The Power of Feedback

Giving, Seeking, and Using Feedback for Performance Improvement

Manuel London

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317802815
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: History & Theory in Psychology

This follow up to the 2003 edition of Job Feedback by Manuel London is updated to cover new research in the area of organizational management. This edition bridges a gap in research that now covers cultural responses to employer feedback, feedback through electronic communications, and how technology has changed the way teams work in organizations. The Power of Feedback includes examples of feedback from friends, family, colleagues, and volunteers in non-profit organizations. In this new book, both employers and employees will learn to view feedback as a positive tool for improving performance, motivation, and interpersonal relationships. Managers, human resource professionals, and students who will one day oversee teams will benefit from the research and advice found in The Power of Feedback.

Section I How People See Themselves And Others

1 Introduction The Power and Challenge of Feedback

DOI: 10.4324/9781315813875-1

Meaningful feedback is central to what we do on the job and in other aspects of our lives. Feedback guides, motivates, and reinforces effective behaviors and reduces or stops ineffective behaviors. Feedback tells us how close we are to our goals. Similarly, giving feedback is an important way to guide others’ actions and decisions. Yet many people feel uncomfortable giving and receiving feedback. Indeed, the lack of feedback isn’t unusual.

Managers and supervisors may give feedback as a way to reinforce their self-importance or manipulate how others see them. Givers of feedback may be destructive or hurtful intentionally or unintentionally. In addition, they may be biased by factors such as race, gender, or age. Receivers of feedback may be apprehensive about being evaluated, defensive in the face of negative feedback, and/or apt to ignore information that could help them.

People often use negative terms when they observe and describe others, while they use positive terms to describe themselves.¹ As a result, feedback may be disappointing and possibly detrimental. No feedback at all may be better in some cases. Feedback is not effective regardless of the content and manner in which it is given and regardless of the receiver’s sensitivity to the information. Support mechanisms are needed to ensure that feedback is understood and used to set goals for improvement.

Such support mechanisms focus on the recipient’s ability to comprehend the feedback, the recipient’s sensitivity to feedback, the context, and accountability mechanisms. The recipient’s ability to comprehend the feedback may depend on the extent to which the feedback conforms to the recipient’s cognitive processing capabilities (e.g., it is not too detailed), causes the recipient to think about the task from others’ perspectives, and can be readily applied to change behavior and improve outcomes. These conditions depend on the control and credibility of different sources and the clarity, reliability, and validity of the information they provide. They may also depend on standards and expectations for behaviors and the availability of coaching and role models for how to apply the feedback. The recipient’s sensitivity to feedback is the extent to which the recipient wants to learn and is able and motivated to process information from different sources. The context refers to what is happening in the environment and the demands and stressors experienced by those who give and receive feedback. Such conditions differentiate the recipient’s role in relation to that of others and suggest reasons (and rationalizations) for differences in perspectives. Accountability mechanisms are ways to hold people responsible for giving and using feedback. These mechanisms may include requiring the recipient to explain and justify the use of feedback, reminders that people may have different viewpoints about the same event, expecting performance raters to provide accurate and meaningful ratings, and rewarding behavior change and improved performance.

Case: Lack of Feedback Is Not Unusual

Consider Sheila Monroe, an apartment rental property manager in her mid-30s who supervises 10 people. She describes her work as high-stress, balancing the need to please her employer (the rental management company), her staff, and the tenants. She has worked for her current employer for more than 5 years and says that the only feedback she ever received from her employer was the relaying of a letter sent by a tenant to the property management company about how helpful Sheila was in solving a problem. Other than that, she has not had a formal performance appraisal or any sort of feedback, positive or negative. She says that she has a strong work ethic and a desire to do her best on the job at all times. She believes this is why her manager has not felt the need to give her feedback. Her performance meets expectations and there have been no difficulties. Still she would appreciate more recognition of how hard she works and the success she has keeping her tenants satisfied. And she wouldn’t mind some tips on how to do even better. She recognizes that she hasn’t gone out of her way to ask her employer how she is doing and have a discussion about what she can do better, if anything.

Highlights of the Book

In this book, I examine how people give, seek, and use performance feedback. I describe processes by which givers of feedback perceive and judge performance, and I outline information processes by which receivers of feedback absorb (accept, deny, or ignore) and apply feedback. I consider formal sources of job feedback including performance appraisal, multisource (upward and 360-degree) survey feedback methods, and assessment centers. I also examine the ways individuals and groups receive informal feedback. This includes guidelines for how to give effective feedback under different conditions and how to hold people accountable for giving feedback.

I focus on the receiver of feedback by considering self-assessment, seeking feedback, and reactions to feedback. Several chapters provide surveys that readers can use to evaluate themselves. This includes self-assessment of performance and sensitivity to feedback from others. I emphasize that people need to be proactive in getting feedback, and I show how to increase feedback. I describe how employees can draw on co-workers as sources of feedback. I also show how to hold people accountable for using feedback.

I consider ways people can coach and develop others—in particular, how managers can coach their subordinates and how they can establish long-term, growth-oriented relationships that enhance individual and group performance. I give special attention to ways managers use feedback to increase coordinated behavior in groups and generate win-win resolutions to conflict. I also show how goal setting permits people to get feedback about their own performance relative to their goals.

