Forget the Annual Review: Help Your Managers Build a Consistent Feedback Culture
If you've ever walked out of an annual review feeling like it didn’t quite hit the mark, you’re not alone.
A recent article from Monkhouse & Company highlights something we see too often: formal performance reviews are backward-looking, compliance-led, and ultimately not that helpful when it comes to improving how people actually work.
Instead, the biggest impact comes from building a culture of feedback – one where feedback is consistent, constructive, and part of how your managers lead every day. Real-time feedback, delivered in the moment, is what drives real performance improvement. It’s also what builds trust.
At PUSH, we believe in helping managers build the confidence and coaching skills they need to have those conversations – and to make them count.
Why Traditional Reviews Often Miss the Mark
Formal performance reviews have their place. But when they become the only space for feedback, teams miss out on the everyday moments where learning, growth, and performance conversations really happen.
Reviews tend to be:
- Backward-looking
- Focused on documentation
- Tied to compliance or HR processes
- Too infrequent to impact day-to-day employee development
Compare that with regular, real-time feedback. According to Gallup’s 2025 Post-Pandemic Workplace report, employees who receive consistent, meaningful feedback are almost four times more likely to be engaged at work. That kind of engagement drives not just productivity, but also retention, confidence, and long-term performance.
What We Mean by a Feedback Culture
Creating a feedback culture at work means making feedback a natural, normal part of the job, not something saved for formal check-ins or when things go wrong.
In a strong culture of feedback:
- Feedback is regular, not reserved
- It flows both ways – from managers and team members
- It’s specific, actionable, and timely
- Managers feel confident giving and receiving it
- Teams know feedback is about development, not judgment
This is also about embedding psychological safety in the workplace – ensuring people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, take risks, and learn from mistakes without fear of judgement.
Why Confidence Is the Missing Piece
Many organisations assume managers know how to give feedback at work. But knowing what to say and feeling confident about how to say it are two very different things.
When we speak to managers in our coaching and feedback sessions, the blockers we hear most are:
- “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
- “It’s awkward, and I don’t want to upset anyone.”
- “I don’t feel like I have the right words.”
These aren’t signs of poor leadership – they’re signs of under-supported leadership. With the right frameworks, managers go from feedback avoiders to confident coaches.
The PUSH Approach: Coaching Before Correcting
In our management training, we teach that feedback and coaching go hand in hand. Coaching isn’t a separate skill – it’s the foundation of how great feedback lands well.
We introduce managers to the GROW model, a simple and powerful framework for guiding performance conversations:
- G – Goal: What do you want to achieve?
- R – Reality: What’s happening right now?
- O – Options: What could you do differently?
- W – Will: What action will you take?
Why it works:
- It avoids triggering the brain’s defensive response
- It encourages self-reflection and intrinsic motivation
- It builds psychological safety and accountability
- It helps employees own their development
In practice? Instead of saying “redo this,” a coaching manager asks: “What’s your approach to improving this? How can I support you?”
Making Feedback Less Awkward
Giving feedback is often avoided because it feels high-stakes. That’s why we also introduce managers to the CORE model – a simple way to structure feedback conversations:
- C – Context & Intent: What’s the situation, and why are you raising it?
- O – Observation: What did you see or hear specifically?
- R – Result & Impact: What happened as a result?
- E – Expectation & Next Steps: What would better look like?
Using CORE helps take the sting out of feedback. It shifts the conversation from confrontation to collaboration.
Five Habits for Coaching Confidence
When it comes to how to give feedback as a manager, these five everyday behaviours are a great place to start – they’re the habits we help managers embed in our sessions:
- Ask first – “How do you think that went?” encourages ownership
- Keep it real-time – feedback lands best when it’s timely
- Be specific – say what you saw, not just how it felt
- Normalise feedback – make it part of the everyday, not the exception
- Coach, don’t correct – help people think, not just follow
PUSH in Action: Client Examples
1. Creative Agency: Feedback Confidence
We worked with a London-based creative agency where feedback avoidance was stalling team performance. Through workshops and 1:1 coaching surgeries:
- 87% of managers said they felt more confident giving feedback
- Employee engagement rose by 14% in under a year
2. Health Tech: Technical to Trust-Building
A high-growth health tech business had technically brilliant managers who weren’t confident in giving feedback. After six months of our leadership training:
- 90% felt more confident giving feedback
- 82% were already applying their learning
- One manager shared: “I used to put feedback off. Now it’s how I lead.”
3. Corporate Comms: Elevating Performance Conversations
We partnered with a large comms agency where performance reviews had become a box-ticking exercise. We helped turn 1:1s into coaching moments.
- Managers began using both GROW and CORE
- Teams reported improved clarity, trust, and communication
The Business Case for Feedback
Let’s not forget: this isn’t just a “nice to have.” The benefits of feedback are strategic:
- Companies with strong feedback cultures are 12.5% more profitable
- High-performing teams give 6x more positive feedback
- Engaged employees are more productive and stay longer
When feedback becomes a habit, not a hurdle, everyone wins.
From Reviews to Conversations: What to Do Next
Want to shift from performance reviews to performance conversations?
Start small:
- Try “Stop, Start, Continue” after projects
- Build GROW questions into 1:1s
- Use CORE for tricky conversations
- Start every team meeting with a simple check-in
Then build from there.
Final Thoughts: Culture Follows Confidence
If you want to know how to create a culture of feedback that sticks, start by giving your managers the skills, confidence, and structure to do it well.
Let’s stop waiting for performance review season – and start coaching in the moments that matter most.
Explore our management coaching programmes or book a call to talk about your team.
.jpg)
Cate Murden is the Founder and CEO of PUSH, which she started following a successful career as a partner for a global media company. She created PUSH with a belief that if people are happy and healthy, they work better and are more resilient to whatever is thrown at them. Since founding PUSH, Cate has built a hand-picked team of world-class experts to help develop individuals and teams, truly transforming how businesses work whilst enhancing their productivity.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
-1.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
%20(1).jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Connect it to any collection list or static items, position and style the nav arrows wherever, and filter by another collection if needed!
