Team cultures are partly defined by how leaders and team members engage in performance-related feedback. Without the candor and specificity of feedback to do things differently in the future, leaders and team members don’t develop and get better.
But more is not always better. How feedback creates the everyday conversation within an organization is what defines its success. Depending on how an organization ritualizes and engages in performance candor, feedback can be either healthy or destructive.
Feedback-positive organizations and teams are markedly different from feedback-negative ones. When feedback is offered in the ideal quantity, specificity, channel, and frequency, leaders and team members learn in a positive manner.
A feedback-positive organization is best characterized by how candid feedback elevates performance and morale. In contrast, a feedback-negative culture is most often reflected by leaders and team members who avoid feedback, fail to give it, or use it as a weapon of mass destruction. In workplaces where feedback is seen as a sanction or punishment, morale suffers. Feedback-negative organizations are a bear to work in, often creating a revolving door of talent.
To better understand and assess your own team or organization, consider the following qualities that reflect how feedback gets done in your workplace. Evaluate your team on these six qualities on a PASS/FAIL basis:
- Feedback on the team is constant and continual. It does not get stored or saved for year-end reviews or feedback dumps. Most often, it is offered while the performance is still fresh in memory.
- There’s a relatively equal balance of positive and negative feedback across the team, where criticism or praise does not drown out the other. People get just as much praise or compliments as they do criticism or suggestion for improvement.
- Feedback goes upward and downward with ease. It is not just given downward from those with higher status, but is also shared upward with ease. Leaders commonly seek feedback from the team.
- The feedback offered within the team is actionable and specific rather than broad and general. People know what to do differently after receiving feedback from leaders or colleagues.
- Feedback is equally distributed on the team. Everyone gets it in relatively equal doses. Star or subpar performers don’t receive any more or less of it. It isn’t just weak performance that receives the attention.
- Feedback is generally viewed as a reward across the team rather than as a punishment or something to be avoided. People seek it and often ask for the unfiltered version.
Striving to create an even stronger feedback culture is a worthy goal for all organizations. Seeking more consistency on all six qualities is the pathway to establishing a feedback-rich and positive workplace.
Once established, a feedback-positive culture helps to create a powerful learning environment where people get better more quickly. High talent looks for and thrives in feedback-positive workplaces. They know it is the key to getting even better.
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