How am I Doing? Strategies for Continuous Organizational Feedback

Faced with perpetual disruption and increased pace of change, there is a strong demand for organizational feedback. Employees want to know how they are doing today and how to improve performance for tomorrow. CGS Enterprise Learning and the Human Capital Institute (HCI) recently released a report to help organizations optimize their feedback processes through several key findings. The report consisted of 261 questionnaire responses, subject-matter expert interviews and secondary sources for the basis of the research. Findings show that high-performing organizations:

• Are more satisfied with their performance management process
• Encourage feedback to improve organizational performance AND to enable individuals’ learning and development
• Require that goal setting, progress monitoring, downward feedback, upward feedback, and lateral feedback occur more often
• Have higher quality feedback at their organizations
• Have senior leaders who are active role models for giving, soliciting, and receiving feedback
• Train feedback behaviors and offer more types of resources for developing feedback skills
• Utilize a continuous feedback platform for consistent, timely, and fair application across teams to enhance human connection and conversation

Understanding Feedback

“Feedback is the lifeblood of our organization.” – Survey Respondent

According to the report, feedback should be supportive, nonevaluative, timely, and specific. It needs to focus on what is in the receiver’s control, such as their behaviors and effort, rather than talents and abilities. Researchers have found that the combination of negative process feedback (i.e., identifying gaps between performance and goal on a task) and positive outcome feedback (i.e., an assessment of the accomplishment after a task was completed) is the most beneficial for acting on feedback and motivating behavioral changes.

Developing Feedback Behaviors and Cultures

“I have concerns about a continuous coaching approach.” – Survey Respondent

The top challenge for feedback at organizations is fear of hurting feelings and changing relationships. Exposure to more feedback can help people address these fears. Learning and Development professionals can increase the amount of feedback flowing throughout an organization through senior leader buy-in and support and training.

How to Give Feedback

Instead of viewing feedback as a gift, givers of feedback should perceive it as an investment. This report finds that all parties benefit if the receiver of the feedback changes and those changes improve the relationship, the team functioning, and organizational performance. This perception of feedback as an investment would address the second most common challenge: not following up. Viewing feedback as an investment can increase accountability for asking for and giving feedback and encourage the development of a feedback culture.

The survey respondents shared how Talent professionals can develop a workplace culture where people want to give and receive feedback:

1. Model key behaviors – spotlight leaders who do a good job
2. Build trust, empathy and psychological safety through compassion and a trusting environment
3. Train and develop feedback skills – educate managers on how to have those types of conversations that are inviting, welcomed and productive.
4. Create a process that is mindful of people’s time. Ensure that feedback is collected, reviewed, understood and used.
5. Set expectations and monitor the progress.

How to Receive Feedback

To help build a feedback culture at your organization, use these five steps for receiving and responding to feedback.

1. Breathe and consider how you are showing up at the moment.

Are you fearful, defensive, disengaged, or open? How do you want to be instead?

2. Listen to what the person is saying. Turn off your interpretations and assessments of the situation and listen to their words.

3. If needed, ask for clarification.

4. Determine how the feedback fits into your goals.

5. Follow-up with the giver.

Remember that this is not a one-time event. Listen, reflect, and incorporate feedback into your goals and plans and try again.

How to ask for Feedback

Feedback is information about our efforts toward a goal. It is personal, but ultimately it is a treasure trove of valuable data that should be put to good use.

The key to seeking and accepting feedback is two-fold: 1) get more of it, and 2) treat it like a data point. Collecting more data from a variety of sources—that is, getting feedback from multiple people—is better, so you aren’t swayed—or worried—by outliers.

When you seek feedback, be specific about the goal you want information on. Leave it open-ended. For example:

“Hey, colleague who I work with every day. I am evaluating my efforts toward producing higher quality report drafts within five days. What did you notice about my work this time around?”

Page 27 of the full report offers a flowchart to help guide you through this process.

Additional Resources:

• Webinar: Driving Organizational Change Through Learning & Development
• White Paper: How to Thrive in the Face of Disruption
• Article: How Mentors Can Prepare Your Future Workforce

To learn more and dive deeper into these stats, Read the full report.