Feedback: correcting without closing down creative exploration
In Zurich's financial services, insurance and tech businesses, as well as the European headquarters of international groups, managers must review proposals that are still taking shape. The precise question is this: how can they identify shortcomings without encouraging employees to suggest only what already seems approved?
What the literature establishes
Teresa M. Amabile (1979, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally studied how expecting external evaluation affects the creativity of artistic work. Her findings show that this expectation can reduce creativity, depending on the conditions under which the evaluation is announced. The study concerns anticipated judgement, not a feedback conversation: it highlights that the evaluative setting has an effect before the manager even comments.
Informing is not controlling
Jing Zhou (1998, Journal of Applied Psychology) jointly examined positive or negative feedback, informational or controlling feedback style, task autonomy and achievement orientation. The experiment identifies interactive effects: feedback's effect on creativity depends on its combination with other conditions, rather than its positive or negative tone alone. Feedback that provides guidance and feedback that pressures someone to conform are therefore not the same intervention.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that all criticism should be suspended to protect creativity. These studies justify neither that rule nor the idea that a positive comment is enough to produce better proposals. A more cautious managerial distinction is to separate non-negotiable constraints from the manager's preferences, so that a preference does not implicitly become the only permissible solution. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot guarantee
These experiments reproduce neither an insurer's regulatory obligations nor the internal politics of an international headquarters. A creative output does not guarantee compliance, commercial value or feasibility either. Everyday practice also leaves a blind spot: receiving a corrected version does not reveal whether the employee explored alternatives or simply guessed the manager's preferred answer.
A practical check in Zurich
As a practical application of SHR's « L'art du feedback » programme in Zurich, a team could test a format for one month that distinguishes mandatory constraints, open questions and managerial preferences in every response to a proposal. Before the test, it defines an alternative as a solution with a genuinely different underlying mechanism, rather than merely a different presentation. It then measures the proportion of revised proposals accompanied by at least two such alternatives, comparing this with the previous month using retained versions. This monitoring does not prove an increase in creativity, but it can establish whether room for exploration remains visible after feedback, without treating non-compliant options as acceptable. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Zurich
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