One of my biggest professional pet peeves is the message that feedback is either harmful or that your employees don't want feedback.
Rubbish!
The is popular because professionals believe that all feedback is negative. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, I understand why this has happened - because too many managers only give negative feedback. To make matters worse, they usually do that poorly.
Here are the simple rules:
You should give feedback often - every employee should get a minimum of 1 piece of feedback a week, preferably 1 piece of feedback per day.
It would be hard to give too much feedback (simply because it would require you to do nothing but give feedback and I doubt you have the time).
Most feedback should be POSITIVE. The ratio of positive to negative feedback should be at least 5:1. For your Rock Stars, closer to 9:1.
Feedback is about influencing future behavior, so focus all feedback on what the employee can do well NEXT TIME.
Once you start to practice this method of feedback, you will see that feedback is craved by your team because it lets them know they are on the right path to success.