Police leaders' daily feedback-seeking: the role of an organization’s error-management climate, leaders' feedback orientation and the situation

Leaders lack essential information about their performance from their followers. In light of the frequently encountered error avoidance climate in the police, leaders should actively seek feedback to fill this gap. The purpose of this paper is to explore organizational, personal and situational antecedents of police leaders' daily feedback-seeking behavior.

The authors used a diary study and examined error-management climate, feedback orientation and two situational characteristics, namely daily occasions for feedback-seeking and daily time pressure. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the N = 188 daily entries from 27 leaders (minimum of three daily entries per leader).

Results show that police leaders seldom seek daily feedback from their followers. A positive (i.e. learning-oriented) error-management climate and occasions for feedback-seeking foster leaders' daily feedback-seeking, whereas no main effects of feedback orientation and time pressure were found. However, time pressure moderated the relationship between occasions for feedback-seeking and daily feedback-seeking, with higher time pressure leading to a weaker relationship.

This is the first study empirically examining feedback-seeking as a key leadership behavior on a daily basis. The results show that organizational conditions promote leaders' feedback-seeking behavior and indicate organizations should foster an error-management climate to promote feedback-seeking of their leaders.