High-quality feedback drives performance improvement. But too often, employees receive either too little feedback or only low-quality, unhelpful input. In this article, we’ll discuss how to share continuous feedback in the workplace that truly fuels growth. We’ll also address how to cultivate a feedback-rich culture that empowers people to excel.
Table of Contents
- Laying the Foundation: Why Continuous Feedback Matters
- Building a Feedback-Rich Culture
- How to Give and Receive Feedback Effectively
- Maintaining Momentum: Ensuring Continuous Feedback Sticks
- Primalogik: Your Partner in Building a Continuous Feedback Culture
Laying the Foundation: Why Continuous Feedback Matters
Let’s explore why ongoing feedback plays such a critical role in organizational success.
The Modern Workplace Demands It
In today’s dynamic business environment, relying on traditional performance reviews for sharing feedback simply doesn’t work. Since they happen too infrequently to respond to quickly changing conditions, a more agile approach is needed. The events discussed in an appraisal may have happened months ago, and employees may have moved through multiple project cycles since then.
Additionally, informal feedback conversations often flow more naturally than a formal review, leading to greater understanding.
The rise of remote work heightens the need for consistent feedback. Without regular feedback, remote and hybrid employees will feel detached from their team and unclear about expectations. With reduced chances to spontaneously interact, intentionally sharing daily feedback will provide much-needed social support, clarity, and guidance, as researchers share in Personnel Review.
Further, today’s employees expect ongoing feedback. In particular, Millennials and Gen Z workers want frequent feedback that supports their growth. Gen Z workers crave real-time feedback and richer constructive conversations that address not just what happened, but why—and how they can do things differently. In these conversations, they want to share their perspective and help design solutions, as Danielle Abril explains in The Washington Post.
The Benefits, When Done Right
Continuous feedback plays a major role in enhancing performance—but only when the feedback is high-quality. According to Gallup, 80% of employees who have received meaningful feedback in the past 7 days are fully engaged. Those who receive feedback from their manager daily are 3.6 times more likely to feel motivated to do exceptional work. And as Gallup notes, an agile approach to feedback-sharing lets teams make performance adjustments in real time, providing a competitive advantage. This also results in reduced error rates, higher quality of work, and faster project completion times.
“Higher levels of feedback are associated with 89% greater thriving at work, 63% more engagement, and 79% higher job satisfaction,” writes Christine Porath in Berkeley Greater Good. “People who receive more feedback are also 1.2 times more likely to stay with the organization.” Hence, frequent feedback can help reduce the high costs of turnover and disengagement.
Effective feedback engages and motivates employees by giving them the tools to improve. It helps them envision a clear path forward and continuously enhance their performance, as researchers Jeremiah Rogito and Morris Makabe write. All of this fosters higher levels of trust between managers and employees, as well as between peers, resulting in stronger relationships and greater team cohesion. By nurturing a mindset of learning from mistakes, a strong feedback culture encourages creativity, experimentation, and innovation.
Conversely, ineffective feedback feels demoralizing. Feedback that doesn’t help people imagine a path forward or conceptualize how to handle a task falls into this category. Often such feedback is vague or negative in tone. This unconstructive feedback leads to disengagement, lowers confidence, and damages relationships, as Rogito and Makabe assert.
Building a Feedback-Rich Culture
Let’s discuss a few key ways of fostering a feedback culture.
Role Modeling by Leadership
Leaders can model their commitment to growth by publicly asking for upward feedback. In meetings, they should proactively invite input, asking open-ended questions about how to improve their performance. Further, they can emphasize the value of feedback by sharing how they’ve personally benefited from it. Then, when employees share feedback, they should listen actively, asking follow-up questions. They should convey willingness to consider surprising ideas, showing curiosity. Later, they can check in about their progress.
Managers should provide constructive feedback to direct reports at least several times a week, too. Guide leaders in becoming great coaches so they’ll do this more effectively. “Managers who continually listen, ask questions, gain context and promote dialogue have progressed to a coaching mindset,” asserts Gallup.
With remote employees, consider holding daily 2–3 minute phone or video conversations. These quick check-ins will help work flow smoothly and build comfort with giving and receiving feedback.
Training and Development
Teach all employees—including managers—to share and receive feedback effectively. Here are a few tools that can help:
- Role-playing scenarios. In groups of three, employees can practice giving and receiving feedback and sharing observations.
- Feedback models. Share simple frameworks like the SBI model, which involves describing a given situation, behaviour, and impact. (We’ll share a couple more techniques in a moment.)
- Active listening workshops. Share empathetic listening tips, like reflecting the speaker’s feelings, paraphrasing ideas, and asking for clarification.
Emphasize that feedback serves as a tool for growth. By reframing it as a constructive resource rather than something to fear, you’ll encourage everyone to share feedback regularly.
Creating a Safe Space for Feedback
Encourage feedback-sharing by fostering psychological safety and trust. A psychologically safe environment promotes open communication, enabling people to voice concerns promptly. Nurture this culture by showing curiosity about people’s ideas, resolving conflict productively, and celebrating risk-taking.
Emphasize how sharing feedback will benefit their colleagues’ growth, too. Research shows that people underestimate how much others would value their input. Then, praise people who offer helpful feedback to peers and leaders.
