Feedback is Important

It is important to provide people with feedback in the workplace. Feedback should be positive or in the form of constructive criticism. Purely negative feedback accomplishes nothing and is the sign of a poor corporate culture.

If you are providing positive feedback, make it meaningful. You should praise someone’s work or actions when it’s really deserved and you mean what you say. Being overly complimentary all of the time won’t help morale or people improve in the long run.

In our participation trophy world, praise can be handed out too much and in situations where it’s not warranted. Don’t give positive feedback when it isn’t deserved. If you do it only will cause problems down the road.

In a similar vein, people withhold praise when it would provide validation for an employee who did a good job and deserves it. I know it can be hard to always know how complimentary to be or when to provide some constructive criticism. The better you know the person the easier it should be to know how and when to provide feedback.

If you start thinking about providing feedback more often you likely can find the balance in trying to provide the right amount of feedback to your co-workers. Try it and see the positive effect it can have on you and your workplace.

As always, this post and others can be found on my blog, Business Law Guy’s Blog.