Feedback – why leaders need it

The ability to give and receive feedback is an important part of the leadership role. Today’s fast-changing and challenging workplace with its competitive labour market means its not only important that employees use it to get help in their development, but also that their leaders get the feedback they need to continue to grow in their role.  Some large organisations such as Amazon and Google are even using regular anonymised employee feedback surveys to ask employees for feedback on their managers’ style and performance!

Many employees though are often reluctant to criticise their leaders because they fear repercussions but if leaders are not aware of issues within the organisation it can damage employee engagement and productivity.

The idea that somehow leaders aren’t meeting employee expectations can be damaging to the ego and at times will be even be unwarranted but its essential that criticism isn’t taken as being personal. Input from colleagues can help in building a constructive plan to move forward and identify any weaknesses that can be improved

Feedback is a skill that needs to be developed. If leaders are open to it and act on it, feedback can help to create a healthy work environment with increased transparency, improved productivity and engagement and better results through the adaptation of new knowledge and skills. It can also help managers improve and grow as much as their employees.

The demise of the annual performance review

Over the past few years there has been a growing trend away from annual performance reviews. As a result many organisations including Deloitte, Adobe and Accenture are now reporting improved employee morale, productivity and innovation.

With the changing nature of business and employee expectations, organisations need to adapt quickly to ensure business continuity. An annual process of management, monitoring, evaluation and realignment no longer provides this.

By its nature, an annual performance review consolidates a year’s worth of feedback into one meeting with recent events understandably at the fore. This means managers feel they don’t have to provide in-the-moment or regular feedback and employees hold back their thoughts about their role, the organisation and their ideas for potential changes or improvements. Often there is no organisation-wide standard so reviews can be seen as unfair when promotions and salary increases are included as part of the process. 

Many employees want more feedback so the focus should perhaps change to continuous performance management. This would allow a more informal, agile and less stressful process with the organisation able to dynamically set goals, get feedback and improve productivity along with better collaboration, greater alignment and more collective responsibility. Employees would benefit from increased recognition and work evaluation, more performance feedback and empowerment and the alignment of their personal goals with organisational ones

There is a clear correlation between higher level of motivation and timely, accurate feedback so maybe its time for managers to look for ways to give effective continuous feedback.?