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Create a Culture of Feedback

LEADERS IN organizations and communities often have a difficult time providing others with feedback in a constructive way. For many, it takes only a moment to recall an inappropriate remark made in the spirit of trying to be helpful—whether delivered as a shout, as gossip, or in a condescending manner. Such divisive behavior among coworkers and supervisors and their direct reports can linger for years and can inhibit productivity and a true sense of “team.” It all comes down to supportive communication. If you have an environment with healthy communication, it is much more likely to be productive. Do your coworkers a favor: Create an environment in which team members have an opportunity to provide one another (and you) with feedback in a healthy and productive manner. Creating this culture will pay off tenfold. Otherwise, you may end up with a “toxic culture” and need to find more profound systems interventions, as Kusy and Holloway²⁴ found in their research on toxic personalities.

As a team, develop healthy ground rules surrounding the communication process. After all, disagreement in a team is to be expected, but how you disagree is critical to being a constructive critic. As with everything else in this book, it starts with you. If you provide feedback in a supportive manner, then others around you will have a greater tendency to do the same. If you are willing to accept constructive criticism, then it is likely that others around you will follow suit. If you are willing to put in the effort to create an environment of open communication, others may follow your lead.

Try the following strategy for providing feedback to another individual, whether it is positive or negative. We call it the ID—GAP model:

Considering the many clients, coworkers, and/or supervisors with whom we have worked over the years, this is an area that appears to be one of the most troublesome for leaders—how to manage the performance of others. We can easily count a dozen or so of our clients within the past six months who have had this challenge. They flounder because, sometimes, they just don’t know how to have difficult conversations or provide feedback to others. One leader told us that having this kind of a template helped her initiate the process and provided a game plan for her team. Please note that it certainly doesn’t have to be our model. However, we have found that it needs to be some model that provides a road map to foster the feedback process.