Overall, I show how people can be more effective in gathering and processing performance information about others and feeding back this information in a way that is nonthreatening and leads to productive changes in behavior. Also, I show how people can gather, accept, and use meaningful feedback from appraisals, surveys, and informal discussions to change their own behavior. In doing so, the book suggests how professionals in the fields of human resource management and training can help people in their organizations give and use feedback more effectively.

Considerable work is done in teams and many organizations are global. I examine feedback in teams and cross-cultural (multinational) organizations. Also, since advancing communications technologies make feedback and development as close as accessible and portable as a wireless laptop computer, I examine how technology provides new means of collecting feedback and providing developmental resources. In addition, I consider how feedback is a means of communicating changing competency requirements as the nature of work evolves. I demonstrate how feedback programs are integrated into performance management systems to promote an organizational culture that supports continuous learning.

Feedback is important for people in most any job and organizational position. The book includes examples from different occupations throughout the text and also a special chapter on specific applications in different organizational contexts, including part-time and volunteer positions, and people in small businesses as well as large organizations.

The Psychology of Feedback

Industrial and organizational psychologists have devoted considerable attention to studying and guiding formal performance appraisal processes, but have given less attention to feedback delivery and use. However, psychologists have long recognized the value of feedback to enhance job challenge, increase motivation, and facilitate learning when the information is meaningful and given in a helpful way. Knowledge of results is a critical psychological component of motivation that stems from performance feedback inherent in the task or job. Moreover, feedback is an important element of career motivation. Insight about oneself and the environment affects the stability and direction of one’s career behavior. Such insight stems from performance feedback and information about potentially fruitful career directions. Also, feedback is an important element in learning. We know that people learn by modeling others, trying new behavior, and receiving feedback on how well they are doing.

That people don’t like to give negative feedback is not surprising. They know that the recipient is likely to be defensive or hurt. However, many people avoid even patting others on the back for good performance. Some managers seem to feel embarrassed or threatened about giving favorable feedback that a subordinate or co-worker deserves. Employees sometimes request feedback, but they usually don’t do so when the results are likely to be negative and they can’t avoid accepting blame.

Unfortunately, many managers don’t know how to give feedback, let alone how to coach and develop subordinates. Some don’t even see giving feedback as part of their jobs. Indeed, they may view performance discussions as a distraction from day-to-day operations. They decry the expense of individual development that may result from feedback discussions, and they fear losing an employee’s loyalty and friendship from negative feedback. Managers’ reluctance to give feedback is especially problematic in organizations faced with tight resources and employee cutbacks. Standards of performance are increasing in these firms, and more and higher-quality work is expected of everyone who remains. Marginal performance cannot be tolerated for long.

Elements of Feedback

Performance information may be objective, resulting from clearly visible performance output. Moreover, the amount and type of information may be under the control of the employees who can select the information they want about how well they are doing. On the other hand, performance information may be subjective, arising from formal and informal evaluations made by others. Employees may seek such information on their own. More likely, their supervisor or co-workers deliver the information, regardless of whether employees want it. Employees may be receptive or defensive depending on factors such as the favorability of the feedback, the source’s intention to be constructive, and the employee’s self-confidence. The source’s willingness to give feedback depends on factors such as the source’s ability to communicate, the source’s comfort with giving a performance evaluation face-to-face or in writing, and the source’s ability and desire to coach the employee in using the information to improve performance. Giving feedback may also depend on organizational expectations to deliver performance feedback as part of the management process.

Unfortunately, feedback has its dark side. For instance, managers may avoid giving feedback or may give destructive feedback deliberately. I cover the psychological, social, and situational antecedents of these all too common occurrences. I show how people give and seek feedback in ways that manage others’ impressions of them. I relate destructive feedback to harassment and other forms of treatment abuse and discrimination on the job. I show how to encourage constructive feedback, develop functional feedback and growth-oriented interpersonal relationships, and discourage destructive feedback and dysfunctional interpersonal relationships.

I offer guidelines for improving the value of feedback and its use by recipients. Table 1.1 provides a summary of what you need to know about feedback. As I develop the points in Table 1.1 throughout the book, my goal is to help managers who struggle with the difficulty of discussing another’s performance face-to-face with the individual. I show

Table 1.1 What You Should Know about Feedback

Key Points about Feedback

No one likes it …

They don’t like to receive it. They don’t like to give it.

But…

Feedback directs, motivates, and rewards behavior. Feedback is a dynamic, two-way interaction.

Key Principles for Giving Feedback

Formative feedback helps people improve; summative feedback evaluates (grades) performance for use in making decisions, such as who deserves a pay raise. People don’t react positively to feedback. People generally evaluate themselves highly. People make common attribution errors (attribute positive events to...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword—by Jeanette N. Cleveland and Kevin R. Murphy
• Preface
• SECTION I How People See Themselves and Others
• SECTION II Sources of Feedback Information and Support
• SECTION III Expanding the Power of Feedback
• References
• Index