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Feedback-Orientation-Model

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Feedback-Orientation-Model

Lopp’s Chapter 37 of Managing Humans (“Inwards, Outwards, and Holistics”) presents a three-orientation model for understanding how individuals process experience and direct their energy at work. The framework is not a personality type system — it is a focal orientation that shapes where a person naturally directs attention and derives meaning.

The Three Orientations

Inwards — Self-focused

  • Primary concern: personal development, craft, and growth
  • Strengths: deep expertise, self-accountability, continuous self-improvement
  • Blind spots: limited awareness of team friction or interpersonal dynamics; can appear uncollaborative when absorbed in their own work

Outwards — Team-focused

  • Primary concern: immediate team health, morale, and collaboration
  • Strengths: trust-building, culture maintenance, collaborative contribution
  • Blind spots: may miss wider organisational dysfunction; over-localise problems to the team level

Holistics — Organisation-focused

  • Primary concern: systemic dynamics, cross-team politics, long-term strategy
  • Strengths: strategic awareness, cross-functional bridge-building, big-picture thinking
  • Blind spots: can lose touch with immediate team needs; may appear distant or disengaged from execution

Why All Three Are Necessary

No orientation is superior. High-functioning teams need all three represented:

  • Inwards drive technical depth and individual excellence
  • Outwards sustain team cohesion and psychological safety
  • Holistics provide strategic direction and organisational navigation

A team composed entirely of one orientation will develop characteristic failure modes: all-Inwards teams fracture into silos; all-Outwards teams optimise for local harmony at the cost of organisational fit; all-Holistics teams lose execution focus.

Management Application

Assignment: Match orientation to role context. Holistics are strong candidates for cross-functional liaison and staff-plus tracks; Outwards suit team lead and people-management roles; Inwards thrive as deep individual contributors and domain experts.

Feedback tailoring:

  • Inwards respond to feedback framed as personal growth opportunity
  • Outwards need feedback connected to team impact and relationships
  • Holistics engage with feedback that links to organisational context and strategy

Detection: Orientation shows up in meeting behaviour — Inwards ask “what does this mean for my work?”, Outwards ask “how does this affect the team?”, Holistics ask “what does this mean for the company?”

Academic Grounding

This framework maps onto three established constructs:

  • Snyder’s Self-Monitoring (1974): High self-monitors adapt behaviour to social context (Outwards/Holistics tendency); low self-monitors behave consistently with inner standards (Inwards tendency).
  • Brewer and Gardner’s Self-Construal Levels (1996): Individual (Inwards), relational (Outwards), and collective (Holistics) identities are orthogonal motivational orientations, not a single continuum — explaining why each orientation is stable and genuine, not a deficiency.
  • Organ’s OCB Dimensions (1988): Sportsmanship and civic virtue align respectively with Outwards and Holistics orientations; conscientiousness aligns with Inwards.

Sources

  • Lopp, Michael (2019). Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, 3rd ed. Apress. ISBN: 978-1-484-23712-4.

    • Chapter 37: “Inwards, Outwards, and Holistics” — source of the three-orientation model

  • Snyder, Mark (1974). “Self-Monitoring of Expressive Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 526–537. DOI: 10.1037/h0037039.

    • Original self-monitoring scale; high/low self-monitoring parallels Outwards/Inwards orientations

  • Brewer, Marilynn B. and Gardner, Wendi (1996). “Who Is This ‘We’? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 83–93. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83.

    • Individual, relational, and collective self-construals as orthogonal motivational orientations

  • Organ, Dennis W. (1988). Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome. Lexington Books. ISBN: 978-0-669-11651-3.

    • OCB dimensions (sportsmanship, civic virtue, conscientiousness) map onto the three orientations

  • Day, David V. and Schleicher, Deidra J. (2006). “Self-Monitoring at Work: A Motive-Based Perspective.” Journal of Personality, Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 685–714. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00389.x.

    • Reframes self-monitoring as motive-driven rather than trait-based; reinforces that orientation is shaped by what an individual is trying to achieve

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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