There is no such thing as positive or negative feedback.
November 20, 2007 by David Zinger
Filed under leadership, management, productivity, self management
I believe that there is no such thing as positive or negative feedback. The positive or negative impact of feedback is based less on what we say than on our reasons for saying it and how we say it. The person receiving feedback can always use the feedback in a constructive manner.
How do you give feedback so that the other person does not get their back up or turn their back on what you have to say?
Feedback just is. What we do with it and how we deliver it is what makes feedback positive, negative, neutral or constructive.
Our motives in giving feedback may be more important than the actual things we say. If we desire to help the other person learn and grow it will make a huge difference than if we are venting our own frustrations or trying to put another person in their place.
Here are 11 guidelines to unleash effective feedback in the workplace:
- The intention of your feedback may be more important than your content. Ask yourself: what is my purpose in giving this feedback to this person right now?
- Be liberal with your offering of feedback about strengths and what is going well.
- Feedback needs to be well timed and given in a nonjudgmental way.
- Check to determine if the other person is ready for feedback, if not ask what they need to be ready and receptive.
- Feedback is more helpful when it is concise, clear and straightforward.
- Feedback is more effective when it is focused on observable and specific behaviours.
- To offer effective feedback we must also be open to receiving feedback.
- Ongoing feedback in small dosages is more productive than saving it up for a year end review.
- Avoid global feedback, focus on specific behaviors and actions.
- When trust and safety is strong others will be more open to constructive feedback.
- Whether you are giving or receiving feedback it is helpful to remember that feedback often says as much about the person giving it as the person receiving it.
Photo Credit: Feedback Flower by http://flickr.com/photos/jonathanpberger/465376498/
If you’d like to give David some feedback
feel free to write a comment below.
Actually, I kinda just want to know what that picture is of? Thanks!
Allena,
I encourage you to click on the photo credit and visit the wornderful photographs by this photographer.
David
This is a great list David - I’d add one more point which is that feedback always says more about who is giving it rather than about the person to whom it is given.
Annette:
I couldn’t agree more and we had parallel thoughts as I said this too in #11. It is worth saying twice and maybe even more than that.
Thanks,
David
Thank you for posting this article. I also try hard to work on seeing the positive in feedback as much as humanly possible and this article helps tremendously. My appreciation to you is in the highest sense.
To show you my gratitude I would like to share with you a post I found that also helps with this: http://consciousflex.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-dissolve-problems-in-human.html
Thank you indeed. I hope it helps you and others who read this as much as this post of yours as helped, please keep up the incredible work in helping others!
I enjoyed reading these comments.
I read somewhere that there is no such thing as +ve or -ve feedback, just feedback with varying levels of judgement.
When feedback feels good its usually very low in any judgements. Its just clean feedback and usually kindly given and gratefully received.
When feedback feels negative or uncomfortable it usually high in judgemental content, where the judgement essentially says that the commentator would be doing a far better job than you if placed in your shoes. Sort of like pointing their finger at you where only 1 finger is pointing at you, yet the other 3 fingers are pointing back at them. This kind of feedback is not very useful to you at first glance, because it can rub you up the wrong way, etc.
The trick is to benefit from this second type of feedback (ie: listening to the one finger) without getting caught up with reacting to the judgemental content (3 fingers) which is saying a lot more about them than you.
[Works for me.]
Feedback and feed-forward from Marshall Goldsmith all give us food to enhance our performance it we open our brains.