Part three in a four-part series on what the Human Capital Community of Practice can learn from neuroscience.
Importance of boss-employee relationship. For as long as I’ve been a practicing professional in the human capital arena, I have considered feedback a core skill to both practice and teach to supervisors and managers. Recent Gallup research tells us that one main reason employees become disengaged from their work and organizations—and subsequently leave—is the relationship they have with their immediate boss. One of the communication cornerstones between a boss and employee is feedback. So, it’s really no surprise that a pivotal relationship lacking in one of the key communication areas will become strained, or at least unfulfilling. Other related research has shown that no feedback is actually far worse from the employee’s perspective than receiving negative feedback! The rationale? Receiving negative feedback brings a negative or critical message, but it at least lets the employees know that what they do gets noticed, and that their boss felt compelled enough to provide it. Hearing something from your boss tells you he at least acknowledges the working relationship you have with him.
No feedback is worse than negative feedback. The brain can handle negative feedback. It doesn’t like rejection, but we can deal with that in various ways. What it doesn’t like at all (and is not very good at dealing with), is the absence of information or feedback. Our brains have a “negativity bias” which predisposes us to assume the worst in situations where information is missing. This bias served us well in the days where we had to make split-second decisions about the likelihood of a saber-toothed tiger eating us or letting us be. Given this negative bias, in the workplace—when we don’t have any indication of rejection or approval from our primary relationship (boss)—we can subconsciously conjure up many reasons why we don’t receive it. For example, “My boss has decided to fire me and is just biding time until he gives me a pink slip.” Or, “I am so uninteresting and unremarkable that other team members steal the spotlight. A co-worker must be stealing credit for my work.” Or, “My boss tolerates me and wants work out of me, but can’t stand me on a personal level. These—and more—reasons to explain a feedback void can flash through our minds in a half-of-an-instant and become our reality. As neuroscience tells us, the more we focus on beliefs, the more they feel like undebatable truisms.
Feedback as a core managerial skill. In many first-time supervisor or management 101 courses, we teach the core responsibilities of a boss, which include giving feedback. We teach what feedback is, why it matters, techniques for relaying positive and negative feedback, and what to do in various special situations. And in upper-level manager and executive development programs, we often launch the program with a 360-degree feedback review process, where a select panel of raters spends upwards of an hour evaluating the target’s use of very particular competencies. These ratings are aggregated with our own company ratings on those same competencies, and then the summarized results of both are presented to us—if done well—with anywhere from an hour to a day-long feedback session. From here, individuals can largely decide what to do with the feedback: attempt to change, ignore it, or dismiss it. As you can see, large amounts of time, money, and brainpower are spent each year giving feedback in organizations.
New research underscores 1996 findings. In “Turn the 360 Around: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and How to Do it Better,” Phil Dixon, David Rock, and Kevin Ochsner assert that most feedback in corporations is a waste of time. Citing research from 17 years ago, the authors note that a Kluger and DeNisi study found that 30 percent of feedback processes have a positive impact, 30 percent have no impact, and 40 percent of them make things worse (1996)! Additional findings have been highlighted, including
- No correlation between a leader’s effectiveness and whether their self-assessment matches others’ feedback (Fleenor and McCauley, 1996).
- Managers with higher levels of education spend less time preparing to give feedback (Sillup and Klimberg, 2010).
- One in five managers simply used their own perceptions in informing feedback (Sillup and Klimberg, 2010).
- Peers may see the feedback recipient as competition and deliberately rate him more harshly (Ashford and Tsui, 1991).
Feedback can, but doesn’t always, improve performance. It can also make performance worse. A Watson Wyatt study (2002) found a 10 percent decrease in performance by engaging in feedback processes. Poorly planned messages can easily be misinterpreted. Employees can miss the main point of a manager’s intended message. Feedback can trigger strong emotional responses. Some employees have left companies after receiving feedback poorly. A large number of conditions must be satisfied in order for feedback to be worthwhile. Feedback is expensive, and without follow-up built in to the process, it is largely futile.
If we’re looking for a “both/and” solution to the feedback controversy, perhaps we can find modifications of current processes to keep in place. Besides building in follow-up, then, what else can be done to make the feedback that takes place in your organization worthwhile and not harmful? Please accept these New Year’s “Feedback Resolutions,” given in the spirit of organizational improvement, to you and your kin:
2013 Feedback Resolutions
- DeNisi and Kluger (2000) divide feedback into categories: feedback about self, task, and task detail. The only category of feedback, they say, that might be useful is that around tasks. I will give feedback around task and not around self or the task detail.
- I will assume that some feedback is better than no feedback. I will share this message.
- I will stop believing that the best and most educated managers are also doing the best at providing useful feedback. I will provide support and coaching to them as well.
- I will spend more time setting up and explaining the feedback process around the feedback event.
- I will not conduct a 360-degree feedback process if there is to be no substantive follow-up.
- I will model effective giving and receiving of feedback whenever possible.
