“"People often have opportunities to provide others with constructive feedback that could be immediately helpful, whether that's letting someone know of a typo in their presentation before a client presentation, or telling a job candidate about a stained shirt before an interview," said lead author Nicole Abi-Esber, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School. "Overall, our research found that people consistently underestimate others' desire for feedback, which can have harmful results for would-be feedback recipients."

Constructive feedback is instrumental for aiding learning and performance, and research has shown that people commonly report wanting this type of feedback, according to the researchers. However, despite wanting constructive feedback themselves, people often avoid giving it to others. In a pilot study conducted by the researchers, only 2.6% of participants informed a tester of a visible smudge on his or her face (e.g., chocolate, lipstick or red marker) during a survey.

The research was published in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Previous research suggests that people avoid giving feedback for fear of negative outcomes, such as the other person's becoming embarrassed or upset. Abi-Esber and her colleagues theorized there might be another reason people withhold feedback: They simply do not fully recognize the potential of their input to improve others' outcomes, leading them to underestimate others' desire for such feedback.”

My Takeaways From This Article

1. Constructive feedback is an underrated great way of providing input into people’s work and fosters teamwork and togetherness in the workplace. It can exponentially increase productivity and quality of work and give a sense of accomplishment for everyone. Therefore it’s a skill worth mentioning and learning, yet a lot of people are reluctant to do so.

2. Constructive criticism has a rather negative connotation to it because there is a fear that people will take it the wrong way and that it’ll lead to issues between team members. Additionally people who desire to give criticism are often restricted from doing so because they feel as if the person who’d receive it would be set off by it and not necessarily want to hear proposed changes to their work.

3. However, this study has shown that many people actually underestimate that other people actually do want constructive criticism from others! Personally for me I do want people to give their inputs on my work because it shows that they are invested in what the outcome will be. I also think that every person has their unique points of view and consolidating that in your work is one of the best ways to ensure quality work.

Full article is here!

What do you think about this finding? What does constructive criticism look like for you?

#Criticism #Teamwork #Work