Parks and Recreation. Context: Centers on the Parks Department of a small town. Illustration: Leslie Knope, the main character, gives and receives feedback that is always considerate of feelings and personal growth. The show highlights how encouragement, recognition, and even constructive criticism are tailored to the individual, reinforcing bonds and motivation.
More praise, please!
An international employee survey by the Geva-Institute of Munich from 2009 demonstrated the differences by country in the expectations of employees from their supervisors.
80% of German employees expected their boss to be good at making decisions and able to execute their plans.
Besides this, German employees prefer to take responsibility for their own work. Accordingly, three out of four people who were surveyed stated that a supervisor should provide enough freedom to their employees with regard to making their own decisions and taking action.
Nevertheless, the typical German office could use some more dolling out of praise: only half of German employees felt that their work is sufficiently appreciated.
group performance
Die Welle (The Wave, 2008). Context: A high school teacher conducts an experiment to demonstrate the appeal of authoritarianism. Illustration: The feedback given by the teacher to students – and among students themselves – remains focused on behavior and group performance, not on individual personalities. The film explores the consequences of depersonalized, performance-based evaluation in a group dynamic.
Critique and Humour
German colleagues will at times communicate critical feedback with irony, hoping to gain a smirk or a smile. This is not meant to make fun of the colleague whose work is being criticized, but rather to add a lightness to the criticism.
The person criticized is given the opportunity to accept the feedback with a sense of humour and light-heartedness. The Germans value the ability to maintain a healthy, objective distance to one‘s own work.
Humor: the ability to accept with lightness personal imperfections and those of the world, as well as the difficulties of daily life.
fragile mother
Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). Context: A son tries to protect his fragile mother from the truth about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Illustration: Although the film is comedic and emotional, scenes involving hospital staff, government officials, and bureaucrats consistently show feedback and communication that is formal, factual, and impersonal, especially in professional contexts.
An American in Berlin
From an American:
“I started working for a German company a few years ago and was immediately excited to find that they had a culture of frequent feedback.
As the weeks went on, the feedback kept on coming. Very quickly, I began to see a pattern; it was almost entirely negative. All delivered amazingly well, with examples of how I’d fucked up alongside helpful guidance on how I might want to improve.
The onslaught continued; it was relentless. It became apparent to me that there was very little chance of me passing my probation period if this continued. So I buckled down, pushed myself to breaking point and put in those extra hours to save my job. But still, it kept continuing critical feedback, after critical feedback.
For the first time in my career, I was going to fail my probation period. There was no point in getting feedback on how I improve the situation. I was getting it daily. I was just shit.
So finally, my final probation review came around. Everything was excellent; the company was super happy with my progress and delivery. I passed my probation period with flying colours. But it had broken me. I was fried and burnt out.”
From a German:
“I have recently started working in an entirely new industry, leading a small team. Shortly after joining, my team’s scope changed to a new problem space.
Again, this company had an active feedback culture and processes. Constant feedback was given to the team every two weeks from leadership. As we built the team and worked out how we were going to achieve our new goals, we got feedback all the time. And it was always positive.
This didn’t play well for me. I knew that there was no way that we could be that good, we were a team with little experience in what we were doing, how could we be doing that well? There must be areas for improvement.
As this continued, positive feedback began to feel more and more empty. I went hunting for critical feedback. Unfortunately, this manifested in me trying to find critical input for the team bellow me. I became overly focused on trying to find areas for improvement in the team.
The problem came to a head when one of my team said ‘I only get negative feedback from you, and I don’t know what to do about it.’ I was so focused on finding the negative areas that we could improve on, and I had not given any support for improvement. I had also failed to celebrate the positive.”
Impersonal Critique
In the German context feedback about one‘s work is in and of itself not personal. Germans – team leads as well as members – can argue vehemently about business topics and at the same time have a friendly, collegial working relationship. German management can criticize harshly an employee but still respect and personally like that individual. In Germany feedback is not personal.
In German team meetings open, honest, direct feedback is not only permitted, it is desired. Weaknesses in individual performance are addressed by team lead and members alike. The criticism, however, is not meant, and is not taken, as a personal attack, not jemandem etwas ins Gesicht sagen (to tell them off), but more to „get a it on the table“, in den Raum stellen.
Jemandem etwas ins Gesicht sagen: to say something critical to another person‘s face; to say something mean, unfair, provoking; to tell someone the unadultered truth; to give another person „a piece of your mind.“
Etwas in den Raum stellen: to put something in the room; to raise a question, a problem; to comment on, to make an observation; to bring a subject into the discussion.
Fair Critical Feedback
Germans consider critical feedback to be unfair if it does not include concrete recommendations on how to improve on weaknesses. They believe that people can only improve on what they understand to be suboptimal. Critial feedback, the Germans believe, should therefore be communicated clearly, avoiding any use of politically correct language.
The more objective and impersonal the critical feedback is stated, the less chance it will be taken personally. Feedback experts in Germany go as far as to view personal relationships within teams as a barrier to honest, effective feedback. They often recommend neutral third parties to facilitate particularly critical feedback discussions.
the wrong way
“Don’t take it the wrong way.” Meaning: Acknowledges that feedback might feel personal and encourages the recipient to see the positive intent behind it.
considerate, personal
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Meaning: Emphasizes the importance of delivering feedback in a considerate, personal manner.