Is feedback a gendered career barrier?

What is the most valuable work-related feedback you have received?

The most valuable feedback I have received has been about my writing – to make my insights on diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DE&I) more accessible. I’m a psychologist by background so writing for a business audience was always going to be an uphill battle for me; it felt like learning a new language! Despite bruising my ego a little at times, the constructive and practical feedback has been incredibly valuable. While my writing is still a work-in-progress, I’m certain I would not have had the same opportunities had I not received that feedback years ago.

Feedback is fundamental to career success. Though often not talked about, many of the leaders we admire today will likely share a responsiveness to feedback. Feedback helps us to know what we are doing well, where we need to improve, how to increase our impact, and how to get the best out of ourselves. Others see things in us that we don’t see in ourselves; we need honest, constructive feedback to increase our self-awareness and enhance our delivery. Without feedback, we will continue to do what we have always done which may not get us where we want to be. Feedback can be given formally, through the performance process or in dedicated meetings, or informally in everyday conversations.

Like many aspects of work and life, I believe that feedback creates a differentiated experience for women and presents a barrier to gender equity. For example, research has shown that women typically receive lower quality, less tangible, and more stereotyped feedback compared to men. Giving feedback creates a stress response, and men are less comfortable giving feedback to women than to men. Developmental feedback has also been found to steer women away from the skills they need for leadership!

Gender bias shows up in the language used, the standards that individuals are held to, and the focus of the feedback that women receive compared to their male counterparts. Feedback bias is very subtle – without comparing like-for-like it is hard to see any feedback as anything less than helpful - but these subtle differences accumulate to detrimental effect.

Much of the gender bias we see in feedback giving can be explained by the fact that archaic gender stereotypes associate and expect women to be caring, compassionate, and communal while men should be agentic, authoritative, and ambitious. These stereotypes set men up for leadership success. Women who act ‘leader like’ are more likely to be marked down for violating societal expectations. As a result, women may have experiences of receiving feedback about how they relate to others, whilst men may have experiences of receiving feedback about how they lead others.

A lack of feedback and shifting standards harms women’s career development. While it is clear that the system needs to change, there are practical things we can do to own and nurture our own feedback environment:

1.??????Know what a healthy feedback environment looks like

As much as it feels good, constant positive feedback is not helpful for personal growth. There are factors we should consider when looking to enhance our feedback environment beyond what is spoken:

Feedback providers should be:

·??????Credible - have good insight on our performance

·??????Available - provide feedback readily

·??????Mindful of delivery - convey positive intent

·??????Encouraging - promote feedback conversations

Feedback should be:

·??????Good quality - consistent and useful, and a combination of:

·??????Favourable - complimentary and reassuring

·??????Unfavourable - constructive and developmental

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2.??????Start small

Giving feedback makes people feel uncomfortable. We are often worried about saying the wrong thing, hurting someone’s feelings, or the reaction we might receive. Give people permission to give you feedback by starting small and providing structure. Ask for feedback on specific deliverables or pieces of work and be clear about what you would like feedback in relation to. Asking for general feedback without structure will likely lead to unhelpful feedback that lacks clarity.

3.??????Feed-forward

I often hear that progression remains a persistent ‘black box’ for many women – what it takes to get to the next stage of one’s career isn’t made clear. Creating space for good quality feedback conversations can be a critical step towards demystifying progression, particularly when we focus on feeding-forward. Whilst feedback means looking at past experiences (performance), feed-forward means looking at future experiences and what is required to get there (development). Asking our seniors to feed-forward will surface conversations about progression and disrupt assumptions that women are less ambitious than their male counterparts.

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In summary, taking ownership of our own feedback environments may help us to take a step forward in fulfilling our potential. The act of having feedback conversations formalises the previously unspoken, adding structure, clarity and objectivity to our development. In turn, this should help to demystify progression, reduce subjectivity and change our feedback culture.