Feedback: ask for an explanation before showing the solution?
In a precision workshop, demonstrating the right movement or setting seems the most direct way to correct a deviation. The managerial question is more specific: before providing the solution, should a manager ask the employee to explain why a correction would be appropriate?
What the literature establishes
Michelene T. H. Chi, Miriam Bassok, Matthew W. Lewis, Peter Reimann and Robert Glaser (1989, Cognitive Science) studied how students learn to solve physics problems from worked examples. Students who learned more successfully generated more explanations connecting the steps in the examples to underlying principles. This observation distinguishes exposure to a solution from the intellectual work needed to understand it.
The mechanism: building the missing connections
Michelene T. H. Chi, Nicholas de Leeuw, Mei-Hung Chiu and Christian LaVancher (1994, Cognitive Science) demonstrated experimentally that prompting self-explanations while students read a text about the circulatory system improved understanding. Self-explanation is not simply repeating information: it involves building connections and filling gaps in reasoning. Applied to feedback, the hypothesis would be to ask employees to articulate the connection between an observed deviation, its explanation and the proposed correction.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a manager should always respond to an error with a question. These studies justify neither withholding essential information nor leaving an employee to work things out alone when quality or safety is at risk. The suggestion is narrower: where circumstances allow, make time for an explanation, then check and correct the reasoning. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies concern academic learning, not feedback conversations in industry. They do not establish that a persuasive spoken explanation guarantees correct execution, or that this practice reduces production non-conformities. Evaluation must therefore focus on a subsequent task, not merely on the quality of the conversation.
A practical check in Neuchâtel
As part of SHR's « L'art du feedback » programme, a Neuchâtel site working in microtechnology, watchmaking or precision microelectronics could test this sequence on training cases outside production: ask for an explanation of the proposed correction, then provide the necessary technical feedback. Compare this sequence with a correction explained directly by the trainer, randomly assigning participants and using cases of comparable difficulty. The measure would be the proportion of participants who, on a new equivalent case, independently choose the correction that complies with the procedure, assessed against a rubric defined before the trial. This result would provide a local indicator of learning, without by itself proving effectiveness in production. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Neuchâtel in the canton of Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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