Sharing Feedback: An Expression Of Utmost Respect
Article | Accountability Insights
Most of the successful executives with whom we work agree that direct and honest feedback—received and given, appreciative and constructive—is the ultimate demonstration of mutual respect in the workplace. Consider the opposite for a moment, as one business leader suggests: If you’d like to increase your consciousness, do you think not giving feedback to someone is respectful? Do you think not seeking feedback from someone is respectful? Do you think going around someone to his or her boss is respectful? Do you think going to a peer with the hope that he or she will say something to someone is respectful? Do you think not telling the truth, as you see it, is respectful? Do you think not hearing the truth, as someone else sees it, is respectful?
Over the past two decades, we have implemented the feedback process in thousands of organizations with hundreds of thousands of people at every job level in countries all over the world. That experience has taught us some valuable lessons about the value of sharing feedback. Here are a few of them:
| • | Feedback doesn’t happen unless you make it happen. | |
| • | It is easier to ?lter feedback than to accept it. | |
| • | People often don’t act on feedback without some sort of follow-up. | |
| • | Feedback declines after people improve because they assume it’s no longer necessary. | |
| • | Organizations always underestimate the dif?culty of getting people to give and receive feedback. | |
| • | People more fully appreciate the feedback they receive after they have applied it and seen its impact on their results. |
When we regularly seek and offer feedback with the intent to improve individual and organizational performance, we not only demonstrate genuine respect for each other, we also achieve consistently better results.
For more information on the importance of feedback in Creating Greater Accountability in your organization, please join the Accountability Community by visiting www.partnersinleadership.com
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