Tip of the Month: Management 
Positive Feedback
In a survey, managers were asked to respond to this statement: “I let my team members know when they are doing a good job.” Team members were asked to respond to a similar statement: “My supervisor lets me know when I am doing a good job.” Same question, different perspective. A scale of 1 to 5 was used, where 1 equaled “Never” and 5 equaled “Always.”
Overall, the managers rated themselves a 4.3. No surprise here – most managers think they do a great job of providing positive feedback. But the team members rated their managers a 2.3. They perceived that less than half the time, they did not receive positive feedback even though they did a good job. What a huge gap in perception!
Why the big difference? Could it be the supervisors didn’t take the time or seek out opportunities to give positive feedback? Or perhaps the supervisors gave all their positive feedback to a few select employees? Could the reason be the employees in the survey weren’t listening and were wrong in their assessment? The bottom line is it doesn’t matter who was right. Team members’ perceptions are what counts and their perceptions were that they were not receiving positive feedback often enough.
The Manager’s Communication Handbook by David Cottrell and Eric Harvey