How am I doing? Research by Francesca Gino and colleagues shows just how badly employees want to know. Is it time for managers to get over their discomfort and get the conversation going at work?
If you were talking with a woman and noticed a splotch of red marker on her nose, would you tell her?
You’re not alone if you would prefer to remain silent. A recent study looking at whether and why people give constructive feedback found that only four out of 212 people surveyed told their survey provider that they had an unsightly smudge on their face.
The field study points to an uncomfortable truth: Even in cases where people have little to lose, they withhold needed feedback from others who could use it. Part of the reason why is that they underestimate how much other people crave feedback.
"We all like to think of ourselves as someone who would give someone constructive feedback, but the study suggests that . most people don't."
“We all like to think of ourselves as someone who would give someone constructive feedback, but the study suggests that even in a low-cost situation, most people don’t,” says Francesca Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “People overestimate the negative consequences giving feedback for themselves, as well as underestimate the benefits for the other person. This misunderstanding persists even when the feedback giver and receiver know each other well.”
The results highlight a potential disconnect in the workplace: While many workers are eager for feedback, especially constructive feedback, in many cases managers may be reluctant to provide it. Gino conducted five experiments with HBS doctoral students Nicole Abi-Esber and Jennifer Abel, and Juliana Schroeder, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business. The results are included in a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Workplace surveys consistently show that employees crave better information about how they could improve their performance. But most say they don’t get it.
A recent Gallup poll, for example, found only 26 percent of employees strongly believe that the feedback they receive helps them do their work better. A McKinsey survey of 12,000 managers indicated they consider “candid, insightful feedback” critical to career development.
Another international employee survey found that 72 percent of respondents rated “managers providing critical feedback” as important for them in career development, and another survey found only 5 percent believe managers provide such feedback.
In an attempt to understand this gap, the researchers presented a series of situations in which feedback could help to survey participants. These scenarios ranged from having a stain on a shirt during a business meeting to bigger problems, like a tendency to interrupt colleagues or write rude emails.
They asked participants to rate, on a one-to-10 scale, how much they would want feedback in a particular situation, versus how much they thought another person would want feedback. They found that in every case, people rated their desire for feedback higher when they were imagining themselves as the receiver than when they were imagining themselves as the giver. In fact, the more consequential the situation, the larger that gap seemed to be.
“People tend to focus on the discomfort of delivering feedback, and underestimate the value of the feedback to the other person, including how much they would appreciate the feedback, and how impactful it would be,” says Abi-Esber.
"Even though it could be uncomfortable, people reported that they really wanted to hear the feedback and appreciated it when they got it."
In another experiment, the team ratcheted up the stakes by inviting two people who knew each other well—such as romantic partners and close friends—into the laboratory, and then randomly assigning one of them to provide constructive feedback to the other about a real-life issue. The feedback givers routinely expressed nervousness, predicting the conversation would go poorly. Yet afterward, they typically said the conversation wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be.
“The interactions went better than expected,” says Abel. “Even though it could be uncomfortable, people reported that they really wanted to hear the feedback and appreciated it when they got it.”
Another experiment looked at how to get feedback givers to be more likely to provide input for receivers. Researchers tested two interventions—in one, they asked the feedback giver to imagine that someone else was giving the feedback, so they didn’t personally feel the discomfort; in the other, they asked the giver to imagine how they would feel if they were in the situation (and whether they would want the feedback). After both interventions, the giver was more likely to recognize how much more the receiver wanted the feedback—but asking the feedback giver to put themselves in the other person’s shoes was more effective overall. This suggests that one potential way to increase the likelihood that someone will give feedback is to encourage them to try to take the perspective of the potential feedback-receiver.
That kind of intervention, the researchers say, is an easy one to implement in the workplace to encourage more open conversations about employees’ performance. As managers consider whether to give constructive feedback to their employees, they might pause for a moment to recall when they were in a similar situation.
“To try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you could remember when feedback would have been very helpful for you, like when you were in your first job, or giving your first client presentation” Abi-Esber says.
After all, there are few greater gifts a person can give someone than showing them that you are paying attention to what they are doing, and helping them to do it more successfully, Gino says.
“Even if you are hesitant, take a second to ask yourself if you would want the feedback if you were them,” she says. “Most likely you would, and this realization can empower you to give better feedback. The other person likely wants it more than you think.”
Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu.
Image: Unsplash/Madison Oren