Why positive feedback comes first, not last
Ask five people when they last told a colleague what went well, and you'll get five hesitations. We seem to find it genuinely hard, and something gets in the way, some kind of reluctance. What is that, exactly? As if it's excessive, unnecessary, or just doesn't belong in "serious" work.
That's a mistake. And the science is fairly clear on this.
Psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues showed in their widely-cited review study Bad Is Stronger Than Good (2001, Review of General Psychology) that negative information outweighs positive information in almost every domain: we process it more thoroughly, remember it longer, and let it weigh more heavily in our judgment. One critical remark sticks, while ten compliments blow away.
This means you have to actively compensate, otherwise we stay stuck in the negative. Positive feedback is, in effect, the counterweight you have to organize yourself.
Recognition and appreciation matter
Recent large-scale research by Gallup and Workhuman (2024, among more than 4,400 working adults in the US, supplemented by Gallup's Q3 2024 workforce study) makes this concrete:
- Employees who receive valuable feedback are five times more likely to be engaged in their work.
- People who receive both feedback and recognition from their manager weekly are engaged 61% of the time — versus 38% for feedback without that recognition.
- Regular recognition is associated with 57% lower odds of burnout and 48% lower odds of actively looking for another job.
So this isn't "being nice for the sake of being nice." It's one of the cheapest interventions there is against turnover and burnout.
Why giving positive feedback also makes your constructive feedback better
This is where it gets interesting for anyone who occasionally has to have a difficult conversation. Research by Zenger Folkman (2020), based on 360-degree evaluations of more than 700 leaders by their teams, shows that the most effective leaders stand out precisely by giving positive feedback far more often than corrective feedback.
The logic behind it is simple. If you never point out what's going well, every conversation you start feels suspect — "what's he going to criticize now?" But when someone knows you regularly and genuinely notice what's going well, a critical remark lands differently. It's no longer an attack — it's part of a conversation you're already having. You've sown trust, and that trust is exactly what you need at the moment things get uncomfortable.
One warning here: these need to be separate conversations, separate moments. The moment you use positive feedback as a warm-up for something unpleasant (the well-known "sandwich model") everyone sees through it within seconds, and exactly the trust you were trying to build disappears. Positive feedback has to stand on its own: specific, at its own moment, genuine.
The real work is in learning to see it
This is exactly where it often goes wrong. You have to want to see what's going well. That's a choice, and only you can make it. Someone who only pays attention to what's going wrong will only ever find that.
So: this week, deliberately notice one moment when someone does something well and name it.
Good luck!
Sources
- Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad Is Stronger Than Good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.
- Gallup & Workhuman (2024). Organizations Can Redefine Feedback by Including Recognition. gallup.com
- Folkman, J. (2020). 10 Attitudes About Feedback From The Most Effective Leaders. Zenger Folkman. zengerfolkman.com