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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Reviews tend to be:

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.

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In a strong culture of feedback:

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.

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When we speak to managers in our coaching and feedback sessions, the blockers we hear most are:

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.

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We introduce managers to the GROW model , a simple and powerful framework for guiding performance conversations:

Why it works:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

The Business Case for Feedback

Let’s not forget: this isn’t just a “nice to have.” The benefits of feedback are strategic:

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:

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.

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Let’s stop waiting for performance review season, and start coaching in the moments that matter most.

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Explore our management coaching programmes or book a call to talk about your team .