People talk a lot about how important feedback is and how they want more of it at work. Actually delivering on the promise may require a look at your team culture, a deeper understanding of what makes your teammates tick, or a few helpful tips on sharing feedback. This week’s top articles cover it all.

1. The Facebook Generation vs the Fortune 500

Your cheat sheet for working with people who grew up online. World-renown author, speaker and business thought leader, Gary Hamel describes 12 characteristics of the Facebook Generation, or Gen F, that we all need to understand if we’re to engage these talented up-and-comers. According to Hamel, they’ll: “expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy.” The way work works is changing dramatically and management needs to embrace this shift, or else…

My top 3 from Hamel’s list:

• Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed (reminds me of HubSpot’s influence chart).
• Leaders serve rather than preside: it’s all about expertise and selfless behavior, not command-and-control.
• Intrinsic rewards matter most: “Money’s great, but so is recognition and the joy of accomplishment.” (Dan Pink and McKinsey are all over this too)

Read the full article…

Note: If you’re passionate about management and believe there’s a better way, definitely check out the Management Innovation eXchange!

2. 6 Ways to Give Feedback to Your Boss and Coworkers

Upward feedback can be a scary thing. Even if you feel you know your boss well, those butterflies in your gut always seem to re-appear when you want to share what you really think. Particularly if your boss isn’t receptive to feedback, things can quickly spiral downward: people don’t share as much, motivation declines and the manager-employee relationship weakens.

So what do we do about it? Evil HR Lady offers six tips that you can apply today:

1. Make sure you know what you are talking about
2. Give more positive than negative feedback
3. Don’t just talk: Implement
4. Your job IS to make your boss look good
5. Accept feedback from others graciously
6. Don’t expect others to always implement what you suggest

Read the full post…

3. Why Corporate Leaders Won’t Abolish Performance Reviews

Samuel Culbert, creator of the performance preview, provides a compelling argument for why performance reviews are destructive to organizations and why they happen anyway. It’s a classic case of “easier said than done” in which people and organizations may deride an outdated and counter-productive process, but not actually do anything about it. According to Dr. Culbert, here’s why:

• Intellectual laziness: management by intimidation is easier
• Ego: managers don’t want to be told they’re wrong
• Managers don’t want to give up control
• Companies don’t want to put time into fixing internal processes
• Managers don’t want to look like bad managers

If you work in an organization like this, it must be frustrating. Speak up – follow Evil HR Lady’s 6 steps – and you can do something about it.

Read the full post…

4. Leveraging Social Media Tools for Learning

Gautam Ghosh reviewed Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham’s book “The New Social Learning”. (Marcia is a Partner at the Altimeter Group and Tony is the CEO of the American Society of Training and Development.)

It’s always great to hear such a positive take on social media at work. The best part about Gautam’s review is that he calls out an opportunity for HR and training people to be agents of change. It’s time to step away from legacy systems and embrace new approaches. In fact, it’s easy, as Ghosh writes:

• “You don’t need to be a tech organization to deploy social tools to enable people to learn from each other”
• “Deploying these tools does not mean a lot of expense”

There’s also a great article on this topic from a while ago on Mashable.

How are social media and feedback related? For feedback to really be effective, it needs to be easy to share and – where appropriate – visible to the entire team. This creates a more collaborative environment and accelerates learning when your colleagues can see and comment on feedback you get. And, it’s really motivating to know that your colleagues are aware of the great work you’re doing and the praise you get for it.

Read the full post…

I’d love to hear from you.

Are there other articles you think should be here?

Photo of 3D character with question mark by o5com. Licensed under CC.