Today is International Women’s Day, so let’s look at what’s going in the wonderful world of Feedback Fitness. How are we shaping up?
Stanford University researcher, Katherine Hilton, found that women in the workplace are offered the feedback they are ‘too aggressive’ three times more than men. The research found that if the word aggressive was used for men, it was used to tell them to be more aggressive.
‘Our research shows that even if it is positive, feedback provided to women tends to be less actionable and less useful for leadership progression than feedback given to men, making it less likely that women will advance to more senior positions’.
Elena Doldor, Madeleine Wyatt and Jo Silvester. Feb 2021.
Based on my own recent research of 103 participants here in Australia, (thank you if you participated!)
Of the three different types of feedback, both women and men felt most confident offering Acknowledgment Feedback (this is what you are doing well) with women rating themselves as more confident than men. In contrast, men felt more confident than women when offering Evaluation Feedback (this is how you are going) and Guidance Feedback (this is how you can do better).
More women (19.7%) than men (4.7%), felt clumsy when offering feedback in the workplace. However, women felt slightly more (10.5%) courageous than men (9.5%) when offering feedback.
Less women (36.8%) than men (42.8%) believe they receive enough feedback at work.
More men (19.1%) than women (9.2%) felt reluctant when receiving feedback in the workplace. Women rated themselves more receptive and resilient than men when receiving feedback.
While both women and men found Guidance Feedback the most helpful to receive out of the three different types of feedback, more women (57.9%) found it useful than men (47.6).
Generally speaking, if were to combine this data, the picture it paints is that:
Women would like more feedback and are more open than men to receiving actionable, Guidance Feedback. Nearly 20% of women felt clumsy offering feedback.
Men are more reluctant than women when it comes to receiving feedback, and they would also like more Guidance Feedback. Only a very small number of men (4.7%) felt clumsy when offering feedback.
Regardless of gender, less than half of people believe they receive enough feedback of any type, yet more than half of people believe they offer enough feedback! Most people describe themselves as receptive to receiving feedback. The majority of people felt the most confident when offering Acknowledgement Feedback, and most people felt the least confident when offering Evaluation Feedback.
Take from this what is useful for you as this is a small snapshot of the data. If you would like access to the bigger picture or have an analysis of your team or organisation – sing out and we can make it happen.