Learning leadership and feedback seeking behavior: Leadership that spurs feedback seeking

Abstract

Lifelong learning is crucial for professionals to continuously develop and update their knowledge and skills, and for organizations to create and sustain competitive advantage. In this regard, feedback seeking is a powerful vehicle to gain new knowledge and insights in one’s development and performance. The current research dives deeper in the concept of feedback seeking by investigating the act and use of feedback as well as multiple feedback seeking methods. Leadership as a contextual factor can affect employees’ feedback seeking behavior. As such, this study also explores the role of learning leadership for feedback seeking. Learning leadership supports, facilitates and encourages employees’ professional development. To address these aims, two independent studies were conducted. Study 1 was a quantitative, survey study that investigated the direct relationship between learning leadership and (the act and use of) feedback seeking. Study 2 was a qualitative, interview study that explored which concrete learning leadership behaviors were linked to different methods of feedback seeking. The findings confirmed the pivotal role of leaders in employees’ feedback seeking behavior and provided an overview of concrete learning leadership behaviors.

How health professionals maintain and update their professional knowledge in a self-directed learning context

“…Relying instead on their strategies to select relevant articles choosing to "read smart" not read everything. However, as medical knowledge is increasing exponentially (Corish, 2018) these current strategies may become more and more ineffective.…”

“…Medical professionals are facing major challenges to keep abreast of current and updated information with the rapidly growing clinical and scienti c knowledge (Prasad & Kumar, 2013). The expectation to update and maintain knowledge as a health professional is implicit in the medical eld and is paramount to provide the best care for the patient (Corish, 2018). Medical knowledge has been expanding exponentially (Corish, 2018) over the last 10 years with an explosion of health care knowledge worldwide.…”

Igniting work innovation: performance pressure, extraversion, feedback seeking and innovative behavior

“…Performance pressure can be considered a job demand (Adeel et al, 2023) as it involves high expectations, time pressure (Shalley and Perry-Smith, 2001) and the need to meet the required demanded output (Zhang et al, 2017). On the other hand, FSB can be viewed as a job resource (Crans et al, 2022) within the JD-R theory, which helps manage job demands. Seeking feedback allows employees to gather information about their performance, identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments, thereby enhancing their job performance (Zhang et al, 2022a) and reducing the adverse effects of job demands (Anseel et al, 2015).…”

“…The JD-R model suggests that job resources can offset the detrimental effects of job demands. In the context of the JD-R model, FSB is considered a job resource (Crans et al, 2022), and performance pressure is a job demand (Adeel et al, 2023). Employees engage in FSB because they recognize the informational value of feedback in helping them improve their performance and regulate their behavior (Katz et al, 2023).…”

Effective personal development plans contextualized: The role of the autonomy‐supportive people manager in sustaining employees' self‐directed learning

“…The literature on learning climate has also pointed to the interaction between individual and context, and thus to the situatedness of learning. Crans et al (2022) found that learning-related leadership is one of the fundamental building blocks of a learning climate. In their study, employees perceived their supervisors as a crucial factor in establishing an environment that fosters learning.…”