When you provide feedback to your colleagues – do you want to be polite or do you want to be objective?
In many international companies there is a whole bunch of processes dedicated to gathering and providing feedback. Somehow though, only few of their employees extract actual value from it.
The bitter truth is that a lot of people think they have to be very positive and mention only good things; they think if they provide positive feedback, they will also receive a good one in return. Many are also afraid to offend the person or simply prefer to withhold if they were to provide any negative feedback.
If we provide only positive feedback, without examples or suggestions what to enhance or improve, can you really call it “feedback”? If people know what they do well, but are kept in the dark about what they don’t do so well… can they really improve? What is then called continuous improvement?
True power belongs to those who put their ego aside and want to learn about what they could do better. The things on which you need to work – this is the most valuable information, because if you work on that – you will improve and become a much better professional.