback giver, but no the feedback doesn’t align with your values or goals, I still recommend discussing it with others – including, if it feels safe, to do so with the original feedback provider. This step may help you and your giver reach a deeper sense of understanding or even refine the feedback so it works better for you. The next P, our fifth step here, is Proceed. Keep in mind that if adopting the feedback is the way, proceeding to adopt it all at once might not be the best way. For example, let’s say the feedback you received and chose to implement involves being more assertive in meetings. Let’s say you’ve got six meetings lined up for the day. Rather than going all in and showcasing this new assertive side of yourself, I’d recommend the drip approach, perhaps practicing being more assertive during one meeting that day which is on a topic where you have a clear and informed opinion. You can then journal or otherwise take time to reflect on how they went and proceed from there. Think of Proceed as your opportunity to practice developing expertise of a new skill. And forming a habit is more likely to happen with consistent practice over a long period rather than jamming six practice sessions into one day. The slower approach can be especially helpful when the feedback you received was constructive but didn’t necessarily come with a guide for how to incorporate it. And our final P is Perspective. Perspective can be about asking those who you respect and who have seen your new post- feedback performance what they think of it to ensure there isn’t a mismatch between how we perceive our performance and how it’s landing for others. If the colleague you ask doesn’t know it’s something you’ve been working on, you can frame the question like: “I’ve been working on X. Have you noticed any performance changes in this regard? “If the person does know, you might ask something like: “As you know, I’m working on X. Can you let me know if and when you see improvements in this regard?” Regarding Perspective, I’d also recommend journaling your experiences so that you understand how it’s landing with others and how it feels to you. Earlier I mentioned practicing during one of your six meetings for the day. In this example, I want to highlight again how helpful it can be to reflect on how that practice went. If your attempt to be more assertive was exhausting because you’re an introvert, capture that in your journal. Over time, you may start to notice patterns and gain a better perspective on how to improve in the ways you want while protecting your energy to stay motivated for the long haul. Lastly, with Perspective, I recommend casting your gaze wide so you are observing others who seem to be doing great in the area you are trying to improve in. When we commit to improving in something, whatever that something is, it can be helpful to see what a future state might look like. Although I prefer to use the order outlined here: Poise, Process, Positionality, Percolate, Proceed, and Perspective – it’s also possible to pursue the six Ps in a different order. You may, for example, already have a sense of the change you want to make. In this case, you could begin directly at Percolate or even Proceed and progress from there. Lastly, have some fun with this! Not all professional development must be paired with a formula, but I found it can be a joy to take something like implementing received feedback and looking back over time at how you’ve practiced, how the practice went, and what new perspectives you’ve gathered along the way. So that’s a wrap on Module Two, team. I’ll see you over at Module 3.
1Poise

Hold the feedback with neutrality and grace. Avoid immediately reacting, agreeing, or disagreeing. Use a fallback phrase to buy time.

2Process

Metabolize the feedback. Let it run through your body and mind. Feel the emotions without judgment before taking action.

3Positionality

Consider the giver’s motives, power dynamics, and social identities. Does their feedback reflect your needs or their values?

4Percolate

Use a decision tree. Do you trust the giver? Does it align with your goals? Decide what to keep and what to discard.

5Proceed

Adopt the “drip approach.” Don’t change everything at once. Practice the new skill in small, low-stakes environments first.

6Perspective

Check in with trusted colleagues. Ask if they’ve noticed your improvements. Journal your progress to see the long view.

SOURCELinkedIn Analytics
PUBLISHERHarvard Business Review
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RESONANCE247+ Shares
Feedback Decision Tree

Think back to a time when you struggled with feedback you received.

What emotions do you associate with this experience?

Those emotions are trailheads to insight.

By understanding what they are trying to teach you, you can position yourself to learn from that feedback… and give the kind of feedback that can change lives.

Click to Proceed →
Chapter 7

How to Use
Feedback

Okay, let’s say you’ve received some challenging negative feedback. Maybe it stirred up some emotions. But you’ve embraced your inner feedback wisdom and took time to process it.

Now what? How do you begin integrating it?

Welcome to the rarely-discussed world of actually using feedback! While much feedback is quick to implement (like fixing a typo), we are addressing the type that takes effort—like changing a behavior pattern.

If something has worked for you in the past, there’s a comfortable history with it. Changing it is like Steph Curry rebuilding his jump shot form—it might feel worse before it gets better.

Hi there and welcome to Module 3 in our Constructive Feedback course.

Now that we’ve received and processed our feedback, it’s time to think about how we use it. At this point in the course we’ve developed an understanding of what feedback is and why it’s important, and we’ve also discussed a few of the challenges that can arise and how to mitigate some of those challenges.

From there, we started to build the pieces of a kind of constructive feedback assembly line. We learned how to receive constructive feedback, including feedback that may be especially challenging to us. But it was here where we realized that receiving feedback does not necessarily mean making a decision about it. We split out the receiving of feedback from our next step, processing it.

So let’s say we’ve used some of the tools in Module 2 to effectively process that feedback and in leveraging the six Ps and the feedback decision tree. Let’s say we’ve now decided that we are going to adopt the feedback – that is, we’ve decided that we can grow professionally if we adopt it. It’s now time to integrate it into our work life.

But as with all parts of this course, it’s worth being strategic here. As feedback researchers have made clear: feedback is perhaps the most powerful lever for our professional growth, but the results can vary due to its complexity. Fortunately, the work you’ve done up to this point by receiving and processing has served as a kind of filtering mechanism, and you may find that in some ways actually using the feedback is the easiest part. As such, this module will be a little shorter than the others as we’ll walk through a framework to help us use the feedback.

So our GROWTH model begins with G with G standing for Game Plan. Just as you’ve carefully and mindfully received and processed the feedback, now it’s time to do the same with using it. Creating a Game Plan has several meanings. First, it’s about building out a strategy for how you’re going to adopt this feedback. You might set a SMART goal here with SMART standing for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Next, we move to R with R standing for Reflect. As you progress, it will be important to Reflect on how you’re progressing. You may have days when you feel you made leaps and bounds of progress whereas other days may feel like two steps back. Over time, through reflection, whether through journaling or some other means, you’ll begin to see patterns that can both help ensure you are staying on a path to growth and inspire you by showing you how even the small moments of progress all add up.

From there, we can move to O with O standing for Ownership. Throughout the process of adopting challenging constructive feedback, it’s important for you to keep in mind that this journey is yours to own. Yes, the feedback may have come from someone else but you are not necessarily adopting it for them. This is for you. You own it. You own the journey of it. Seeing yourself as the owner can allow you to tend to your growth with more care and more consistency.

We then move to W with W standing for Wonder. If the Game of Game Plan didn’t resonate with you, here’s to Wonder serving that purpose. At every step along the way, try to to see your path to improvement with a beginner’s mind, with a sense of wonder. Wonder is what allows some of the world’s greatest to remain fascinated by the details of their craft, details that many others may overlook, details that, if developed, can catapult growth.

