Feedback and Feedforward

How does the brain respond and what is best?

Feedback is considered a good thing and something that enables performance – but some research has shown there can be negative impacts and if not well implemented, and well thought through, can therefore backfire. Simultaneously quality feedback does enable and contribute to high performance and high performing teams.

Feedback, feedback, feedback is often drilled into managers on leadership courses. It sounds like a good thing, but hold your horses because if you don’t think it through carefully, it may backfire on you.

Now, of course, in principle feedback is a great thing – if you don’t hear feedback you don’t know what everyone else is thinking and whether you are doing a good job. In other areas, such as sports performance, there is constant feedback and sports coaches are constantly giving feedback to their progeny constantly nudging them along to greatness. Similarly, in online gaming feedback is pretty instantaneous, you know where you are, and when you’ve failed.

So yes, ideally, we’d be getting a lot of feedback, a lot of the time. However, there are also important subtle differences. Much of the feedback in sports areas is normative, i.e., it is pretty clear what the outcome was or is, there is not a lot of room for interpretation, you scored a goal, or you blasted it wide. You made the pass, or you fudged it. You made it to the next level of Zombie Killer Attack, or you were eaten by the Zombies. The problem in the workplace is that a lot of feedback is very subjective.