Balanced feedback

Have you ever given someone feedback and been asked “Don’t I do anything right?” Maybe you feel that you do balance your feedback. You mention both positive and negative when necessary. Marcial Losada’s research suggests that a ration of 1:1 is not a balance. Most people give much more negative feedback than positive. They assume that you know that no feedback for doing good work means that they are happy with your performance. You are supposed to know this. No feedback seems more like ignoring your performance, hoping it will stop. Just like ignoring bad behaviour at a meeting, hoping it will stop. Losada discovered that a ratio of 3:1 is more balanced. Three times more positive to negative will feel balanced to the other person. When you say to them “I need to talk to you about your work performance, there needs to be a 3:1 chance that your comments will be positive. Try this ratio for a week and see the effect. Have you noticed the ratio during a professional basketball game? Not much negative here.