Our next letter is T with T standing for Test. At various points along the way, it can be helpful to test your progress, perhaps in new environments. To continue with our public speaking example, let’s say your confidence is growing at Toastmasters. A new test for you might be to ask your manager if there might be any internal speaking opportunities in the coming weeks, or if she might be supportive of you applying to speak at an upcoming industry event.

And lastly we have H with H standing for Habit. Learning about all the public speaking skills in the world won’t necessarily lead to you becoming a better public speaker. However, turning a few critical skills into a habit could create some remarkable results. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits writes, “All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger.”

So team, that’s the GROWTH model for using feedback. Similar to the quote from Billie Jean King we talked about earlier in the course, you might think of feedback equaling growth as a way to remember both the importance of feedback and our model here.

The G.R.O.W.T.H. Model

G Game Plan
+ Reveal Strategy
Game Plan
Build a strategy. Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). Treat it like a game—bring joy and curiosity to the challenge.
R Reflect
+ Reveal Strategy
Reflect
Journal your progress. Some days will feel like leaps forward, others like steps back. Reflection helps you see the patterns and stay inspired.
O Ownership
+ Reveal Strategy
Ownership
This journey is yours. You aren’t just doing it for them; you are doing it for your own growth. Own the process and seek feedback on your progress.
W Wonder
+ Reveal Strategy
Wonder
Adopt a beginner’s mind. Be fascinated by the details of your craft. Wonder allows you to see nuances others overlook.
T Test
+ Reveal Strategy
Test
Put your new skills to the test in new environments. Ask for opportunities to practice your improved performance in real scenarios.
H Habit
+ Reveal Strategy
Habit
Turn the skill into a habit. Once it becomes second nature—something you no longer have to think about—you are ready to tackle the next challenge.
Quick Hits

Feedback in 60 Seconds

What is Feedback?

What is Feedback?

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Feedback

Women Get 20% Less Feedback

Women Get 20% Less Feedback

Managers Avoid Feedback

37% of Managers Avoid Giving Feedback

19 Words To Improve

19 Words To Improve Feedback

COIN Framework

The COIN Feedback Framework

Feedback Sandwich

Should You Use The Feedback Sandwich?

Recency Bias

Recency Bias in Feedback

Psychological Safety

Feedback and Psychological Safety

Science of Negative Feedback

The Science of Negative Feedback

Employees Quit

17% of Employees Quit Due to Feedback

Directive vs Guide

Feedback as Directive vs. Guide

Chapter 8

How to Ask
For Feedback

(And Why You Should)

Hi there and welcome to Module 5 where we will cover why asking for feedback is so important and how to go about doing it. Asking for feedback is perhaps the most effective way to get the feedback you need. As we covered in Module 3 as it relates to using feedback, asking for feedback is an act of ownership – it’s you intentionally breaking what is in many places a business world norm of passively waiting for feedback – and going after it to get what you need. We’ve mentioned Kobe Bryant throughout this course. Kobe had Phil Jackson as a coach, one of the greatest basketball coaches in history. Kobe certainly could have been a passive recipient of Coach Jackson’s feedback. Indeed, I’m sure many who have played for Coach Jackson did just that. But Kobe went to the next level. He received feedback from Coach Jackson, but as we covered, it didn’t end there. He also sought feedback from what he called GOAT Mountain, a group of six of the greatest living players. In the academic literature on feedback, this type of behavior is referred to as “Feedback- Seeking-Behavior ,abbreviated as FSB. You can think of feedback-seeking behavior as referring to how individuals seek feedback either by reading the actions of others to infer what it means – in other words, to get feedback purely through observation, or by explicitly asking others for feedback. This concept came to prominence thanks to this classic paper in 1983 by Susan Ashford and LL Cummings. This paper, to my understanding, was the first to really go deep in an exploration of what it means for feedback recipients in the workplace to play a major and proactive role, to truly be owners of their professional development. This all leads to what they write here, that FSB is “proposed as an important component of the feedback process.” Earlier in the paper, the researchers first set the scene for why feedback is important. They write: “The positive effect of feedback on performance has been an accepted psychological principle since at least the early 1950s.” Among the paper’s many insights on the importance of asking for feedback, and the paper does suggest that feedback receivers should ask for feedback more often, I want to bring our attention to a few particularly compelling passages. The authors state that these arguments “suggest that it may benefit both individual and organizations to not only give subordinates more feedback” and recall here some of the research we covered in the giving feedback module about how many managers completely avoid giving constructive feedback at all “as the current literature suggests, but also to improve the use of inquiry as a FSB strategy.” In other words, to promote the use of asking for feedback as a strategic tool in the workplace. They go on to say that such a promotion can best be achieved by attempting to reduce some of the risk and effort costs involved in this strategy. In other words, the culture matters. If there’s psychological safety it will be far easier for everybody in the organization to engage in feedback seeking behavior because the team or department or even the entire organization will see it as a proactive act of growth. Managers, they say, can play a major role in manipulating the shared meaning of this act. Rather than a sign of weakness and uncertainty, asking for feedback could come to represent a confident desire to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses. Note how the authors specifically call out strengths here. We’ve covered it throughout this course, but I can’t reiterate it enough. Knowing your strengths is often just as and sometimes more important than understanding your weaknesses. A great ballet dancer, for example, could not have become great if they spent most of their time trying to shore up their weakness in geometry. Or, to get even more specific, they wouldn’t have been able to carve out their unique and differentiated strengths as a ballet dancer – perhaps their incredible ability to maintain posture and balance during dynamic pirouettes – if they spent most of their time trying to leap further. If you’re interested in learning more about the importance of strengths, you might check out a book called Strengths-Based Leadership. I’ll link to it in the description. The authors of our paper on FSB here conclude with “opening up this channel of feedback will allow employees to obtain more accurate appraisals of their work at the times when such appraisals are most valuable.” Lastly, let’s look at one other passage from this paper. “The perspective presented here is also beneficial in that it more accurately reflects how individuals actually acquire and respond to feedback in their organizational lives. In situations where no verbal feedback is being given, our perspective argues that the individual is processing environmental cues and is deriving feedback information from them.” In other words, even in environments where nobody is providing feedback, feedback still remains. They continue with “second, it is probably accurate to conceive of the individual as having several goals in his or her organizational life beyond present performance, and that each of these goals may serve as the organizing function of FSB.” In other words, as a feedback receiver you would do well to ask for feedback on a range of topics – from specific feedback directly tied to the task you are currently working on to perhaps more general feedback around how you may need to develop to move within your company from a director to a Vice President. Even if we move out of the 1980s and into the modern era, we still find research highlighting the powerful role of asking for feedback. Consider this quote from a paper in 2022 titled Learning Leadership and Feedback Seeking Behavior: Leadership That Spurs Feedback Seeking. “Lifelong learning is crucial for professionals to continuously develop and update their knowledge and skills, and for organizations to create and sustain competitive advantage. In this regard, feedback-seeking is a powerful vehicle to gain new knowledge and insights in one’s development and performance.” Okay, so let’s jump out of the research and into how to go about asking for feedback. First, come at this with a pure intention. What do I mean by that? Well, you may have experienced someone who seeks your feedback not necessarily to learn but to quickly get your approval so they can move forward with a project. That’s not really asking for feedback. Or, similarly, some seek feedback as a way to appease someone or to perform humility. In other words, it’s more about the performance of being perceived as a humble feedback seeker than it is about gaining new knowledge and insights. So, to the extent possible, try to seek feedback genuinely and not with hidden motives. Number two: ask your manager. This seems simple enough but it doesn’t happen as often as it should. And remember that you don’t need to wait until a quarterly performance review to do this, you might even start next week by saying to your manager “Hey. I’ve been watching a course on feedback and since we’ve been working together for insert time period, I’d like to get your feedback on how I’m doing, maybe what you see as my strengths and areas for growth.” Number three, and this is especially true if you are a people manager, you should be regularly asking your team either via a survey, directly going individual by individual, or even going to the group after a project – if the latter you can pull everybody together after a project and ask how they think it went, what worked, and where you might have been able to do a better job as their leader. When this works, and it often does, you will both be receiving great feedback and also modeling for your team what feedback-seeking behavior looks like. Number four is about indirect feedback seeking. Study those in your field or beyond who inspire you. Maybe you see those folks shining on LinkedIn or you saw them wow an audience at an industry conference or you’ve been reading their blog for years. Rather than merely be inspired, see them as a case study worth really digging into. What qualities do they bring to the table that you admire? What are their strengths? And is there anything about their strengths that you may be able to learn from to improve your own strengths or weaknesses? Number five is about establishing peer-to-peer relationships, either within your organization or beyond. The research on peer-to-peer feedback is vast and it suggests that we can learn as much or more from meeting with a few peers than we can from meeting with with our manager. If you’re a digital marketer in a large organization, for example, you might reach out to another digital marketer at your same level who works on a completely different part of the business – perhaps you set up a monthly one-to-one conversation to share insights with each other. You might also join an organization in your skill domain. This will connect you with a variety of peers who likely have a similar skill set but have learned to apply it across different sectors. Again, this could be a great opportunity to get feedback. And, lastly, although there are plenty of other ways, ask for feedback after you interview somewhere. Although some on interview panels aren’t allowed to share their feedback, many are willing if you really push for it. This type of feedback can be especially helpful because this interviewer likely knows the type of talent they need and has perhaps already interviewed many other folks. Their feedback can help you see how you stack up in your field. I’ve personally provided feedback to a few folks who I had great interviews with but who for various reasons didn’t fit what I was looking for. On several occasions, these folks sent me a response about how my feedback meant the world to them and will help both with their development and in their future interviews. Okay team, that concludes Module 5: Asking for Feedback. I’ll see you over at our final module.