As an organization, build trust by maintaining open communication and transparency. Share company plans and invite input on them. Welcome feedback about your practices, underscoring the importance of sharing feedback in all directions.
How to Give and Receive Feedback Effectively
Let’s dive into how to share high-quality feedback in a way that people can hear. Then, we’ll discuss tips for receiving and integrating this input.
Giving Feedback
By following these tips, you’ll ensure that people will hear and benefit from your feedback.
1. Use a Framework
Use a feedback-sharing framework to organize your thoughts. These two methods will help you provide specific input and examples.
The STAR method
- Situation or task: Clarify the situation or task that your feedback relates to.
- Action: Describe what the recipient did, sharing relevant details.
- Result: Explain how that action influenced the situation.
The IDEA method
- Identify: State the problem or situation you’re working to address.
- Describe: Specify the necessary behaviour change and how it will affect the team. (Or, if sharing positive feedback, emphasize how continuing their current behaviour will benefit the company.)
- Encourage: Provide encouragement to make any necessary changes. Share any support you can offer.
- Agree: Come up with steps the recipient can take, and set a time to follow up.
2. Focus on Behaviour, Not Personality
When giving feedback, follow the philosophy of Radical Candor: “care personally and challenge directly.” This means being empathetic while bravely sharing your observations. Focus on behaviour, not personality. And avoid ruinous empathy by being straightforward and candid rather than sugarcoating the truth.
3. Be an Ally
As Paige Cohen writes in Harvard Business Review, remind yourself that you’re an ally to the feedback recipient. Strive to create a psychologically safe space for hearing and responding to feedback.
4. Be Calm and Respectful
Feedback may trigger emotions in you as well as in the recipient. Remaining emotionally centered will help the conversation flow smoothly.
5. Be Timely and Relevant
Give feedback as close to the event as possible. But do take time to reflect beforehand.
6. Balance Positive and Constructive Feedback
Recognize achievements and strengths, while offering suggestions for improvement. The recipient will feel more capable of integrating the feedback when reminded of their strengths.
7. Take a Collaborative Approach
As Abril discusses, younger generations want feedback conversations to be a dialogue that invites their ideas. Practice active listening and ask good follow-up questions to spark this dialogue. As Cohen writes, after sharing feedback, ask, “What are your thoughts?”
8. Focus on Solutions
Look toward the future rather than dwelling on the past. Frame feedback as an opportunity for growth.
9. Embrace the Awkwardness
As Radical Candor says, giving feedback can sometimes feel awkward. Leaning into the awkwardness instead of resisting it will diffuse that tension.
Receiving Feedback
Follow these four principles to graciously accept feedback and maximize the benefits you derive from it.
1. Listen Actively
Ask the giver of feedback to elaborate on key points. Use follow-up questions and paraphrasing to ensure understanding.
2. Maintain a Growth Mindset
Be open to learning, viewing feedback as a gift. Envision your future self becoming more effective as a result of this conversation.
3. Express Appreciation
Acknowledge the effort and intention behind the feedback. Remember that it takes courage to speak up, and that it’s meant to benefit your growth.
4. Commit to Improvement
Take action to improve, setting clear goals and determining how you’ll measure progress. Mention any changes you’re making to the giver of feedback. Revisit it later, asking for their input on how well you’ve integrated their suggestions.
Maintaining Momentum: Ensuring Continuous Feedback Sticks
Follow these strategies to get the most from your continuous feedback efforts.
Regular Check-ins and Follow-up
Monitor progress through regular check-ins. Urge managers to follow-up on feedback during weekly check-in meetings, sharing support and resources. Peers can also hold check-ins together.
Adopting the Right Tools
Utilize tools that facilitate feedback-sharing in a hybrid or remote environment. Instant feedback-sharing tools make it easy to share bite-sized feedback, even when schedules aren’t synchronized.
Continuous Improvement
Work to continuously strengthen your feedback-sharing processes. Gather input on the effectiveness of your feedback system, making adjustments in response to these insights. And stay up to date on best practices in continuous feedback, so you can keep fine-tuning your system.
Moreover, don’t be afraid to try new things—and offer multiple modes of feedback-sharing to fit different personalities. For example, you could hold a town hall to seek ideas, followed by a survey for those who didn’t feel comfortable speaking up in the big meeting.
Primalogik: Your Partner in Building a Continuous Feedback Culture
Primalogik’s platform facilitates continuous feedback-sharing. With our instant feedback tool, you can easily share valuable input in real time.
Using Primalogik’s continuous feedback tool provides multiple benefits:
- Streamlined process: Make feedback a natural part of the workflow.
- Improved feedback quality: Encourage more specific, actionable, and timely feedback.
- Enhanced employee engagement: Foster a culture of open communication and growth.
- Increased productivity and performance: Align feedback with goals and track progress over time.
- Data-driven insights: Gain valuable insights into feedback trends and areas for improvement.
The platform also lets you monitor performance on a daily basis, gaining real-time insights on development.
Through continuous feedback, you’ll strengthen the capabilities of every employee in your organization. You’ll also enhance relationships between managers and team members. And by using the right tools, you’ll ensure that everyone receives high-quality feedback when it matters.
Learn more about Primalogik’s continuous feedback capabilities and other features—demo our performance management platform today!
