A feedback loop is one of the most effective tools for performance improvement. We learn faster and accomplish more when we make giving and receiving feedback an ongoing part of how we collaborate with each other. Feedback helps us avoid misunderstandings, creates a climate of co-responsibility and reduces the need for hierarchies and rules.

However, encouraging sincere feedback in a company is much more difficult than one might imagine. Fostering an atmosphere of sincerity requires employees to shed years of conditioning and firmly ingrained beliefs like “Give feedback only when asked” and “Praise in public, criticize in private.”

When considering giving feedback, people often feel torn between two competing issues: they don't want to hurt the listener's feelings, but they also want to help the person succeed.

The point at Living is that we help each other succeed, even if that means hurting someone's feelings from time to time. More importantly, we found that, in the right environment and with the right approach, we can give feedback without hurting other people's feelings.

The first step in implementing a culture of sincerity is not to have line managers provide extensive feedback to their team.

On the contrary, it is to make employees give sincere feedback to the direct boss. This can be accompanied by feedback from the boss to the employee. But de facto sincerity occurs when employees begin to provide candid feedback to their leaders.

I myself in feedback assessments for employees and/or managers, I always make myself available for true 360º feedback on my performance and performance and I have learned a lot and improved my performance thanks to the sincere feedback I receive from people.

Like the famous story of “the king's new clothes”, which tells of a fool in power, so convinced he was wearing the most sophisticated clothes ever made that he paraded naked before his servants. Nobody dared to point out the obvious, except a child unaware of hierarchies, power or consequences.

The higher up in a company you get, the less feedback you get and therefore the more likely you are to “work naked” or make some other mistake that is obvious to everyone but yourself. This is not only dysfunctional, it is also dangerous. If an intern gets something basic wrong and nobody tells him anything, it's not serious. But if the CFO gets something wrong on the income statement and no one dares to question it, it puts the company at risk.

The first technique to get employees to give honest feedback is to regularly include feedback in the schedule of individual meetings between managers and employees.

Not only should you ask for feedback, but inform and show employees that this is expected and extremely important.

While receiving feedback, behavior is a fundamental factor, you must demonstrate to the employee that it is safe to give feedback, responding to all criticism with gratitude, and above all giving him suggestions of belonging, that because he has been sincere with him “management”, this does not in any way jeopardize his role or his performance in the company, as any employee who gives honest feedback will be worried about: will my boss use this against me? Or will this hurt my career? Which can never happen at any time in a company with a culture of sincerity.