Asking for feedback is an act of ownership. It is you intentionally breaking the business norm of passively waiting for feedback and going after what you need.

We’ve touched on “Feedback-Seeking Behavior” (FSB) in previous chapters, but here we’ll go deeper. Asking for feedback matters because it sets you up to receive insights others might be too afraid to share, and it builds collaboration into a habit.

When you bring a wholesome intention to seeking feedback, you generally ask the right people at the right time.

The Feedback Vault: Power Questions

“What is one thing I could do differently to have more impact?” COPIED!
“Can I get your feedback on my recent project performance?” COPIED!
“What strengths do you see me bringing to the team?” COPIED!
“Is there anything I might be missing in my approach?” COPIED!

6 Strategies for Seeking Feedback

Pure Intention

Don’t seek feedback just to appease someone or perform humility. Come at this with a genuine desire to learn, not just to get approval.

Ask Your Manager

Don’t wait for the quarterly review. Ask next week. “I’d like to get your feedback on how I’m doing, specifically regarding my strengths.”

Ask Your Team

If you lead people, ask them how a project went and how you could have led better. This models healthy behavior for the whole group.

Indirect Seeking

Study the greats in your field. Treat them as case studies. What strengths do they have that you can reverse engineer?

Peer Relationships

Research suggests we learn as much from peers as managers. Find someone at your level in a different department and swap insights.

Post-Interview

Push for feedback after job interviews. They know the talent market best and can tell you exactly where you stack up.

Chapter 9 • The Finale

Creating a Feedback Culture

Hi there and welcome to Module 6, the final module in our course on Constructive Feedback.

The topic here, building a feedback culture, is a big one worthy of an entire book, but I’ll work to address as many points as I can without repeating too much from earlier in the course. For those, who may have stumbled on this video rather than the course, I’ll pause here just to say that while I think you’ll find value in Module 6 here, if you are serious about improving your feedback culture at work, I’d highly recommend starting at the beginning of the course this module is part of as you’ll build some foundational knowledge that will make everything we’re about to cover here make sense on a much deeper level.

Okay, so we’re going to break this module down into five parts. Part one will be to look at a Feedback Relationship Model so we have a visual way to understand how the many dimensions of feedback we’ve covered in this course relate to each other. From there, we’ll move to an in-depth exploration of feedback literacy, a concept we’ve mentioned a few times throughout the course but haven’t unpacked. If some part of your role involves building a feedback culture, and I’d argue that everyones is, then a large part of what you will be doing is working to improve the feedback literacy of yourself and others. As such, it makes sense that we understand what feedback literacy is.

In part three, we’ll keep working with feedback literacy, this time exploring some practical ways we can develop in each of its three foundational areas. In part four, we’ll dive into feedback culture – including an exploration of the ways in which we can categorize the various feedback types that exist within a culture. This will take some of the information we covered throughout the course and give you a new way to look at it so you’re able to think about feedback at the organizational level. And in part five, our last part and a fitting close to the course since we opened with a mention of how Slack made feedback the epicenter of its effort to grow into a $1 billion company, we will cast our gaze beyond the constructive feedback that occurs between individuals at work and towards organizational feedback systems – the ways in which organizations as a whole can be strategic in how they receive and process customer feedback and market feedback.

After all, for constructive feedback between employees to continue having the ability to even exist, the larger organization must be effective at leveraging feedback so it can stay alive and competitive as a business.

Okay, so let’s begin with exploring the feedback relationship model. At the core, we begin with feedback literacy. If you recall, this is your capacity to effectively give, receive, ask for, process, and use feedback – all of the things. Think of it as the collection of all the pieces we’ve covered in this course, whether you are having a challenging conversation with a direct report whose performance is pulling your team down, or are learning from audience survey results that the presentation you spent months preparing didn’t land well, or are preparing to ask a colleague in your field if she might be open to serving as your mentor, or are working diligently to integrate the audience’s feedback you received into your next performance. All of these are part of the feedback relationship and are actually opportunities, what you’ll hear me referring to as experiences, that can allow us to improve our feedback literacy by putting the reps in.

