The Power of Pure Positive Feedback

Ben Madley, 25 Oct 2019

I am a big fan of positive feedback, and I would like to talk about why. This is inspired by a collection of thoughts from talks and blogs. It goes like this…

Types of Feedback

We normally think of feedback as either Positive or Constructive. I’d like you to consider Active and Passive feedback.

Active feedback is the feedback you choose to give someone. An example of this is face-to-face, spoken feedback. Passive feedback is the feedback you give someone without realising. You don’t know it, but you are providing this feedback almost all the time. For example, when you give a presentation you are getting constant passive feedback from the audience:

Action from audience	Passive feedback received
Laughter	The audience are listening, engaged and enjoying my talk.
Blank faces	The audience have stopped paying attention. Is my talk engaging enough?
Looking at laptops	The audience don’t think this section applies to them. Is it too basic?
Intense focus	The audience are still paying attention but close to being lost. Do I try an example?

The problem is that passive feedback isn’t feedback you intend to give. Let me give you another example.

The Lack of Active Feedback

The most common example of passive feedback is the lack of active feedback. This is where we haven’t explicitly given someone feedback.

Let’s consider two situations: behaviours we like and behaviours we don’t like.

If we observe a behaviour we don’t like and we don’t give active feedback, we passively say that the behaviour is fine. We condone it. More than likely, the recipient of our passive feedback doesn’t even know that we don’t like the behaviour. If that behaviour makes things easier or quicker, then the recipient has no reason to stop and every reason to carry on.

If we like the behaviour and we don’t give active feedback, we’ve said we don’t value it. We’ve provided the passive feedback that we don’t mind if the recipient doesn’t display that behaviour again. Often this behaviour takes extra effort. Maybe they were on the ball in a meeting thanks to extra preparation. Maybe their work was great today because they’ve been working hard to sleep well. If they don’t know that they’re doing great they’ve got no reason to keep putting in that effort.

The Call to Action

All this is to say: don’t be afraid to give that positive feedback. Make it useful though. Let them know what you want to see again.

If you don’t provide feedback, don’t be surprised when they stop doing it.