In Lugano, what kind of feedback really helps people improve?
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Leadership d'excellence” programme, feedback deserves to be treated as an intervention in work rather than simply a relationship skill. The managerial question is precise: how can a manager frame feedback that helps someone correct an action without shifting attention towards a judgement about the person?
What the literature establishes
Avraham N. Kluger and Angelo DeNisi (1996, Psychological Bulletin) show in a meta-analysis that feedback interventions improve performance on average, but can also undermine it. Their theory proposes that the effect depends partly on where feedback directs attention: the task, motivational processes or the self. Feedback is therefore not useful simply because it is given; what it makes salient matters.
Feedback needs a reference point
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham (2002, American Psychologist) synthesise goal-setting research and emphasise the relationship between goals and feedback. Feedback helps people assess progress against a target, provided that the target is understood and people have the necessary abilities and commitment. For a manager, this suggests linking an observation to an expected outcome rather than to an abstract personal quality.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that personal judgements simply need to be replaced with numerical targets. That would overlook the fact that, for a complex or unfamiliar task, knowing what result to achieve does not mean knowing how to achieve it. Feedback should then help people examine a strategy or learn a method, rather than merely increase pressure for results. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot guarantee
These studies establish neither a universal feedback formula nor an optimal frequency of conversations applicable to every team. The diversity of the tasks and interventions studied limits direct transfer to any particular company. Counting conversations or collecting participant satisfaction ratings is therefore insufficient to establish that work is improving.
A practical check in Lugano
An exercise to incorporate into the “Leadership d'excellence” programme would be to select a recurring process with traceable rework in a bank, fashion business, trading company or Italian-speaking family SME in Lugano. During a baseline period and then a trial period of equal length, the team would count files or orders returned for correction out of all files or orders processed; during the trial, every feedback conversation would specify in Italian the observed fact, the expected standard and the action to test. The log would retain the date of the feedback and the check on the agreed action, without personality judgements. Comparing rework rates, alongside a record of changes in workload and complexity, would provide a local indication of usefulness, not causal proof of the training’s effectiveness. To go further: explore the Executive Leadership training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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