So before we move forward here, I want to call attention to the openings and the lines of this model, the dots that you see here. This represents each element of the feedback relationship holding its own space, with the dotted lines representing fluidity as each element can influence and be influenced by the other. Also notice that there are three levels to this porous nature. In our initial view here, this would mean that what we are describing as the total set of our feedback literacy can leak out to impact other areas. Likewise, those other areas can leak into our feedback literacy. So here is how it works, starting from the inside out. Feedback literacy is at the core because it contains everything and, although developing it takes being in relationship with others, it is an individual capacity we can develop.

Extending from this core individual capacity are the specific feedback skills we’ve covered in our time together. So you’ll see in the next level here we have giving, receiving, processing, and generally experiencing feedback. Let experiencing here be a reminder to get into the arena. As we said earlier, we can intellectualize and read about feedback all day long and yet still not make much progress toward the development of our overall feedback literacy. All of these parts then extend into the enclosed outer layer of the feedback culture. While elements outside of the feedback culture can impact the culture, and while the feedback culture you are primarily part of can leak out to positively or negatively influence other cultures, we enclose it here so we can focus our thinking on it.

In my experience of feedback at work, while we are part of multiple feedback cultures, there’s usually one that we typically inhabit and influence most. As we progress here, you might think about which culture that is for you. Perhaps your direct team or the team you work closest with or, depending on your environment, the primary feedback culture may simply be the relationship you have with a colleague or two. If you are leading some feedback training for your team or organization you may find, as I do, that this visualization makes it far easier to discuss feedback in general and each part in particular. It also helps to break down some of the boundaries we have with feedback – where we put certain folks into certain camps. This visual shows that we’re all working towards improving the same core even if as individuals we have differences in terms of how our time is spread across the different feedback parts.

One last point about culture here: it is both an expression of and a contributor to a group’s feedback literacy. When managers receive advice to build a healthy feedback culture, they can now see this means recognizing existing elements of the culture that may not be as developed and modeling and otherwise helping their team develop the skills that feed into feedback literacy. For example, a manager may find on their team that folks are excellent at receiving feedback, but upon thinking it through further it could just be that their team basically says yes to all feedback as soon as they get it. This can often be the case on teams with very early in career colleagues. If this is the case, you might highlight their openness to receiving feedback as a strength while also letting them know you also want their thoughts about it before they move to adopt it. You might also find other areas where they can develop it. For example, perhaps they can be more proactive by asking for feedback rather than only waiting for it, or perhaps they can begin to flex their muscle to give feedback to you or in peer-to-peer relationships where they can share feedback with others in areas most closely aligned to their greatest skill. For example, you might have an early in career but incredible copywriter on your team provide feedback to others who aren’t as strong in writing. These types of lighter touch feedback relationships can help early in career colleagues begin to build feedback confidence.

Okay, let’s now move to part two, developing a deeper understanding of feedback literacy. Let’s say in the morning you saw the smiles of your colleagues and many heart emojis on your screen as you virtually presented quarterly results to your global team. In the afternoon you receive a note from a regional manager who felt their territory wasn’t given the time it deserved in your presentation. That evening, to power through getting some extra work done, you have a cup of matcha – I’m a big matcha fan here – but let’s say you have it a bit later than usual and you struggle to sleep at night because of it. I have definitely done that on many occasions. In her book, Feedback Fundamentals and Evidence-Based Practices, industrial psychologist Dr. Brodie Riordan refers to these types of moments as feedback events, and she leads the reader through an inventory of 25 she captured just on a typical day in her life. Dr Riordan’s point was to challenge our idea of feedback as primarily what happens during the quarterly performance review by showing us that feedback is literally all around us. Once we bring awareness to the ubiquitous nature of feedback, we can begin to see its stunning dimensionality and modes of expression – how it includes not only the traditional manager to employee direct feedback relationship but also the subtle non-verbal gesture of your colleague, the self-reflective feedback that arises from observational learning as you compare your performance next to the performance of someone you admire, and even the wisdom of your body as your nervous system kicks in to try to protect you when you’re stressed.

Feedback literacy encompasses all of these elements. The concept of feedback literacy has roots in the world of education where it primarily focuses on students receiving and adopting feedback. As I’ve brought the term into organizations by expanding the concept to include the capacity of all people to effectively give, receive, ask for, process and use feedback, something magical has happened – the dismantling of the invisible walls that too often separate groups of givers and receivers. When this happens, managers at all levels are able to take a more holistic approach to developing their feedback capabilities. They see themselves not as purely feedback givers but as on the endless path to becoming more feedback literate – with giving as only one dimension. Individual contributors who once felt disempowered and merely passive recipients in the feedback process now understand the challenges their managers may have in giving them feedback and feel more confident in exhibiting feedback seeking behavior. And, perhaps most importantly, introducing feedback literacy creates a common language and a common ground for all employees to recognize that feedback is multi-dimensional and an ongoing developmental path that everybody is on.

Through conversation, leaders can create an individualized approach to help employees begin building their feedback literacy. Getting it into a development plan is important for integrating learning into each employees workflow. Beyond introducing the concept of feedback literacy, I found it helpful to visualize what I see as its three primary developmental areas. I’ve also found it helpful to provide a brief glimpse into what each area means and then allow the individual to take it to the next level regarding how it might apply to their development.

So here’s how we can think about each part of feedback literacy. We start with feedback literacy at the core as it develops at the intersection of each part. In one part we have the intrapersonal – this refers to the skills within our own mind, including those involving self-awareness, open-mindedness and emotional intelligence. How we’re able to bring awareness to and work with our ever-changing emotional states. In this sense, it can be said that the intrapersonal serves as the foundation for how we enter into feedback relationships. In my experience, if things are chaotic in our inner worlds that will likely manifest in our outer worlds – often in ways we don’t expect. From there, we move to the other side of our venn diagram, with interpersonal. If intra is our inner and individual state, inter can be seen as the outer and relational state. Interpersonal refers to the relational skills – including those comprising verbal and non-verbal communication. These enable practices like active listening that are critical for developing feedback literacy. At this point, you may be wondering – it seems there’s a connection between intrapersonal and interpersonal and that a relatively stable inner state would be needed to engage in authentic active listening… you are correct! These qualities not only feed into feedback literacy, they feed into each other.

From there, we move to the top of the diagram with experiential. This is about the feedback experiences we have across our personal and professional lives. As we’ve said, we must pursue meaningful feedback experiences in order to improve not only in our craft but in our feedback capabilities. The primary way we’ve covered to be proactive about this aspect of our development is to ask for feedback wherever and whenever you think you need it. Let’s now move to how we can develop each of these parts. Let’s start with a cleaner view of our diagram and then break it apart.

