What Is Feedback?
No More Feedback — Chapter 4
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 on Medium, and purchase the full book here.
In terms of human methodologies, feedback is offering to or receiving from others opinions, impressions, and assessments of attitudes and behavior in any form or context. Feedback is based on the ideas that 1) people cannot see themselves clearly and cannot assess the effects of their actions, objectively, and therefore, 2) external observers — assumed to be clear seeing, unprejudiced, and reliably objective — must do this work for them. Feedback is given with the intention to help others change their behaviors in ways that will benefit their work teams and organizations. Its primary goal is to improve performance reviews, teamwork engagements, and people’s ability to align themselves with the business’s strategies and objectives.
With this definition and an understanding of the core human capacities as guides, we are ready to look at the history of feedback with three objectives in mind, to:
- See why resourcing the development of the three core capacities may be the most important and generous gift one can give to another person.
- Become familiar with…
