When was the last time someone offered you feedback? Assuming you said yes, what was the quality of the feedback you received?

Many of the practices we call feedback don’t give people the information they need to perform better. This is the key finding from a new report from the Corporate Research Forum’s Work Psychology Network (Briner, 2026).

Two essential ingredients of performance feedback

Performance feedback is feedback “that specifically helps people adapt their behaviour in ways that improve their performance” (Briner, 2026).

To do that, feedback needs two types of information:

1) how someone is progressing towards an outcome, and

2) which of their behaviours are helping or hindering that progress.

If either is missing, it isn’t performance feedback.

Not all feedback is performance feedback

Praise makes people feel valued but often doesn’t tell them what worked. Appraisals often come too late and are too general, and ratings are unreliable. 360s capture how others see your behaviour, not whether it helps you perform. More feedback isn’t automatically better either. It can improve performance, do nothing, or make it worse, especially when it’s inaccurate, irrelevant, misunderstood or badly timed (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).

Five conditions for performance feedback

1. A clear goal. This is essential as without a clear goal, there is nothing to give feedback against.
2. A shared understanding of that goal. If the manager and team member see success differently, they’ll disagree about progress and about which behaviours matter.
3. Knowing which behaviours help or hinder progress. The manager doesn’t need to be a technical expert, but must be able to connect what someone does to the results they get.
4. Knowledge of what the person is actually doing. You can’t comment on behaviour you don’t see, which is a real challenge in remote, hybrid or project-based work.
5. The person understands the feedback. If it doesn’t make sense to them, they can’t act on it or see why change is needed.

Perfect conditions rarely exist, but the more of these are in place, the more genuine performance feedback is likely to happen. Even then, its impact can be blunted by a strained manager relationship, low manager credibility, reluctance to give “negative” feedback, or outcomes largely outside the person’s control.

How to improve performance feedback

• Start with goals, not feedback training. Check that goals are specific, discussed and agreed with employees, reviewed periodically, linked to organisational objectives, and come with an agreed way of measuring progress.
• Audit what you currently call feedback. For each practice ask: does it tell people how they’re progressing, and does it link that progress to specific behaviours?
• Give managers line of sight. Help them understand the behaviour–outcome links in their team’s work, and build in regular ways to see what people are actually doing, such as short check-ins or work reviews.
• Match the feedback rhythm to the task. A short-cycle role with visible outcomes needs something very different from long-term knowledge work across several teams. The work itself, systems data, coworkers and customers can all be valuable sources.
• Check for understanding before the conversation ends. Ask “What will you do differently next time?”

If you want to know whether your management approach is genuinely giving people the feedback they need to perform, I’d love to help you test it against these five conditions and design something simpler that works. Get in touch.

References

Briner, R. (2026). Feedback and work performance. Corporate Research Forum, Work Psychology Network.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284.