Write Up: Feedback Effectiveness

Write Up: Feedback Effectiveness

Generally it’s seen or assumed that giving feedback to en employee results in performance improvement. However there are cases were case has been otherwise & the performance has declined. The article speaks about the mechanism of a feedback intervention, why it’s successful & why it’s not & how it can be linked to 360 degree appraisal system.

The article says after a lot of research, meta-analysis & empirical study almost one third of the feedbacks were resulting in negative or decline in performance & it didn’t matter whether the feedback was positive or negative.

One had to see how does feedback operate, the article proposes a model to look into this called feedback intervention theory. It’s based on 5 basic assumptions.

1. Behaviour is regulated by a comparison of feedback with a goal or standard
2. Goals or standards are arranged hierarchically
3. Attention is limited, so only those feedback standard gaps that receive attention will regulate behaviour
4. Attention is normally directed to a moderate level in the hierarchy
5. Feedback interventions change the focus of attention & so affect the behaviour

First assumption explains how we notice a gap between the performance & the goal & try to bridge the same

Second assumption of goals or standards are arranged hierarchically is deeply ingrained in cognitive psychology. It has got 3 levels of goals. The topmost is self-level, second task level & third level is task learning level.

At Self level, goals or task are related to one’s self concept & the performance of the same is central to self-concept.

At Task level, a person would focus only on the task itself & work hard to reduce gap between the desired performance & actual performance

Task learning level, is about how one goes about doing the task, focus is on learning how to do the task

The question is at which level should we focus feedback interventions?

Many of the successful feedback intervention happens at Task level were the concerned person who is getting feedback is trying to close the gap between actual performance & performance goals & this is the intended outcome of most feedback interventions

When focus is on task learning level, the person tends to learn on how to improve the performance this can lead to better performance. However at this level it’s also important to show the ways or measures   how performance can be improved   otherwise performance will suffer.

The problem area is at the topmost level that is at self- concept, goals at this levels always have the potential of impairing performance because they deal with how one view themselves & it requires considerable cognitive resources. Since it’s linked with self-concepts, feedback interventions often produce strong reactions like despair, disappointment or even elation that can affect task performance. For e.g. : A person who considers himself a fair person who is then given feedback that he  is biased towards certain employees, will starting what kind of person he is rather than working towards the unbiasedness.