Feedback is essential and critical at the same time to have a detrimental impact on the individual’s performance. The debate is on for a long time that either positive feedback is useful or negative feedback. Feedback, either in the academic setting, work-setting, or family setting plays an essential role in the self-efficacy of a person and help in improving the individuals’ performance. “Feedback by nature must be negative to an extent if it is to be helpful in improving performance. Much of the feedback that significant other’ give is to specifically point out the shortcomings of an individual’s task and motivate the person towards improvement. Such feedback is intended to be received as ‘constructive criticism.
However, although individuals may say they value feedback in general, when it is about their performance and by extension themselves, the impact on self-esteem may provoke an adverse reaction” (p. 174). This statement shows up in a study that investigated how much criticism should give their students. There are many scholars who favor that negative feedback is healthy and improves performance but at the same time, there are some researchers and scholars who suggest that positive feedback is a new form of motivator that when given efficiently and timely can leads to improved performance. I stand with the latter one who are in favor of positive feedback because I think that instructors, employees, students or anybody can be improved by positive feedback. Positive feedback reveals to you what you are doing well or what works. On the other hand, one can realize that anybody can accomplish a greater amount of it. Beyond any doubt, one won’t enhance performance if one gets positive feedback.
Significant others, like parents, friends, teachers, and siblings (Shrauger & Rosenberg, 1970) play an essential role in affecting the performance of individuals. The main purpose of feedback is not to pass any comment or judgment on individual’s performance but rather to provide support, guidance, challenge, and information. Burnett (1996) investigated the relationship between positive and negative statements that are made by parents, teachers, sibling, peers and child’s self-talk; and it was also found that positive feedback are more beneficial than the verbal criticism. At home personalities and beliefs of children are shaped by parents and siblings, whereas in schools teachers and peers play an important role in developing their individuality and personality. Children’s achievement-related beliefs (e.g. feedback) are important because these beliefs have a significant influence on their performance. Schunk and colleagues conducted a series of experiments to examine the effects of feedback and goals on students’ performance and found that progress feedback together with learning goal are beneficial to their performance (Schunk & Rice, 1991).
There are two types of feedback involving praise and criticism that are usually considered as reinforcers at any setting to achieve the goal of learning. In the school setting, teachers’ feedback plays a crucial rule in influencing the students learning. Similarly, in case of writing classes, negative feedback is not preferred rather it is said that positive feedback has potential to improve students’ learning outcomes. There are a variety of learning context like face to face learning, distance learning; and there are different types of students as students with the high confidence, and students with low self-esteem, so it yields multiple types of interactions between instructor and learner. Teachers are encountered with a wide variety of learners in a wide range of settings. So there is a need for different types of approaches and not the same type of feedback applies to all students. When the interaction is not healthy then obviously it will end up in lousy learning (Belschak & DenHartog, 2009).
In case of workplace setting, positive feedback helps employees in improving their tasks and maximize performance. Studies have found that when an organization pay attention to their employees and expect great thing by presenting different opportunities, then this can lead to improving their performance. Related to organizational behavior, those employees who receive consistently, planned feedback along with training, also increased expectation performs significantly better than other (Shields, 2007). The necessary mandate of an organization, on a broader perspective, is to train their employees while developing their abilities and skills and for that purpose, timely feedback is much essential. Studies have shown that there is a positive relationship between positive feedback given by organization and employee development and then this leads to the decreased cost of the organization. Those employees who are appreciated by their supervisors perform much better than those who are not appreciated.
Those who are proponents of constructive criticism say that criticism improves performance but plenty of literature suggest that constructive feedback is important and it is not a criticism as it is descriptive and is meant to help employees to motivate them and perform up to the mark. Moreover, nobody likes criticism and research indicates that the learning oriented employees do not appreciate criticism instead are open to positive feedback. Similarly, when individuals are blamed for their shortcomings, then this will lower their engagement which ultimately will affect their performance negatively. Studies suggest that those supervisors (teachers or employers) who focus on the strengths of their subordinates (students or employees) receive positive and improved performance from them.
Although some researchers say that negative feedback is healthy as it is a healthy way to stop the unwanted behavior, Leadership Management International suggest that is not a good strategy to encourage employees to replace their bad behavior with the positive one. Similarly, negative feedback can inconveniently influence work fulfillment, as indicated by Diane M. Alexander, Professor at the University of Rhode Island. The person who receives negative feedback may lose the will to work positively and efficiently because of his response to the negative appraisal of his efforts performance. Furthermore, negative feedback hit the self-esteem of the individuals and instead of getting motivated they become de-motivated and perform poorly in future. Although some individuals are open to criticism yet, there are plenty of individuals who receive criticism negatively, and their performance got affected in a more negative manner.
In case of the workplace, negative feedback increases the stress and anxiety level of employees and in return affect their health and wellbeing. Some studies suggest that negative feedback leads to absenteeism and even turnover in some cases. So losing employees means the company is losing talent and thus resulting in the overall decline of organizational performance. So, those who consider that negative feedback can lead to improvement in overall performance think wrong; because it is evident from many studies that individuals take negative feedback as a way of insult thus causing them stress that leads to lower self-esteem and eventually lowering of performance (Belschak & DenHartog, 2009).
Conclusion
Conclusively, the crucial purpose of giving positive feedback involves helping individuals to grow, comprehend, and understand them that they are answerable and responsible for their actions and performance; and also to make them learn that the support and guidance are there and significant others are recognizing their efforts. When something positive is expected from individuals, and are provided with effective advice and positive feedback, then they perform best. So constructive feedback always ranks higher than the constructive criticism that often makes people rebellious. So in the light of given evidence, positive feedback is both valuable and healthy for individuals performance.
References
Ackerman, D. S. and Gross, B. L. (2010). Instructor feedback: How much do students want? Journal of Marketing Education, 32 (2), 172-181.
Belschak, F., & Den Hartog, D. (2009). Consequences of Positive and Negative Feedback: The Impact on Emotions and Extra-Role Behaviors. Applied Psychology, 58(2), 274-303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2008.00336.x
Kraft, D. (2018). Woman.thenest.com. Retrieved from https://woman.thenest.com/problems-can-negative-feedback-cause-job-15087.html
Shrauger, J. S., & Rosenberg, S. E. (1970). Self‐esteem and the effects of success and failure feedback on performance. Journal of Personality, 38(3), 404-417.
Shields, J. (2007). Managing employee performance and reward. New York.
Schunk, D. H., & Rice, J. M. (1991). Learning goals and progress feedback during reading comprehension instruction. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23(3), 351-364.
Essays, UK. (November 2013). Effect Of Positive Feedback On Employee Performance. Retrieved from http://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/effect-of-positive-feedback-on-employee-performance-management-essay.php?vref=1
