Most managers know they should ask for input. Many still don't, or dismiss what they hear when they do. Speaking up and staying silent are separate behaviors with separate causes, so giving employees more chances to speak does not necessarily reduce what they withhold.
Sherf, Lee & McElroy · 2026 · Academy of Management Annals
Between moving toward and moving away, people often do a third thing.
A manager who learns a senior executive will attend her next update might take a bold risk, let a colleague present, or prepare carefully to balance her ambition against the executive's preferences. That third response reflects inhibition, a separate system that responds to conflicting goals. Reviewing 268 organizational papers, we document that researchers often omit inhibition or treat it as avoidance, and assume approach is good while avoidance and inhibition are bad. We integrate the two theories the field draws on and apply the result to power, voice and silence, and proactivity.
Anseel & Sherf · 2025 · Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
Twenty-five years of feedback research, and the findings still contradict each other.
Researchers use one word, feedback, for at least six different things: a one-time rating, an ongoing conversation, a 360 program, information available while you work. Because the underlying assumptions differ, so do the results, which is why a simple rule like "lead with the positive" works in one line of research and fails in another.
Sherf, Croitoru & McElroy · 2024 · Personnel Psychology
Asking for feedback and watching for it are not the same behavior.
Across roughly 390 samples, people who ask directly and people who quietly observe show different patterns. Worrying about looking bad is associated with less direct asking but not with less observing, and direct asking is associated with better job performance while observing is not.
Sherf, Parke & Isaakyan · 2021 · Academy of Management Journal
Speaking up and staying silent are not opposites.
Across a meta-analysis and a six-month panel study, how often people speak up and how often they stay silent are only weakly related. Believing your input will change something mostly predicts speaking up, feeling safe mostly predicts not staying silent, and burnout is associated with silence rather than with a lack of voice.
Sherf & Morrison · 2020 · Journal of Applied Psychology
Confidence reduces feedback seeking only under one condition.
Across five studies, self-efficacy had no overall relationship with how much people sought feedback. The negative relationship appeared only among those low in perspective taking, who saw less value in what others could tell them, and prompting people to consider the other person's point of view removed it.
