What I mean by a feedback culture
A feedback culture is the habit, shared by the people in an organisation, of telling each other regularly and in both directions what they observe in each other's work, without waiting for the formal meeting. Feedback is specific information about a behaviour or a result, given to help someone learn, adjust or carry on. It is not a verdict on the person.
Survey platforms and recognition tools can support the habit; they do not create it. A simple test shows the difference: how many times this week did someone tell their manager something the manager did not want to hear? If the answer is "never", the organisation has feedback tools but not a feedback culture.
Taking stock of feedback in your group
When a leadership team wonders why bad news reaches them late, the cause is rarely the people and almost always the habits of dialogue. A first conversation helps to scope what is getting in the way and what it is realistic to change, depending on how many countries and teams are involved. Fees are set by personalised quotation.
What happens when feedback is missing
Silence does not produce calm. It produces delayed effects:
- small frictions are never named, and eventually become conflicts;
- the same mistakes are repeated, because nobody took the time to point them out;
- good work goes unnoticed, and people stop investing in it;
- managers hear about problems late, when they are already expensive;
- criticism travels through the corridors instead of reaching the person concerned.
Four conditions for the culture to take hold
A shared method
Without a common language, everyone gives feedback in their own way and everyone hears it in theirs. A simple structure, the same for all, makes exchanges shorter and less risky. I rely on the Situation, Behaviour, Impact model, which I set out in the article on constructive feedback.
A climate in which people can speak
Nobody gives honest feedback in a team where they fear the consequences. Feedback therefore depends on what researchers call psychological safety: the shared belief that you can flag a mistake, ask a question or voice a disagreement without being punished or ridiculed. I devote a separate article to psychological safety in teams.
Feedback that says both the good and the less good
A culture that only talks about problems wears teams out. A culture that only offers compliments lulls them. Both are needed, each worded precisely, which I cover in the article on positive and negative feedback.
Feedback that can be received
Much is said about how to give feedback. Yet a great deal is decided on the receiving side: if every remark triggers a defence, people stop making them. Learning to take criticism is half the journey, and it is the subject of the article on receiving feedback.
The leader sets the tone
No feedback culture holds if the leadership does not practise it. An executive committee whose members tell each other nothing useful will not get from its teams what it does not do itself. Three gestures weigh more than any charter: asking for feedback before giving it, admitting your own mistakes in front of the team, and thanking the person who brings bad news instead of correcting how they said it. For leaders who hesitate to be frank, I find the framework known as Radical Candor a useful map of the balance to aim for.
In an international group, feedback travels badly
The same sentence can sound clear in one country and brutal in another. In some cultures people say things directly, even when they are negative; in others they wrap them up, to the point where "that's quite interesting" can mean "no". Erin Meyer has described this gap well in her work on business cultures. In a group spanning several countries, two habits help: describing facts rather than judgements, and asking the person how they heard the message instead of assuming it was understood as intended.
Building a feedback culture in five steps
- Choose a common structure and have managers practise it in simulated situations rather than from a document.
- Start with the executive committee, which applies the method to itself first.
- Create short rituals: at the end of a meeting, one thing that worked and one thing to adjust.
- Encourage people to ask for feedback before giving it, which makes the exchange less threatening.
- Watch what changes: how often people comment spontaneously, how fast problems surface, how disagreements are handled in meetings.
For a team that wants to practise, I have designed a one-day feedback training course built around role plays and debriefs.
FAQ
What is a feedback culture, and how does it differ from an annual review?
It is a shared mindset, not a meeting. The annual review is a formal moment, once a year, when people take stock. A feedback culture means telling each other things as they happen, between colleagues as much as between a manager and a team. The two complement each other: an annual review without ongoing feedback contains nothing but surprises.
How do you build one, and where do you start?
From the top and through practice. Begin with a shared structure that leaders adopt for themselves first, then have managers practise it in role plays. Rituals follow, so that the gesture becomes a reflex. Announcing a "feedback culture" in a memo, without the leadership changing its own habits, usually produces the opposite of the intended effect.
How long does it take, and how do you know it is working?
First effects show within weeks in teams that practise; embedding takes months. The useful signs are observations, not scores: problems surface faster, disagreements are voiced in the meeting rather than after it, and the same mistakes come back less often.
Do you need a tool or a platform?
A tool can help with collecting and tracking, especially in a large group. But it comes after the method and after trust. A platform introduced into a team where people dare not speak collects cautious answers of no value.
How do you handle it across several countries?
Keep a common framework that is simple and based on facts, and let each team adapt it to its own communication habits. It helps to say explicitly, from the start, what the group expects of feedback, rather than assuming everyone hears the same thing behind the same word.
Going further
- The SBI model for constructive feedback
- Wording positive and adjusting feedback
- Taking criticism without defending
- Psychological safety, the ground feedback grows in
- Radical Candor: care and frankness together
- A one-day feedback training course
- Executive coaching for senior leaders
This article was written by Marc Prager.