749: How to Balance Positive and Constructive Feedback, with Mark Crowley

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mark Crowley: The Power of Employee Well-Being
Mark Crowley is a pioneer in workplace leadership, a speaker, and the bestselling author of Lead from the Heart. He is the host of the Lead from the Heart podcast. His new book is The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams (Amazon, Bookshop).

When I talk with leaders, many of them tell me that it’s really hard to decide on how much recognition to give people vs. constructive or critical feedback. In this conversation, Mark and I highlight the ideal ratio to calibrate our communications so that we support people’s well-being while also helping them grow.
Key Points

Despite the focus on employee engagement, actual engagement scores are the same or worse than a decade ago.
Post-COVID, there’s a massive move towards employee well-being. This is good for both the organization and the employee.
An ideal positivity ratio is 4:1 in many relationships. That’s four positive interactions for every constructive or critical interaction.
We react more strongly to negative influence than positions once, thus the need for a ratio favoring the positive.
Positive interactions include optimism, enthusiasm, solutions orientation, encouragement, kindness, thoughtfulness, approachability, interest, and appreciation.
Leaders still must make unpopular decisions, set expectations, and give critical feedback. Positive interactions are in addition to these, not instead of.

Resources Mentioned

The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams (Amazon, Bookshop)* by Mark Crowley

Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes

How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404)
Gallup Findings on the Changing Nature of Work, with Jim Harter (episode 409)
The Way to Notice People Better, with Zach Mercurio (episode 733)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	When I talk with leaders, many of them tell me it's really hard to decide on how much
0:05.6	recognition to give people versus the constructive or critical feedback. In this episode,
0:13.2	the ideal ratio to calibrate our communications so that we both support people's well-being
0:20.3	while also helping them grow.
0:23.2	This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 749.
0:27.7	Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.
0:36.1	Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviac.
0:44.0	Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations.
0:52.0	If you've led in any organization in the last decade or two, you've
0:56.3	certainly heard the term employee engagement and more recently the term employee well-being.
1:01.8	So many of us have a heart to want to support engagement and well-being in our organizations
1:07.3	in the best way we can. And we also know the challenges that come with so many
1:12.4	of the initiatives of working to do that better inside of our organizations. Today, a conversation
1:18.4	on how we can really support employee well-being in a really key, tactical, simple, and yet
1:25.2	powerful way. I'm so pleased to welcome Mark Crowley to the show. He is a
1:29.5	pioneer in workplace leadership, a speaker, and the best-selling author of Lead from the Heart. He is
1:35.2	the host of the Lead from the Heart podcast, and his new book is The Power of Employee Well-Being.
1:41.5	Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing teams. Mark, what a pleasure to have
1:46.8	you here. Welcome. Well, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to our conversation, Dave.
1:51.3	I am looking forward this conversation, too. As I read through your book and researched your work,
1:58.0	I was just thinking about how this term employee engagement has permeated
2:04.4	so many organizations in the last decade or so. And you write in the early parts of the book,
	...

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