Negative feedback falls on deaf ears

Just as it is easy for your eye to fixate on the one broken window pane in the front of a building, it is easy for us to give feedback only when something is not going the way it’s supposed to. Why fix it if it ain’t broken? However, this approach can have devastating consequences, as shown by Angelo Kinicki and his research team in the United States. In a study of 102 bank employees, it turned out that employees who received the most negative feedback handled this by tuning it out. Those who were receptive to corrections were the ones who worked in a feedback-rich environment where feedback was given often and was for the most part positive. They did not feel as threatened by occasional negative feedback and could therefore use it to develop.