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The Feedback Fallacy

6 min readStatus:Evergreen

Core Idea

The Feedback Fallacy is the widely-held but flawed assumption that providing feedback—particularly about weaknesses—reliably improves performance. Research shows that traditional feedback often fails or even backfires due to rater bias, threat responses, and focus on deficits rather than strengths.

The Core Concept

Popularized by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in their book Nine Lies About Work and accompanying Harvard Business Review article, the Feedback Fallacy challenges conventional performance management wisdom. The central claim: telling people what they’re doing wrong and how to fix it is fundamentally ineffective at driving improvement.

This isn’t about rejecting all feedback. Rather, it’s about understanding that evaluation-based feedback (“here’s my assessment of your performance”) is fundamentally different from helpful attention (“here’s what I noticed working”)—and only the latter consistently drives improvement.

Three Research-Backed Problems

1. The Idiosyncratic Rater Effect

More than 50% of any performance rating reflects the rater’s own characteristics, biases, and perceptions—not the actual performance of the person being rated. This is systematic error, not random error. It cannot be eliminated through training or averaged away through 360-degree reviews (where multiple biased observers still produce biased data).

Example: If seven color-blind people rate the redness of a rose and you average their ratings, you don’t get accurate information about the rose—you get an average of inaccurate information.

2. Feedback Interventions Often Decrease Performance

A landmark meta-analysis by Kluger and DeNisi (1996) examining 607 effect sizes and 23,663 observations found:

  • 38% of feedback interventions decreased performance
  • The modal (most common) impact was no effect at all
  • Average effect size was only d = 0.41 (modest improvement at best)

Traditional performance management largely ignores this variance, assuming all feedback is beneficial.

3. Neurobiological Threat Response

When feedback is perceived as criticism, it activates the amygdala (threat detection center), triggering fight-flight-freeze responses. This:

  • Narrows cognitive focus
  • Shuts down prefrontal cortex (rational thinking)
  • Releases stress hormones (effects can last 72 hours)
  • Physically impairs learning capacity

Learning occurs when the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) is activated, stimulating neuron growth and cognitive openness. Focusing on weaknesses impairs learning; it doesn’t enable it.

Why Traditional Feedback Fails

Subjectivity Masquerading as Truth: Feedback is presented as objective evaluation when it’s actually the evaluator’s distorted perception. The “transparency illusion” leads managers to believe their feedback is clear and objective when recipients experience it as subjective and unclear.

Defensive Attribution Patterns: When receiving negative feedback, recipients intensify self-serving attributions (taking credit for success, blaming external factors for failure). Feedback discussions often increase disagreement rather than create shared understanding.

Past vs. Future Focus: Feedback diagnosing past performance triggers defensiveness. Future-focused feedback (“here’s how we build forward”) is significantly more effective at promoting acceptance and motivation to change.

Weakness-Focused Approach: The brain learns best by building on strengths (where neural pathways are most developed), not by fixing weaknesses. Learning happens in comfort zones, not under threat far outside them.

What Actually Works

Strength-Based Recognition: People learn and grow more when strengths are recognized and amplified than when weaknesses are dissected. “Here’s what you did brilliantly—do more of that” outperforms “here’s what you did wrong—fix it.”

Attention vs. Evaluation: Helpful attention (“I noticed when you explained the architecture using the whiteboard, everyone engaged immediately”) is more valuable than evaluation (“your presentation skills need improvement”).

Future-Oriented Conversation: Shifting from “here’s what you did wrong” to “here’s what worked—how do we expand it?” produces higher engagement and better performance.

Relationship First: Without trust and psychological safety (see Psychological-Safety), no feedback technique works. The relationship between giver and receiver is more important than the method.

Context Matters: Feedback effectiveness depends on task complexity—it can enhance performance on simple tasks but hinder it on complex tasks requiring creativity and judgment.

Implications for Software Teams

For architects and engineering leaders, the Feedback Fallacy has important implications:

Code Review (see Code-Review-as-Feedback): Frame reviews as collaborative learning (“I learned X from reading your code”) rather than evaluation (“here are your mistakes”). Ask questions more than making statements.

Retrospectives (see Agile-Retrospectives): Focus on systems and processes, not individual performance. “What’s working that we should do more of?” is more productive than “who messed up?”

Performance Conversations: Replace “areas for improvement” with “areas where you excel—how do we leverage those more?” Build on demonstrated excellence rather than diagnosing deficiency.

Architectural Reviews: Present as “helpful attention to what’s working and what might work better” rather than “evaluation of your design against standards.”

The Scholarly Debate

Some researchers argue Buckingham and Goodall overstate their case:

  • Subjectivity doesn’t make feedback useless—we grow by learning our impact on others
  • The problem isn’t feedback itself but how poorly it’s executed in most organizations
  • Prompt, specific, behavior-focused feedback (not identity-focused criticism) can be effective

The core disagreement centers on definitions: Buckingham and Goodall argue that traditional evaluation-based feedback should be replaced with attention and recognition. Critics argue that good feedback (properly executed) remains valuable.

Both sides agree: most organizational feedback practice is ineffective and often harmful.

Sources

  • Buckingham, Marcus and Ashley Goodall (2019). “The Feedback Fallacy.” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2019.

  • Buckingham, Marcus and Ashley Goodall (2019). Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World. Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN: 978-1-633-69672-7.

  • Kluger, Avraham N. and Angelo DeNisi (1996). “The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory.” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 119, No. 2, pp. 254-284. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254

  • Kluger, Avraham N. and Dina Van Dijk (2010). “Feedback, the Various Tasks of the Doctor, and the Feedforward Alternative.” Medical Education, Vol. 44, No. 12, pp. 1166-1174. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03849.x

  • Jawahar, I. M., Jonathan R. Schat, Manish K. Sinha, and Amanuel G. Tekleab (2019). “The Future of Feedback: Motivating Performance Improvement Through Future-Focused Feedback.” PLoS ONE, Vol. 14, No. 6. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217703

  • Edmondson, Amy C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-119-47742-2.

Note

This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.

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