In our previous articles on feedback, here and here, we covered several aspects, that could be useful to any leader willing to build an open organizational culture, based on feedback and meaningful communication – how to prepare, how to give, how to gather or how to accept feedback, as well as how to use different tools and methods in a 360-degree review process.

To completely frame the subject, we would like to bring the discussion to a superior level, and to show how feedback depends on different types of organizational structures and leadership.

Organizational charts are a very common reprezentation of business hierarchy, of the way a company structures its employees. Most companies largely use the pyramid-like framework to define management chain and to organize employees into distinct levels. But there are also other ways in which a company can organize itself, beside this traditional aproach, ways that companies may prefer based on their specific needs. We are referring, for example, to team-based organizations, where each employee is part of a group and the management is more informal, to flatter organizations, that have fewer levels, but still have a pyramid structure and to flat organizations wich have no hierarchy and every employee is on the same level.

These different ways of organizing a company impact the communication between managers and employees and, implicitly, the way the feedback is formulated and the way it circulates. And it is totally normal to be like that. In a team-based organization employees are allowed to make decisions without needing to confirm with a manager. In a flatter organization, with a simplified structure, communication between employees is smoother and the company considers them on a more individual basis. In a flat organization, that completely lacks hierarchy, employees do not have specific tasks assigned to them, and, as a result, employee determine their responsibilities by themselves and take complete charge of their projects.

Depending on how a company is structured – hierarchy, simplified hierarchy or no hierarchy at all, two main leadership models that could be encountered: hierarchical leadership and lateral leadership. It is very important wich model an organization choses to adopt, because the feedback culture is contingent to it.

On one hand, hierarchical or transactional leadership is a classic authoritarian leadership style, strictly performance-oriented. As a result, relationship between employer and employee  is purely functional; the interests and ideas of the employees are irrelevant, the expression of opinions or other influence by employees is neither desired nor tolerated, all they have to do is to fulfil specific tasks in a prescribed manner, following clear work instructions. Disciplinary authority and control rein, and good performance and high compliance are occasionally rewarded with incentives or bonuses (performance-related fringe benefits). We can hardly talk about a feedback culture in the workplace within this leadership model. You may wonder how come this form of leadership, which seems outdated, anacronic nowadays is still in place in some organizations. Apparently, it has stood the test of time precisely because of the clear instructions for employees and explicit responsabilities for managers, as well as beacause of the standardised processes, that ensure fast noticing and correction of the errors. However, according to today’s expectations in the working world,  where feecback culture becomes more and more important, it seems less and less suitable for an organization to nurture hierarchical leadership.

On the other hand, lateral or transformational leadership model is the complete opposite of hierarchical leadership. It is based on the trust that employees will successfully complete jobs in their own way with a certain degree of personal responsibility and make a targeted contribution to achieving the company’s objectives. With this freedom for self-determination, employees are allowed to develop and speak freely.  The lateral leadership style promotes comprehensive communication, including an open feedback. Employees’ feedback is encouraged and it contributes to shaping the company, to make it a better place. This leads to a better team spirit and to a stronger employee engagement, that conjunctively drive performance.

Regardless the leadership model your company emploies, there is always space for improvement. On this line, Co-Factor facilitates the smooth running of all processes through an innovative digital platform that embeds feedback within the three main organizational pillars – Employee Engagement, Performance Management and Internal Communication. Thus, the Co-Factor platform is a real ramp for creating and launching collaborative-competitive challenges to increase employee engagement and generate value for the organization and business; it also provides a performance scorecard based on goal cards and an information and action tool associated with each goal, for extra interactivity and control over personal and team’s performance for managers; and it equally helps to define and implement as efficiently as possible the internal communication strategy and to facilitate the exchange of information in real time and the collaboration between colleagues. The results of Co-Factor platform usage are directly reflected in KPIs and in positive effects in terms of organizational climate, as the software allows to track, measure, analyze and improve every aspect of any process in real time.