For people employed in of big companies, the word feedback often smells like trouble. The English word “feedback” has also taken root in our business language, but despite the fact that it does not mean anything negative – it causes anxiety among a large number of employees.

In corporate jargon, feedback is an information that an employee receives about their work, whether if he be praised for a good job or whether he should work on improvement.

However, in reality, the story of giving and receiving so-called feedback is often distorted: “I’ll give you a feedback about yesterday’s meeting!” In translation –  I will tell you in a contorted and corporately “approved” way that you are doing something wrong. Feedback in the wrong hands becomes a manager’s tool for packing a negative charge in an acceptable form towards someone.

Negative perception of the term feedback is increased by employee evaluations in the middle and at the end of the year. These are often stressful moments, because it’s rare to find a situation to speak with employees. A large number of topics is then opened in a very short time. It’s mission impossible to establish communication in this way. Instead of conversation, we fill in an excel spreadsheet together, but we don’t actually communicate.

How to make feedback serve in the right way? To be an important element in directing corporate culture for the better. In the first place, there has to be a positive intention. More broadly, we are talking about a climate of trust that is difficult to create and easy to break down.

This means that we do not fall into the trap of generalization and that we base our feedback on facts which relate to a specific situation. I think that Mika is completely bad while Ž ika is unbelievably good.  I barely can stand Mika –therefore everything he does is bad. The world of facts, that is, the world of reality, is in opposition to a black and white world. The problem is that it is harder to think about the shades of gray of each employee and most importantly, of yourself.

The next important feature of good feedback is frequency of individual meetings –  with protocol, preparation of subjects from both sides in advance, and most importantly with the idea of ​​what we want to accomplish.

In meetings like this it goes without saying that feedback is a two-way street. Let’s question ourselves how we reacted to a feedback we got from our employees. And whether we get it?

The higher phase is to seek feedback from us from people who report to us. And to know to maturely react to what we hear.

Feedback is the key to changing corporate culture that requires uncompromising honesty towards the only person we can change – ourself.

By improving the culture of communication in a company, we gain a lot in the long run. There are studies which show that changing the culture leads to higher profitability in a couple of years. In the short term, we can get calmer and more satisfied employees in a few months. We can recognize and prevent a communication problem at the beginning. This is especially important if a company is going through an endless process of change. It’s of vital importance that the culture change covers all employees. That is when we all can speak the same language. The culture of feedback is best introduced through workshops where employees will freely talk about what is most important to them. Also, there is no change based on copying global experiences. It’s important to define a common denominator for the company on the principle of “right here and right now” and without much theorizing.

A company’s employees know best what they need to improve their communication culture.