How much feedback do you receive from your people and the business? How much feedback do you give your people on a day-to-day basis?  What kind of feedback are you giving them?  Adaptive?  Affirmative?  A good balance of the two?   Do you know what I am talking about?

Well, you’ve heard about feedback, right?  And you probably heard that it’s supposed to be a good thing?  The trouble is, all you ever get is whining and winging…and people don’t really accept the feedback you give them either.

What might be the reason for that?  Are they all lazy louts who don’t want to know?  Is it about the way you give feedback?  Is it about the timing of your feedback?  Is it about the (lack of) culture around feedback in your business?

What do people expect, when they see you coming towards them? Praise? A chat? A roasting about something that has gone wrong? An instruction about how to do things? An expression of your current emotional state? Constructive feedback about their current behaviour – either affirmative or adaptive?  A two-way conversation about standards of performance and how they measure up?

It’s fascinating how what we expect to happen can colour our perception of what is actually happening in the moment.  What are our expectations coloured by?  

Usually, a mixture of our previous experiences, our current emotional state, our current self-image and the feedback of our immediate environment.  The latter can be verbal or non-verbal, and lack of feedback can speak as loudly as feedback given.

So, what are you doing about creating a culture of continuous effective feedback in your company?  A culture where feedback is requested, given and received respectfully, which will result in a more productive working environment, full of engaged people who understand what their role in growing the company is?