Feedback is the breakfast of champions

‘Feedback is the breakfast of champions’ is a quote that I use regularly and is widely attributed to Ken Blanchard (although he himself credits it to Rick Tate, a former consulting partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies.)

What he meant is straightforward: just as breakfast fuels energy and performance for the day ahead, so feedback fuels growth and improvement in people and organisations. 

Tate originally framed it in sports terms - imagine training for the Winter Olympics with no idea how well you skated or executed a jump. Without feedback, we operate in a vacuum. We can't ever improve, course-correct, or feel recognised for what we've done well.

The deeper point Blanchard went on to make was that feedback needs to be timely and honest. Managers or team members who hoard negative feedback and deliver it in one devastating performance review, or who paper over problems with false positivity, are failing their people.

In that respect, and just like breakfast, feedback should never be a periodic event; it should be a daily necessity.