Feedback

A Harvard Business Review study drew a parallel between elite sports and the business world, showing that both high-performing athletes and top-performing organizations share a common characteristic:

A positive-to-negative feedback ratio greater than 5 to 1.

Only in an environment that truly values talent and success can individuals experience enough psychological safety to receive negative feedback not as destabilizing criticism, but as genuine opportunities for improvement.

Below that ratio… progress is much harder to achieve.

Just like in sports — whether amateur or professional —, feedback is a muscle: it must be trained, strengthened, and kept flexible.

Developing a strong feedback culture means cultivating three essential leadership qualities:

• Courage, to give feedback,

• Humility, to receive it,

• And the ability to question oneself, to actively seek it out.