The Three Myths about External Feedback - Part 1

Myth 1: Feedback provides high quality in-formation & improves team effectiveness. (Not necessarily so:)

• Much of what we see in others comes from what we cannot see or deal with in ourselves, therefore we tend to project our own needs on to others.

• Groups providing feedback for other groups may tend to collude, unknowingly, in offering group projections.

• Feedback techniques frequently remove the qualities most needed in teams.

"What is required to be comfortable as friends is not what is required to be a successful organization……..We need to feel camaraderie but we also need to ask tough questions in order to gain new ideas and solutions."


Myth 2: A shared set of high performance leadership behaviors can improve organizational performance

• On the contrary, it may kill individual uniqueness

• It tends to move everyone towards a common standard behavior

• It results in common performance appraisal procedures which results in standardized behavior

Myth 3: Feedback causes people to see themselves more accurately and allows them to be accountable to the team or organization

• In fact, it reduces the capabilities of self-reflection and self-assessment - just the opposite of the self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-accountable behavior organizations need.

• Feedback reinforces the pattern that others will and should tell us how we are doing.

•More deadly, it reduces our capacity to be self-reflective & self-accountable.

Want to find out what is effective? Check back next week for Part 2.

www.wholonomyconsulting.com