When Feedback in The Workplace Is Vague on Purpose, Not by Accident

Feedback in the workplace has commonly been referred to as a development tool, but in reality, it is communicated in pretty vague terms. Statements like “you’re doing well overall” or “there’s room for improvement” are commonly used but fail to provide guidance. This lack of specificity in feedback is not always unintentional. It was found by Stone & Heen (2014) that managers often water down feedback because it makes them uncomfortable, because they want to maintain relationships, and because they want to avoid conflict (Harvard Business Review). This leads to communication in which harmony is maintained at the surface, but at the core, nothing is being addressed.

Performance reviews are generally in relation to promotions and pay raises, and sometimes even politics in many organizations. Thus, being direct can have significant risk implications. Managers will often adjust the directness of feedback according to its potential reception, not its potential usefulness, as found in a study done for the Academy of Management Journal (2019). Feedback becomes less about reality and more about navigating the organization.

It becomes a measure of the organization’s tolerance for conflict and transparency, rather than the actual reality of the employee being reviewed. This situation presents a strange experience of trying to understand what is not being said for the employees involved. The ambiguity causes individuals to read the tone and the patterns over time rather than relying on what has been said.


Vague feedback causes individuals to experience cognitive overload as they attempt to read the feedback and simultaneously go about their work, as seen in research published in the journal “Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes” in 2017. The experience may feel like guessing over time, especially when expectations are not verbally communicated. The individuals may end up changing their behavior not because they were told to, but because they inferred what was expected.

What keeps this process going is the fact that it tends to work well in the short term. Communication remains effortless, and tensions are avoided. But clarity makes way for interpretation. Feedback remains present, but its purpose changes from guiding to maintaining. Simply recognizing this process does not necessarily help to overcome it; instead, it alters the way it is viewed. Vague feedback may not be the result of poor communication skills. Instead, it may be the outcome of an intentional process driven by organizational norms and the unspoken balancing act between truth and comfort.