Okay, we can begin with intrapersonal. Self-awareness is a vital dimension of intrapersonal skills and self-reflection can effectively build this capacity. Through practice, we can develop a heightened awareness of our emotional states, improving our ability to recognize and be with rather than respond to our emotions will help keep us receptive and grounded during challenging feedback conversations. More often than we know, our inner emotional states can lead to our behaviors, and for many of us, we often exhibit those behaviors without having any real awareness of the underlying emotional state. Through awareness-building practices we can ultimately get a better handle on what we’re feeling, what that feeling feels like, and even what behavior we want to engage in as a result of that feeling. For me personally, when I am lacking awareness I tend to rather intensely pick and bite my nails when I have a feeling of uncertainty about something. Also, without awareness, when I’m scared about the health of a loved one, I find my default behavior is to get something to eat. This distracts me from feeling the underlying feelings of fear and listening to what they may have to teach me. As I recently wrote in a blog post, feelings are trailheads that lead to insight. That is, if we bring awareness to them and gently investigate them they often lead to insights we wouldn’t otherwise have had access access to.

We can also bring awareness to our inner chatter and in doing so begin to build an inner system of talking to ourselves that better serves us. Dr Rick Hanson, a psychologist who offers a unique blend of neuroscience and mindfulness, speaks often about the ways in which we can work with our negativity bias to incline our minds towards more skillful chatter. I’ll provide a link to his work in the description. And last but not least, we can bring awareness to our reactive tendencies. So what I mean here is that even if we can’t access the feelings that cause us to react in certain ways, we can develop awareness of what our habitual reactions are and then work backwards from there to understand where they came from and work forwards to think through what a more skillful response would be. This is what I did in discovering my tendency to eat when I’m scared about the health and well-being of loved ones. I first noticed my behavior to eat and then worked backwards. This is still a work in progress and I still tend to eat in some of these circumstances, but through awareness I now reach for healthier foods and am in more control of how much I eat.

So how can we go about building these intrapersonal qualities? The ways are limitless but can include a few of the following. Mindfulness practice. To put some structure around this, I’d recommend trying out an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course. This is an evidence-based mindfulness development program and at the very least you’ll add many new self-awareness tools to your toolkit. If you need some guidance on where to start on this, reach out to me. I had the privilege of having an incredible teacher and experience. You can also take up journaling. There are hundreds of fun prompts, routines and even journaling communities you can join. You can also work with a licensed therapist. Speaking from personal experience, I can’t imagine where I’d be in my self-awareness development if I hadn’t spent many hours over several years working with therapists trained in different styles. Last on our list, and there are certainly many other powerful alternatives that I’ve leveraged, is working with a certified coach. Again, if you aren’t sure where to start here, feel free to reach out.

Okay, so let’s wipe the slate clean and begin again, this time with ways to develop interpersonally. Our relational skills can be built through various means including, by setting intentions and goals. You can think of setting an intention as what you do prior to entering into an immediate relationship. For example, prior to a regularly scheduled 30-minute call with a colleague, you might set an intention to listen to them fully – without thinking about a response as you do. By setting intentions in practicing you can build and refine new skillsets through direct experience. Goals, on the other hand, are longer term. A goal here might be over the next 6 months to break your habit of trying to multitask while on a video call with others. Many small intentions may go into each call, but if you’re often trying to work on other things or looking at other screens while on calls with colleagues, it may take months to dismantle that habit and build a new one. This is where a longer term goal comes into play.

One way that can help you progress towards your goal is to find someone who embodies some element of the future state you want to achieve, and then consciously observe them. If you always leave a meeting with a particular colleague feeling heard and valued, you might practice observing how they create an environment to make you feel that way. Next, you can improve interpersonally by directly asking others for feedback. Let’s say you are typically more shy and reserved in meetings, and you’ve received feedback about how others would like to hear from you more often. You can set participating more in meetings as a goal. Let a trusted colleague know this is your goal, and then regularly ask them for feedback about how you’re progressing.

Another way to develop interpersonally is to record yourself and then study those recordings. I’m reminded of an assignment when I was an Executive MBA student that involved studying films of ourselves and others based on presentations and facilitated conversations. Having a mirror into my performance coupled with studying – not just watching – the verbal and non-verbal cues of myself and others allowed me to address several interpersonal weaknesses. I even noticed small adjustments I could make that made a big difference, such as how when presenting I’d often subtly hold my breath, which caused me to work harder, or how when facilitating I had the habit of more often calling on folks who were to my right even if more folks on my left were raising their hands. Lastly, be a lifelong communication student. For several years now, I’ve worked with Master’s level communication students at the University of San Francisco, and one thing that has become clear to me is that the more I know the more I realize I can grow. You might begin by getting a copy of a book called Nonviolent Communications or you can look up the work of Oren Jay Sofer who specializes in mindful communication practices.

Next, let’s see how we can more intentionally step into experiential. As mentioned here, one way to gain experience especially in a feedback-averse culture is by proactively asking for it. This will allow you to see and learn from different feedback delivery styles and practice how you receive and process each. You could also combine this with journaling, perhaps carving out time after you’ve received feedback to reflect through journaling on everything from how you felt to what you learned in the process. It’s only through these kinds of intentional practices that you can see, for examplem that your default reaction has always been to get overly defensive about receiving even relatively minor negative feedback. With this new awareness, you can develop more skillful means such as perhaps taking a few deep breaths to calm yourself when you notice the defensiveness arising. And reflecting after feedback can work for feedback givers as well. After giving particularly negative feedback to a colleague, which was hard for me to deliver for several reasons, I found it helpful to reflect through writing on how it went and on how I felt before, during, and after.

Another way to develop experientially is to do a 24-hour feedback inventory as Dr. Riordan did in the Feedback Fundamentals book. You can jot down all the moments throughout your day at work and generally in your life where some type of feedback event happened. This is a great exercise in part because it helps you see that feedback is all around you – it just takes bringing awareness to it and once you have that you can begin to wring insight from it. Additionally, especially if you are part of a large organization with a robust talent and development department, you may find that you can get some opportunities to practice feedback through leadership training opportunities. If nothing exists, you might request a 60-minute feedback training session for your colleagues, organized and led by someone internally or externally. Even these practice experiences are the experiences we need to improve.

Lastly, you might consider taking on a stretch assignment at your organization. Remember the quote from Angela Duckworth earlier in the course? She said she’s never seen an organization get feedback right. So this could be your opportunity to take something on, perhaps creating a constructive feedback training session or working with a group in your organization to help collect, organize, and use customer feedback – again it’s all part of centering feedback and gaining the experience we need to develop our overall feedback literacy.

Okay, moving on to part four: Feedback Culture Exploration. When I first began providing feedback training, I sat across from Kai, who was about to become a first-time people manager on a newly formed team. Kai courageously admitted feeling scared to give feedback to their new teammates, then rattled off a range of great questions including, “Before giving feedback should I spend a few months getting to know my team so that we first have a strong rapport?” and “Should I only give feedback on areas within my subject matter expertise?” For Kai, moving into a people manager role meant they had to rapidly understand what it was like on the other side of the feedback line. I learned that Kai’s apprehensions were born out of a challenging workplace culture they were leaving behind. In their previous job, they hadn’t had a healthy feedback culture modeled for them – one in which everybody on the team, regardless of title, felt psychologically safe and had the skills to give and receive feedback effectively. In essence, rather than tap the wisdom of individuals to form a continuously learning collective genius, Kai’s team was assembled into one large group of passive feedback receivers, those who were perceived as knowing little and needing feedback all the time, and one very small group of feedback givers, those who were perceived as all-knowing givers – neither of which had received any feedback training. After many conversations with leaders from global companies, I’ve come to realize both how common and how unhelpful this grouping can be for developing a learning culture. The “good enough” assumption with feedback has a cascading effect whereby passionate and promising future leaders like Kai grow into the kind of managers in the various studies we’ve highlighted who struggle with nearly all aspects of feedback.

