Feedback and Human Self-Regulation

No More Feedback — Chapter 8

This chapter is an excerpt from No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work, the first in a series of books on toxic practices in the workplace. Read the introduction and previous chapter here on Medium, and find links to purchase the full book here.

What happens when you treat people and businesses as if they were closed systems and manage them with feedback? The crazy aspect of this is that feedback processes accelerate the false premise that people cannot see into themselves and understand their own behavior. People believe this about themselves because it has been drilled into them for most of their lives. This causes a painful disconnect between what people hear about themselves and how they experience themselves.

A small firm in Silicon Valley, which touts itself as innovative, took on 360 degree feedback and experienced the usual unexpected consequences.

Unexpected Downsides: The Diminishment of Self-Regulation

Casandra, who was the HR manager for the company was an unusually aware person. She paid attention to how people responded to the new programs that were introduced with the help of her department. She formed internal focus groups and also just talked to people a lot about their…