Imagine walking into your office on a Monday morning to find one of the top teams in your organization disengaged and showing signs of low morale and slipping productivity.
You’ve done everything by the book—set clear objectives, provided the necessary resources, and conducted annual reviews.
Yet, something isn’t working as it should: performance is lagging, and productivity is not what you expect from this group.
What if I told you that the feedback you are (or are not) giving is at least partially responsible for this state of affairs? And it might be true.
The kind of feedback you give (or don’t give) is either helping you to develop your team or hindering that development.
Here’s the good news: You can change the type of feedback you give from useless (or even harmful) to helpful. The kind that doesn’t just assess performance but actively drives it forward.
Or you can stop giving feedback that is harmful.
This is the promise of developmental feedback.
Think back to your last annual review—whether as a leader or an employee. How did it feel?
For most people, these yearly assessments are stress-inducing and are about as comfortable as sitting in a dentist's chair.
You're directed to look back over the past 12 months and to focus on the not-so-great parts.
You're encouraged to relive the mistakes and the poor decisions that you made, as well as the near-misses and the flop ideas you came up with.
These traditional feedback systems often do more harm than good, leaving employees defensive, demotivated, and disconnected.
They tend to focus on what’s already happened, offering little guidance for future improvement. Employees often leave these meetings feeling judged, rather than supported or inspired to grow.
As Mara Gerstein, CEO of Loop, points out, traditional performance reviews can be counterproductive.
This backward-looking approach might tick a box in your HR process, but it doesn’t move the needle on performance or engagement.
Now, picture it differently: Instead of waiting until the year’s end to deliver feedback, you’re mentoring a promising employee on the fly, in real time.
You offer them constructive insights that help them improve instantly.
This is what we call in leadership and management circles “developmental feedback" in action—continuous, actionable, and focused on growth.
Consider it like baking a cake. Traditional feedback will deliver the insights at the end, “This is too salty; you messed up.”
Developmental feedback would entail having someone beside you during the process, saying, “It looks like you’re adding too much salt—what if you tried a little less?”
The result? A better cake, made without the stress of a last-minute critique.
But it’s time to stop thinking about feedback merely in terms of its quality, and to start thinking about what its quantity—or frequency—really means for workplace dynamics.
For CEOs, COOs, and BU leaders, the implications are clear: developmental feedback doesn’t just improve individual performance; it enhances team cohesion, drives engagement, and ultimately boosts your bottom line.
When employees receive regular, supportive feedback, they’re not just doing their jobs—they’re getting better at them every day.
Creating a culture where developmental feedback thrives starts at the top.
When leaders openly seek feedback and act on it, they create a ripple effect that the entire organization feels. Even at the very top of the organization, a leader can’t do this alone.
By nature, feedback culture is something that everybody in the organization participates in. Leaders can and should accentuate that participation by making it a part of the daily operating rhythm.
Carol Shent, founder of Start Culture Shift, emphasizes that when leaders model this behavior, it fosters a culture of openness and continuous learning.
Employees take cues from their leaders.
If employees see their leaders embracing feedback as a tool for growth, they're more likely to do the same.
This isn't just about improving performance.
It's about trust.
It's about empowering employees to take developmental ownership of their own careers.
One of the most effective ways to integrate developmental feedback into your organization is by leveraging Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
OKRs break down larger goals into measurable steps, creating a clear roadmap for success.
Combined with developmental feedback, OKRs ensure that employees are not just working hard—they’re working smart, aligned with the company’s strategic objectives.
With OKRs, we break down our bigger, brook-length goals into manageable, measurable steps.
These steps are really the "key results." They signal to us when we should celebrate (if we’ve accomplished them) or when we should intervene (if we haven’t).
Our OKR pathway is our playbook. The day-to-day work that our employees do is, for the most part, aligned with our strategic objectives—the long game. We also review advancement and obstacles regularly so that we can coach our teams and help them move forward. These events are meant to help them understand how to adjust their pathway in real time.
This agile approach doesn’t only improve individual performance; it drives the entire organization forward. It turns feedback from a reactive, stressful event into a proactive, strategic asset.
Developmental feedback and OKR methodologies are powerful tools for enhancing organizational culture and driving growth.
At Bee'z Consulting, we have experienced their power in action.
From healthcare organizations navigating the complexities of patient care to public entities striving for greater efficiency, and NGOs working to maximize their impact, we’ve helped leaders implement these tools to fuel growth and enhance organizational culture.
In healthcare, for example, we guided a major hospital through the adoption of the OKR framework, and the changes they made as a result of that shift have significantly improved their patient care delivery system.
In the public sector, our work with a large governmental agency enabled them to streamline operations and foster a culture of continuous improvement, leading to more effective service delivery.
And for NGOs, we’ve helped align mission-driven objectives with practical, measurable results, ensuring that every effort counts towards their crucial goals.
Our experience across these diverse industries proves that when feedback is done right, it becomes a catalyst for change, driving better outcomes, stronger cultures, and sustainable growth.
In the contemporary digital landscape, technology is indispensable in ensuring that developmental feedback can be both effective and scalable.
Platforms such as 15Five, Lattice, and Culture Amp play a role that extends beyond that of mere HR tools; they are, at heart, enablers of the feedback-driven workplace and, by extension, the feedback-driven culture.
These tools facilitate continuous, real-time communication between employees and managers, ensuring that feedback is timely, relevant, and actionable.
By creating an environment where communication between employees and management is regular and, ideally, continuous, these platforms allow for far greater intimacy in the employee-manager relationship. And that's good for everyone.
For one thing, these platforms allow for a kind of conversation that, in a traditional relationship, would have to take place in quarterly or annual reviews.
And if you don’t find that an altogether comforting prospect, don’t worry: it gets much worse when you think about what might become of these conversations in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence.
Here’s how these tools can transform your organization:
Changing the culture from evaluative to developmental feedback means more than just changing people's ways of working.
Evaluation means assessment and judgment.
It is backward-looking.
The purpose of developmental feedback is not to find out who is right or wrong, who has succeeded or failed.
It is not an interrogation.
The purpose of developmental feedback is to find out how we can all do our work better, how we can be more useful to each other and to our mutual employer, and how we can achieve our common aims more effectively.
More than simply a method for enhancing staff performance and productivity, developmental feedback is a lever for organizational change.
It creates a culture of connection and accountability within teams.
More than just a good place to start for any team member to be as a counterbalance to poor team functioning, it also serves as a strategic tool for leaders to mine the depths of team potential.
At Bee’z Consulting, we help organizations in the healthcare, public, and non-governmental sectors bridge the gaps between these two cultures: a pathway of OKRs and a culture of feedback. Talents, with the help of a good feedback mechanism, are allowed to shine.
A feedback-driven culture leads to higher engagement, better performance, and stronger communication.
When feedback flows openly, it fosters an environment of trust and mutual respect. Employees feel valued, understood, and motivated to contribute to the company’s success.
Developmental feedback is more than just a tool for improving job performance; it's a strategic lever for creating and maintaining a connected, engaged, and high-performing workforce.
By embracing this approach, you can unlock the full potential of your teams, driving better outcomes for your entire organization.
At Bee'z Consulting, we’re committed to helping organizations like yours implement these transformative strategies. Whether you’re in healthcare, life sciences, the public sector, or an NGO, our expertise in OKR methodologies and feedback culture can drive the growth and success you’re aiming for.
Are you ready to change your organization's feedback and performance management for the better?
Let Bee'z Consulting lead you through the process to a new destination. Get in touch with us today and learn how we can help you create a culture of continuous improvement so your organization can reach its strategic goals.
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