Topic: Employee Feedback and Leader Performance

Author(s), Title and Publication

Smither, J. W., Brett, J. F., & Atwater, L. E. (2008). What Do Leaders Recall About Their Multisource Feedback? Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 14(3), 202-218.

Summary

Multisource feedback (MSF), which refers to feedback from one’s supervisors, peers and subordinates, provides a more comprehensive evaluation of a leader’s performance than traditional top-down appraisal, and thus is expected to influence leader development in the long run. This study examined recipients’ recall of MSF, the influence of recipients’ emotional responses towards MSF on their recall, and the impacts of their feedback recall on later behavior change.

In this study, 145 leaders from an elementary school district and a retail organization completed self-reports; read feedback from their subordinates, peers and supervisors; and answered questions about their initial reactions to the feedback. Nine months later, the researchers assessed those leaders’ recall of the feedback received in the first round, and collected the second round of MSF.

Results revealed that participants were more likely to remember positive feedback than negative feedback, but that was less related to the rating, and more about one’s self-protection or self-enhancement desire. Overall, the leaders paid more attention to feedback about their consideration of employees (e.g., being cooperative) and their performance (e.g., setting goals) than feedback about their efforts in employee development (e.g., giving praise, offering opportunities). For negative feedback, they tended to recall performance-related evaluation. They had deeper impressions of feedback from supervisors and subordinates than feedback from peers. In particular, subordinates’ feedback had a large effect on their emotional reactions. In addition, this study found that the discrepancies between leaders’ self-ratings and others’ ratings did not influence leaders’ feedback. Importantly, their recall of MSF showed no subsequent improvement in their performance.

Implications for Practice

A leader might outperform others by 1) paying attention to feedback from multiple sources instead of favoring feedback from one source; 2) acting on feedback from coworkers and peers; and 3) possessing self-knowledge, encouraging negative feedback, and making changes in actions accordingly.

Location of Article

The article is available online at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NXD/is_3_14/ai_n25018305/ (Full article)

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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