So we have managers struggling to give it, employees wanting it, organizations not investing much in it, and educational psychologists like Dr. James McKenna highlighting that in increasingly volatile and competitive industries it’s a key to building a learning culture that can help organizational resiliency. Where to from here? Let’s dive in. Whether you’ve consciously built it or not, you have a feedback culture. And this culture is significantly impacted by the feedback literacy of individuals within it. For example, if teammates are afraid to provide feedback to each other – because they don’t quite know how or lack psychological safety or both – vital knowledge will remain trapped within individuals rather than unleashed for the benefit of the team. In such cultures, I’ve also seen shadow learning whereby individuals secretly pursue all types of learning opportunities but feel the need to hide that they did it – which again keeps insights locked within the individual. If we take the classic metaphor of a team as an organism, you can imagine individual parts of the organism becoming stronger but the overall organism itself remaining no more resilient.

Fortunately, threading feedback literacy into your culture is in all of our hands. While I still recommend all employees receive formal feedback training, leaders can dramatically improve their learning culture by having feedback literacy-centered conversations with their teams and encouraging all people managers to do the same. Below is a simple but effective three-step process for facilitating these much-needed conversations. I recommend breaking these into multiple meetings. Step one: pull your team together to discuss feedback, not to give it and receive it, but to discuss what it is. The goal of this meeting should be to allow everybody’s insights to surface to co-create a feedback definition. You might use the feedback definition from this course as a guide, tweaking as needed. The important part here is that the members of your team feel a sense of ownership, feel like they’ve contributed to this definition. Step two then is introducing feedback literacy, perhaps leveraging the many frameworks and graphics we’ve used throughout this course to do so. Lastly, working with each individual teammate, you can co-create with them a feedback literacy development plan. You might find it helpful to include this as part of an ongoing professional development plan you have with each of your direct reports.

For leaders ready to step beyond their team, here are a few key questions worth asking as you work to improve the larger feedback culture. Number one: Are employees receiving the feedback they want and need? As we covered, employees who don’t get such feedback are far more likely to leave the company. As a follow-up to this, ask: How do we know? Second, you can ask: Are we training our employees across our organization how to seek feedback from those outside of our organization so that they are staying at the top of their field? Too often we think of talent development as skills development that must happen internally, but the world is vast and talent is everywhere – often the best opportunities to grow your internal talent is to encourage folks to gain insights from outside of the organization.

And third, you can ask: What feedback training are we providing new people managers? These new managers are your future. They are often fired up and hungry to learn, but just as often in my experience we wrongly assume they have seen feedback excellence modeled for them. As a follow-up, we can ask this question directly: Are we assuming these new people managers have the feedback literacy skills required to grow their own career and empower their direct reports? So one way to think about a culture at work, and in our focus here a feedback culture, is as the soil upon which effective feedback is either neglected or cultivated. Like the soil of our Earth, the culture exists whether or not we intentionally try to shape it, so a neglected feedback culture then is one that is not intentionally cultivated. To continue with the soil metaphor, in such a culture, weeds and other invasive qualities may sprout. This can include toxic cultural elements such as managers belittling colleagues rather than providing helpful feedback. In many cases, neglected feedback cultures are actually feedback-averse cultures. By this I mean cultures where feedback is generally avoided, which means employees aren’t receiving comprehensive feedback training and new employees aren’t seeing healthy feedback relationships modeled for them. And if this culture is neglected at the people level, there’s a good chance there’s neglect at the organizational level – where the organization itself is not effective at seeking and receiving feedback. A healthy and effective feedback culture, however is built with intention; it’s a garden that is pruned and nurtured and generally cared for – with the result being colleagues at all levels who are, number one, working to build their own feedback literacy, and number two, feel psychologically safe enough to give and receive feedback regardless of where they sit in the organization’s hierarchy.

One helpful way to frame everything is to look at our workplace feedback categories alongside a feedback growth pyramid. There’s a lot here but let’s begin at the top left. Internal refers to both the feedback happening internally in our minds and the feedback kept internally in our organization. So if we work on the left side, this covers the self-feedback in our minds, the individual feedback we’ve received from our colleagues at work, the customer feedback we receive directly from our customers, and market feedback. Market feedback in the internal sense is about the effects on our business that we experience based on what’s happening in the market. For example, even before it’s a major topic of public discussion, we may begin seeing signals of labor market strength as employees seem to be asking for raises at a higher rate than usual.

If we move to external at the top right, we can begin with sought. This is feedback outside of your organization that we intentionally seek. So at the individual level this could be feedback you seek by asking an industry leader if they are open to serving as a mentor for you, at the customer level this could be feedback about some part of your organization that you see posted on public sites like LinkedIn, G2, Yelp, Reddit forums, or elsewhere. Similarly, external market signals could be a result of publicly known market shifts that maybe haven’t impacted your business yet – such as the Federal Reserve changing interest rates or a tense geopolitical situation that may have an impact on your supply chain strategy. As you see, there can be barriers at every level here. For example, a company may be one of those rare few who offer their employees training in feedback communications but they may be missing the boat when it comes to having a strategy for listening to the external market signals that could seriously disrupt their business model.

Based on my experience and review of the decades of feedback literature, one way to move from feedback category awareness to real action is to pair our category diagram with a feedback growth pyramid as we have here. From here, you can begin to map each category to corresponding growth initiatives. Such as when it comes to collecting external market feedback, what’s our culture? Do we provide training on this? What accounts for an event here? And are these events regular and planned or are they forced on us when the market changes and we’re often in catch-up mode? Another example could be when it comes to organizing internally received customer feedback, have we mapped out the many ways, events, this can happen? Do we provide customer feedback training to our colleagues, or is a wild west of customer feedback coming in from everywhere and not being routed or sorted in any way? And, lastly, what’s our feedback culture as it relates to the customer feedback we receive? Does everybody feel they have a role to play? Does everyone feel incentivized to play this role? How do we know?

