TEAM LEADERS’ EXPERIENCES WITH RECEIVING POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Abstract

The study focused on team leaders’ experiences with receiving positive feedback in an organization. The purpose was to understand how employees without a formal managerial position interpret receiving positive feedback. There are multiple studies regarding feedback in work communities, but not from the experiential perspective of team leaders. The research material was collected by interviewing seven team leaders who worked in a public organization. The research methodology applied and methods used were based on an existential-phenomenological approach. The empirical results consist of seven variants of received positive feedback as experienced by team leaders. Although the variants indicate that receiving positive feedback has favourable effects on team leaders, the effects are conditional. A favourable effect might be realized only if the team leader trusts the feedback giver or if the feedback is experienced to be truly earned. Furthermore, mental closeness with both managers and co-workers improves the perceived reliability of the received positive feedback. The results are similar to previous feedback research with one notable exception. Based on this study, job performance is not related to the received positive feedback as previous research has concluded. Results indicate that positive feedback has many favourable effects but they are mediated by the features of a feedback incident. The existential-phenomenological approach is helpful in understanding a feedback situation as a relation between the experiential worker receiving feedback and the actual work setting including the given feedback. KEY WORDS: team leader, positive feedback, work community, existential-phenomenological approach, phenomenological method, experience.