In traditional approaches to feedback, managers spend most of their time focusing on what's not working well.

• Most of us realize if you constantly criticize children they'll develop an inferiority complex.

• We don't stop to think the same is true for adults.

Appreciative feedback encourages the highest performance:

• You break free from the rut of noticing (and reinforcing) problems.

• You call out the best in people and accelerate the process of positive change.

With appreciative feedback the manager and the person whose behavior is under review agree:

• What the behavior will look like when the individual is performing at his/her best, and

• What resources are needed to develop and reinforce the new behavior.

Subsequent feedback is based on what is going well: specific ways the individual is moving in the desired direction. And this means any incremental step!

Click here for pdf summary of Appreciative Feedback

For more on this topic, read David Cooperrider's Appreciative Management and Leadership

To fine-tune your feedback skills, read Rubin & Campbell's The ABC's of Effective Feedback