Rethinking feedback and purpose
We are pestered for feedback—after staying at a hotel, after listening to a webinar, even after undergoing a procedure in a hospital. Whether or not our suggestions are truly taken on board is another matter—in my experience, the situation rarely bulges from the routine.
Most people will just give a thumbs-up, according to an experiment done by University of Chicago’s Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach. Participants were asked to choose between two possible answers to questions so complex that they might just as well toss a coin. After 10 questions, those who were shown the answers they got right did better at a succeeding test of related questions, but those who were shown their errors did subsequently worse. Emotional framing matters.
“People don’t much care to contemplate their errors, and so are quick to move on and forget,” says economist Tim Harford in “Financial Times.” “Everyone is happy to share a friendly word of reassurance, but few people are keen to offer criticism, even when specifically requested.”
This aversion to giving and receiving bad feedback may be more pronounced in our country, where emotions cannot be divorced from even the most professional workplace. So instead of asking for feedback, Harford suggests that we ask for advice instead.
He cites research done by Hayley Blunden and her team at Harvard revealing that when we ask for advice, we are more likely to receive useful comments: “critical, actionable and focused on the potential for future improvements.”
There is no surefire way to resolve this matter, as shown by Harford’s story about well-known psychologist, professor and author Adam Grant, whom he interviewed onstage. Things went well, until afterwards Grant asked Harford to rate his performance on a scale of ten.
“Oh, nine and a half, I suggested. (There’s always room for improvement, right?) In a flash, the eager follow-up question: ‘What would have made it a 10?’ Clever. If he’d just asked for my comments I’d have told him—truthfully—that I thought he was superb. But having persuaded me to admit that there was some fractional room for improvement, I then had to think about how.”
Speaking of improvement, businesses often use corporate purpose to motivate employees. Take Unilever, whose former CEO Alan Jope said in 2019, “Brands without a purpose will have no long-term future with Unilever.”
But according to management consultant Stefan Stern, who also writes for “Financial Times,” corporate purpose may have lost its purpose. In 2023, CEO Hein Schumacher deemed purpose to be “an unwelcome distraction” and urged employees to prioritize growth, sales and “performance culture” instead.
Stern mentions research from the Judge Business School and Amsterdam’s Top Employers Institute. “After a drive to articulate company-wide purpose, staff engagement may rise, but commitment does not. Neither ‘communicating success stories that bring purpose to life’ nor ‘embedding purpose into leadership [and] management practices’ increases staff retention.”
Rather than top-down inspirational messages, giving employees resources and the flexibility to do their jobs well may be more empowering. Wise leaders also walk the talk, knowing actions count more than their words.
Stern quotes New York University’s Alison Taylor, who says, “The people who are most enthusiastic about purpose are branding consultants.” But for those on the frontlines, “you must convince the human beings you impact that you mean what you say.”
Taylor argues that humans naturally seek purpose and create it for themselves. “We don’t wait for it to appear from above, and we don’t necessarily need it from our job.”
“This does not mean abandoning purpose altogether,” says Stern. Even if, like Unilever, it is clear that profits matter most, company purpose can still sometimes inspire.
But employees need more than a grand purpose—they seek help, resources and instead of feedback—advice.
Queena N. Lee-Chua is on the Board of Directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her print book “All in the Family Business” at Lazada or Shopee, or e-book at Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks. Contact the author at blessbook.chua@gmail.com.
