MGMT 8425M Week 4 Feedback Analysis Example

One Correction, Two Settings, Two Responses: A Feedback Analysis of a Regional Director's Identical Comments to Two Team Leads, Sent Privately to One and Posted in a Shared Channel for the Other, With a Revised Practice for Each

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8425M: Responding to Behavior and Change as a Multicultural Leader

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

One Correction, Two Settings, Two Responses: A Feedback Analysis of a Regional Director's Identical Comments to Two Team Leads, Sent Privately to One and Posted in a Shared Channel for the Other, With a Revised Practice for Each

One Wording, Two Deliveries

On the morning of October 6, 2025, the regional director of a composite logistics software company reviewed quarterly forecasts from two implementation team leads, Dana in Atlanta and Tomasz in Kraków. Both forecasts had overstated the number of client go-lives the team could complete in the quarter. The director wrote the same comment on each: "This forecast isn't credible. Rework the go-live count with realistic resourcing and resend by end of day." He sent Dana's as a private message. He posted Tomasz's as a reply in the team's shared planning channel, where Tomasz's eleven direct reports could see it, because the forecast had been posted there first. Dana resent a revised forecast by noon. Tomasz resent his late that evening, and three weeks later asked human resources about a transfer to another region.

The Table of Settings

[after]

The leads' descriptions come from Dana's reply to the director and from Tomasz's message to human resources, which he shared with the director when asked.

Table 1

The Two Deliveries and How Each Lead Described Them

What Each Lead Heard

Dana heard a task: the forecast needed a different number. Tomasz heard something about himself and his standing with his team. The words were the same, and both leads acknowledged the forecasts were wrong. The difference lies in what the delivery made the feedback about.

Feedback Research, Applied

Kluger and DeNisi (1996) pooled hundreds of studies and reported that, although feedback raised performance on average, many feedback efforts left people performing worse than before. Their theory explains the difference by where feedback directs attention: messages that hold the recipient's focus on the work tend to improve it, while messages that pull focus onto the recipient, such as threats to self-esteem or standing, tend to blunt the effect. The table suggests where Tomasz's attention went. A correction posted in front of his reports, during his own meeting, made his standing as their leader part of the message, whether the director intended that or not.

Ilgen et al. (1979) emphasized that the effect of feedback depends on how it is perceived and whether it is accepted, which in turn depends on the source's credibility, the message and the recipient's situation. Dana's two recent calls with the director gave her a context in which a blunt note read as routine; Tomasz had no recent conversation to frame it, so the note arrived as the only recent signal of the director's view of him. Edmondson (1999) found that teams learned more where members trusted that owning up to an error would not be held against them, and a lead corrected in front of his own reports may find it harder to keep that belief alive among them. Cultural expectations about public correction may also differ between the two offices, and the analysis notes that possibility without relying on it. The features in the table, audience and absence of recent contact, are sufficient to explain the difference, and they would plausibly produce the same reaction in a lead from Atlanta posted the same way.

Two Revised Practices

For Dana, the current practice works and should continue: direct written corrections, private, at the start of her day, within a relationship of regular calls. The director might add a sentence of reasoning, since a correction without reasons can wear thin over time.

For Tomasz, the director should change two things. Corrections to a lead's work go privately, even when the work was posted publicly, with a brief public note that a revised version is coming. And the director should restore a regular one-to-one call, so that a blunt note never arrives as the only recent signal. Neither change depends on assumptions about Polish or American workplace norms; both follow from the audience and context features the table identifies.

Limitations

The author could not observe how each lead's team reacted, or what else Tomasz was weighing when he asked about a transfer. The comparison is also only two cases; other leads might respond differently to the same settings.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Ilgen, D. R., Fisher, C. D., & Taylor, M. S. (1979). Consequences of individual feedback on behavior in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 64(4), 349-371. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.64.4.349

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254