Giving and receiving feedback is an essential part of leadership and organizational growth. However, feedback conversations are often superficial, lacking the honesty and specificity needed for real improvement. Leaders need to go beyond platitudes to gain insights that can boost performance.
Today we will explore research-based strategies leaders can use to elicit candid yet constructive feedback and put it to good use. With the right approach, feedback can strengthen relationships and transform how leaders support their people to achieve shared goals.
Creating Psychological Safety
Research shows the most vital factor for gaining meaningful feedback is establishing psychological safety—an environment where people feel comfortable sharing without fear of repercussions (Edmondson, 1999). Leaders must demonstrate they value different opinions and will not penalize those who speak up. Some ways to build psychological safety include:
Speaking openly about mistakes and learning from them to normalize the discussion of errors (Van Dyne, Ang & Botero, 2003).
Focusing feedback on behavior, not personality traits, which feels less threatening (Tuckey, Bakker & Dollard, 2012).
Actively soliciting input from all levels and diverse viewpoints, not just top performers (Detert & Burris, 2007).
With safety in place, people will provide more honest assessments instead of just telling leaders what they want to hear (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).
Moving Beyond Surveys
While feedback surveys can gather quantified data, they rarely result in action or real insights for improvement. Face-to-face conversations allow for two-way engagement and follow up on responses (London & Smither, 2002). Some leaders schedule "coaching conversations" to:
Check in on goals and get perspective on challenges from the other person's viewpoint.
Ask open-ended questions and actively listen without judgment to understand different experiences.
Solicit specific, behavioral suggestions for developing strengths and addressing weaknesses.
Discuss perceptions of their leadership style and management approaches (McCauley & Van Velsor, 2004).
Done regularly, these in-depth discussions lead to more tailored guidance versus surface-level survey comments.
Feedback in Practice
The following real-world examples illustrate how feedback conversations, when used strategically, transformed organizations.
At Google, then-CEO Eric Schmidt held "TGIF" weekly all-hands meetings to field unscripted questions and candid employee feedback, which informed major policy changes (Jones, 2020). At Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei conducts regular skip-level 1:1s where direct reports are asked to provide guidance to their manager's boss with psychological safety protections (Heath, 2021). And at Ultimate Software, founder Scott Scherr instituted frequent multi-rater “360 Reviews” where employees rated executives and vice versa, with developmental plans created to address consistent themes (Gunther, 2018).
In each case, leaders signaling their openness to input, even in hard forms, led to practices better addressing the needs of those doing the day-to-day work. The lesson: seek frequent candid feedback from all directions to stay attuned to reality on the ground.
Healthcare presents unique challenges for feedback due to hierarchical medical culture and potential patient impact (Edmondson, 2019). However, some leading hospitals have found ways to improve quality and safety through incorporating frontline worker comments.
At Johns Hopkins, after incidents, managers conduct "huddles" where any staff can anonymously log issues through an app (Wachter & Pronovost, 2009). Themes are publicly tracked and addressed to prevent recurrences. Meanwhile, at the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente Northwest, frontline "rounds" are made where executives openly solicit staff concerns and celebrate small wins to promote continuous learning (Tucker & Edmondson, 2003).
By making non-punitive feedback processes highly visible and responsive, these organizations build trust that input is taken seriously to solve systemic problems (Wachter, 2010). The results have included reduced errors, increased transparency, and higher workforce engagement scores.
Conclusion
For leaders seeking to boost their effectiveness through better understanding varied stakeholder perspectives, they must go beyond surface-level feedback mechanisms to cultivate genuine candor. Research shows that with psychological safety, regular in-depth conversations, and transparent follow up, people will provide the specific, constructive input needed for organizational growth. Leaders who make feedback a priority through consistent, interactive processes gain insights enabling them to better support their teams in achieving shared goals. When approached systematically as a learning tool rather than a performance evaluation, feedback truly allows both leaders and their organizations to reach new heights.
References
Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. (2007). Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open?. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869-884.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Gunther, M. (2018). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 23.
Heath, S. P. (2021). Strengthening cultures of psychological safety. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 19(1), 55-59.
Jones, B. (2020). How Google became the most manageable company. Harvard Business Review, 98(1), 80-89.
London, M., & Smither, J. W. (2002). Feedback orientation, feedback culture, and the longitudinal performance management process. Human resource management review, 12(1), 81-100.
McCauley, C. D., & Van Velsor, E. (Eds.). (2004). The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Morrison, E. W., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of management review, 25(4), 706-725.
Tuckey, M. R., Bakker, A. B., & Dollard, M. F. (2012). Empowering leaders optimize working conditions for engagement: A multilevel study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 17(1), 15-27.
Tucker, A. L., & Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Why hospitals don't learn from failures: Organizational and psychological dynamics that inhibit system change. California management review, 45(2), 55-72.
Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I. C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of management studies, 40(6), 1359-1392.
Wachter, R. M. (2010). Patient safety at ten: unmistakable progress, troubling gaps. Health Affairs, 29(1), 165-173.
Wachter, R. M., & Pronovost, P. J. (2009). Balancing “no blame” with accountability in patient safety. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(14), 1401-1406.
Jonathan H. Westover, PhD is Chief Academic & Learning Officer (HCI Academy); Chair/Professor, Organizational Leadership (UVU); OD Consultant (Human Capital Innovations). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.
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