This mention of feedback collection leads us to part five: Feedback Systems at the Organizational Level where we’ll cover what I call the three C’s of organizational feedback systems. Step one here is about collecting feedback from various sources. one metaphor that may be helpful here is to think about all the tributaries that feed into a river. The goal here is to map out all the most important feedback tributaries and to create a process for how they are being monitored. For example, if we think about collecting customer feedback, those tributaries would include the internal feedback our customers send us privately (and ensuring they have easy ways to do so) and it would include monitoring the most important areas where they are providing public feedback. From there, we can move to step two which is to ensure all that feedback flows into a central place where it can be seen in aggregate. This could be a Slack channel, for example. Once there, it’s helpful to classify it. For example, is this external feedback about a particular product or service? Is it positive or negative feedback? You can get as detailed as is helpful here. For example, it may be helpful to note if it’s coming from a Fortune 100 customer who you have a significant deal with as opposed to a customer from a small business who is simply on a free trial. We then move to step three, communicating. Some organizations end at step two thinking that the feedback river is enough, but the river contains everything and can be an overwhelming source of information to the point where it’s irrelevant for many people who are receiving it.

The river metaphor continues here as step three is about creating feedback lakes from the river. That is, ensuring that the classified feedback is routed to the most appropriate people or teams. As in our example, a batch of feedback from Fortune 100 customers on a particular product could be routed to the product team responsible for that product, to the enterprise technical sales team who can follow up directly with their customer points of contact, and perhaps to the marketing team who can determine if and how to respond to the public feedback. So on the whole we’ve taken what can be a complex but always-on organizational feedback initiative – again, one in which Dr. Angela Duckworth has never seen an organization get right – and we’ve turned it into a rather simple three-step approach we can keep top of mind as we work to improve our efforts and build a truly elite feedback culture across the organization. Again, like everything we’ve covered in this course, this is much easier said than done, but putting a process in place is vital.

Well team, you just completed what is perhaps the most in-depth course available on constructive feedback. Congratulations on not only prioritizing this important topic but focusing on your growth! Now what? Here are some recommended next steps. First, this was an epic achievement. By sharing it with others on social media or elsewhere you will create a ripple that will help others see and prioritize the importance of taking feedback seriously. The world needs it. Second, share the course with your teammates. Building feedback literacy takes all of us acting as a collective. As your teammates level up their skills, you’ll level up yours. If you’re bold enough, you might even incorporate this course into your organization’s professional development plan so that all employees level up together. Third, use what you learned at work, at home, wherever. Keeping everything trapped in your mind won’t be all that helpful for you or humanity.

Fourth, keep learning about feedback. I’ve been at this for a while and I still feel like I’m barely scratching the surface. There are many ways to keep learning, including by reading many of the books I’ve recommended, but an additional way is to sign up for my newsletter on CameronConaway.com. This will ensure you are the first to know about my Feedback Facilitator Certificate Program, an in-depth course that will build on what you learned here and prepare you to be a confident feedback trainer at your organization and beyond – a leader capable of delivering comprehensive feedback training to all employee. We’ll get to work together directly, and I’ll be keeping the cohorts very small to ensure you leave the program feeling fully prepared. Spots in the program will be offered based on the order you sign up, so if you have any interest at all I’d go ahead and get on the list. Congratulations again on your achievement here! May you and those you love be well.

The Models

Switch views below to explore the relationship between feedback literacy and workplace culture.

Feedback Literacy Diagram
  • Intrapersonal
    Skills within your own mind. Self-awareness, open-mindedness, and emotional intelligence.
  • Interpersonal
    Relational skills. Verbal and non-verbal communication, active listening, and empathy.
  • Experiential
    The reps. The feedback experiences we have across our personal and professional lives.
Feedback Relationship Model
  • The Core
    Feedback literacy is central. It is the engine that drives the system.
  • The Porous Lines
    Dotted lines highlight the interplay. Giving, receiving, and processing all bleed into one another.
  • The Culture
    The outer circle. A team’s culture is both the result of and the container for these interactions.
The Finale

Create Ripples.

The Thought Leader Share on LinkedIn.
The Change Agent Email your teammates.

Feedback Refresher

How often should feedback be given?

Remember the difference between formal and informal feedback. For in-depth formal feedback, many leaders choose to at least schedule quarterly individual feedback sessions with their direct reports. Informal feedback, however, should be given as close to the event being commented on as possible.

How should I prepare for giving constructive feedback?

As your feedback literacy matures, it may take less time to work through the SEEN acronym. SEEN stands for Scene (understanding the full context of the behavior you are commenting on); Empathy (for the receiver); Example (avoid vague generalities); and Next opportunity (though not necessary, it can be helpful to share an idea of when, where, and how this feedback may be applied in the future).

How should I prepare for receiving feedback?

While informal feedback often occurs before you can prepare for it, I recommend having what I call a feedback fallback phrase. By this, I mean a phrase like, “Thank you, I’ll process that and get back to you,” which you can use right after you get feedback. A phrase like this thanks the giver, grants you time so you are not pressured to adopt or reject the feedback immediately, and lets the receiver know you intend to follow up with them. As a baseline, always set an intention to bring your best and wisest self to the conversation. Practice active listening, be prepared to ask questions if you aren’t sure about something, and always be ready to take notes.

How should I give constructive feedback to my manager?

While there’s often a power dynamic in manager-to-direct-report relationships, it’s essential to remember that the basic principles of giving feedback still apply. If you are early in your career, haven’t had much practice delivering feedback, and haven’t had enough interactions with your manager to know how they may respond to feedback, it might be helpful to preface your feedback communication by sharing how you are feeling and shifting more direct language so it comes off as more inclusive.

What is the main purpose of constructive feedback?

The main purpose of constructive feedback is to help an individual or group adjust a behavior or activity to become more effective. In the workplace, feedback communication can facilitate professional growth by serving as a mirror to help employees see their strengths and address areas for development. As we’ve discussed with feedback literacy, teams that use feedback effectively foster a culture of continuous learning, enhance communication, and generally contribute to a healthy and collaborative work environment.

Are there downsides to feedback?

Yes, depending on the content and delivery, feedback may decrease performance. Bad feedback, poorly delivered feedback, or even great feedback given at the wrong time or place can demotivate an employee and even set them up for failure. Poorly delivered feedback, even if it is well-intended and contains helpful content, may confuse the feedback receiver. Likewise, criticism that comes off as too harsh or is perceived by the receiver as too harsh can demotivate and dishearten individuals rather than enliven and empower.

What is an open feedback system?

An open feedback system is a feedback system in which the identity of the feedback givers and receivers is known. In other words, feedback doesn’t come from anonymous sources.

How do I respond to harmful feedback?

Try to manage your emotional state before receiving feedback (and during, if possible). It may be helpful to take a few steady breaths. This can help you see with greater clarity whether the feedback communication was genuinely harmful or if it perhaps tapped into an area you may feel defensive about. If the feedback was harmful in that it was demeaning or an attack on your character, you don’t have to respond at all. If the behavior of the feedback giver is abusive, it may be best not to engage at all and leave the situation.

How can I get constructive feedback after an interview?

At the end of your interview, directly ask for feedback on the area you want to improve. You might say, “I am incredibly excited at this opportunity and always looking to improve. Might you be open to emailing me any feedback you have about how I could have improved in our interview together?” You can also reiterate your want for feedback when sending a thank you email to the interviewer.

Should I provide feedback to my entire team?

