01/09/2018

Negative Feedback's Faults

An HBR-touted study sheds new light on the value of peer-to-peer reviews

Many organizations use peer-to-peer reviews to provide employees with honest and critical feedback, but a new study of one organization reveals that negative feedback from a colleague often doesn’t lead to improvement.

“When people in this organization received what we call ‘disconfirming feedback,’ they would try to move away from the coworkers who had offered it, and they would look for new and different relationships,” says Paul Green, one of the authors of the study, in the Harvard Business Review. “And the more negative feedback they received, the further the employees would go to forge new networks.”

While some may view negative feedback as constructive criticism, Green contends that it’s often seen as a psychological threat. “There’s an assumption that what motivates people to improve is the realization that they’re not as good as they think they are,” he says. “But in fact, it just makes them go find people who will not shine that light on them.”

Please click here to read the complete article from Associations Now.