04 June, 2015

Honest Feedback is vital for Employee Engagement


If you want to create Employee Engagement you should invest in creating a culture of giving and receiving feedback. This is often confused with creating an environment of being friendly and although this is important it is more important to create relationships strong enough to be able to handle the truth (How to create a frame of honest feedback).





Gallup research has shown that a manager that gives mainly positive (based on strengths) feedback has more engaged employees versus managers that give predominantly negative feedback. What is more interesting is that giving no feedback is significantly worse that giving negative feedback.


As a leader you are responsible for growing your people which sometimes involves giving negative feedback. Research has shown that direct and honest feedback on wrong answers in tests has a bigger impact than feedback on what went well. 






When people are encouraged and allowed to grow employee engagement increases. To grow people need feedback that also means negative feedback.
Knowing that negative feedback also creates employee Engagement should be sufficient to encourage leaders to have difficult conversations with their people – ignoring the conversations are too expensive.

In the book “Crucial Conversations” the authors introduce the concept of the Fools choice: “The choice between friendship and honesty.” 

It is a fools choice because no friendship can be based on dishonesty so a crucial conversation is necessary to give honest feedback

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" Martin Luther King Jr.

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