If your feedback is primarily directed to a single individual, providing that feedback in a group setting is generally not advised. Group feedback is advised, however, if it’s truly applicable to the team. Some examples include if your marketing team is struggling to deliver projects on time or your basketball team’s defense is collectively struggling to guard the pick and roll.

What is feedback literacy?

As defined here, feedback literacy is a term I use to refer to an individual’s understanding of and capacity to effectively give, receive, and process feedback.

What is feedback orientation?

As defined here, feedback orientation refers to an individual’s overall receptivity to feedback, including comfort with feedback, tendency to seek feedback and process it mindfully, and the likelihood of acting on the feedback to guide behavior change and performance improvement.

What is feedback intervention?

As described in Kluger & DeNisi’s classic article from 1996, feedback intervention is defined as actions taken by (an) external agent(s) to provide information regarding some aspect(s) of one’s task performance.

Does constructive feedback improve performance?

Yes, constructive feedback improves performance when we think about it generally. Some even argue that feedback is the only way to improve in anything. John Hattie noted that feedback is the most powerful single influence on achievement, though impacts are variable due to complexity.

Why does constructive feedback improve performance?

It provides individuals with valuable insights into their strengths and development areas. It serves as a guide. It builds a healthy workplace culture that centers on continuous learning. It motivates individuals and ensures they feel satisfied with their growth and professional development.

How can my team/organization get better at feedback communication?

First, invest in developing feedback communication capacities. Second, ensure feedback development is “always on.” Third, dismantle feedback training silos—all employees can benefit from learning to give, receive, and process feedback.

What constructive feedback should I give a candidate after an interview?

Give the feedback you think will be most helpful for the candidate. For example, if the candidate had a fantastic interview but fell short on some primary skills needed in the role, it can be helpful to let them know both aspects.

How is feedback communication different from advice?

Feedback and advice are related concepts, with advice as one part that can be included in the feedback conversation. Feedback could become advice when the feedback giver recommends a specific change the employee could make to improve a weakness.

I heard feedback doesn’t work. Is feedback dead?

Feedback is alive and well. The “feedback is dead” myth spread due to contrarians who either didn’t fully understand what feedback is or had an ulterior motive for leading others to believe in the myth.

How is feedback different than coaching?

Coaching is a type of feedback. Not all feedback includes coaching, but all coaching is a form of feedback.

What is a feedback sandwich?

A feedback sandwich is a way to frame negative feedback by “sandwiching” it between two positive feedback comments.

Is feedback communication always biased?

No, but it is often influenced by cognitive biases. Systemic biases within an organization can also influence how feedback is given and received. It’s possible to mitigate some bias by implementing structured feedback templates and providing training.

How is feedback different than criticism?

Criticism can be considered a type of feedback communication that points only to the areas to be improved. It addresses and “critiques” a past performance without providing guidance or a future-oriented lens.

What should I say when receiving feedback?

For unplanned feedback, use a fallback phrase like “Thank you, I’ll process that and get back to you.” Avoid advice that suggests merely smiling and saying thank you to appease the giver.

How do I know what kind of feedback I need?

Ask people you admire for feedback. Notice qualities in others that inspire you and reflect on what makes them good. As you develop your feedback literacy, you’ll gain a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.

Why is it stressful to give feedback? How can I make it less stressful?

Giving feedback is stressful because people fear they won’t present it correctly or fear the receiver’s response. To reduce stress: be prepared, practice, use the SBI model (Situation-Behavior-Impact), and create a feedback-friendly environment.

I’m a new manager. When should I give feedback to my direct reports?

There’s no strict timeframe, but generally, get to know your new teammates and build a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses before giving negative feedback.

Can feedback be given nonverbally?

Absolutely. Written feedback is vital, and nonverbal gestures (like yawning audience members) provide important cues.

Should feedback always include examples?

To deliver impactful feedback, you should provide clear and specific examples of the observed behavior. This helps the recipient understand the feedback.

My manager doesn’t give feedback. What should I do?

Ask for their feedback directly and be specific. Propose regular check-ins. Remember that you can also seek feedback from peers and industry leaders.

What is a feedback loop?

A feedback loop is a continuous and iterative process where an individual or team receives feedback, learns, and improves performance.

I’m a coach/executive/teacher How can I get the feedback I need to improve?

Map out all potential areas for feedback. Be consistent in proactively asking for specific feedback. Recognize that actions and inactions are also sources of feedback.

What is feedback in the workplace?

Feedback in the workplace is information shared between individuals or teams to improve performance, foster learning, and strengthen relationships. It can be formal or informal, spoken or written, and should ideally be specific and constructive.

Why is feedback important?

Feedback helps people understand how their actions are perceived, what’s working, and what could be improved. It’s a critical driver of growth, learning, and trust.

What makes feedback constructive?

Feedback is constructive when it is specific, actionable, delivered with care, and focused on helping the person grow rather than simply judging them.

What are the main types of feedback?

The main types include positive, negative, formal, informal, developmental, and evaluative feedback. Each serves different purposes and should be used thoughtfully.

How do you give effective feedback?

Effective feedback is timely, specific, and focused on behavior rather than personality. It invites dialogue and supports the person receiving it.

How do you receive feedback well?

Receiving feedback well means listening without defensiveness, asking clarifying questions, reflecting deeply, and deciding thoughtfully whether and how to act on it.

Why do people avoid giving feedback?

People often avoid giving feedback because they fear conflict, don’t know how to phrase it constructively, or have had negative experiences in the past.

What’s the role of psychological safety in feedback?

Psychological safety enables people to give and receive feedback honestly. Without it, people may withhold insights or become defensive.

How do you build a feedback culture?

You build a feedback culture by modeling feedback behaviors at all levels, training for all five literacy components, and celebrating growth from feedback.

What’s the best time to give feedback?

The best time is soon after the relevant event—while details are fresh—but only when both parties are in the right mindset to engage productively.

Can feedback be positive?

Absolutely. Positive feedback reinforces what’s working and encourages continued growth. It’s essential for motivation and learning.

How can I encourage my team to seek feedback?

Model the behavior, normalize feedback-seeking in meetings, and publicly recognize when someone grows from feedback.

What’s the difference between criticism and feedback?

Criticism often points out flaws without support, while feedback highlights behaviors and provides insight that can help someone improve.

How do you use feedback effectively?

Using feedback means thoughtfully reflecting on what you’ve received, integrating what’s helpful, and making changes that align with your goals.

Should feedback be anonymous?

Anonymous feedback can surface hidden truths but risks being less constructive. It’s best used carefully, alongside a culture of open dialogue.

What tools can support feedback in organizations?

Tools like 360 assessments, real-time feedback platforms, and regular check-ins can support but never replace human-centered conversations.

How do you process difficult feedback?

Pause, breathe, reflect. Don’t rush to accept or reject it. Seek context, talk to trusted peers, and revisit it with a growth mindset.

What’s the difference between evaluation and feedback?

Evaluation judges performance (e.g., grades, scores). Feedback supports improvement and should be part of an ongoing conversation.

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