Feedback, a powerful lever in teams: A review

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of feedback provided to teams in higher education or organizational settings. This review (59 empirical articles) showed that most of the feedback applications concerned “knowledge of results” (performance feedback). In contrast, there is a relatively small body of research using feedback conveying information regarding the way individuals or the team performed a task (process feedback). Moreover, no research compared the effectiveness of process versus performance feedback. Concerning feedback effectiveness, half of the studies implementing performance feedback research reported uniformly positive effects while the other half resulted in positive effects on some dependent variables and no effect on others. All the studies using solely process feedback showed mixed positive results: some dependent variables improved while some others did not change. None of the studies reported any negative effects. This review also highlighted 28 key factors supporting feedback interventions effectiveness.

► We reviewed 59 studies providing performance or process feedback to teams.
► Performance feedback impacted team processes, emergent states and performance.
► Process feedback positively influenced team processes and emergent states.
► No study demonstrated any negative effect of feedback interventions in teams.
► 28 key factors supporting feedback effectiveness were highlighted.