Feedback plays a pivotal role in performance management in any business venture. Feedback comes in many forms. From one-to-one feedback discussions with your manager, to sales figures or quality metrics as well as customer surveys. They are all forms of feedback which we use to determine where we are in relation to where we want to be. Feedback facilitates learning and improvement.
Today we will focus on feedback in the one-to-one setting, as it is possible to make or break a relationship by the way in which we give feedback to our people. If you care about your staff, you will give honest feedback, it’s the only way we all grow and improve.
We all need to earn the right to give constructive feedback, it doesn’t come with your title. Yes you can give it, but it may not be taken in the way in which you intended in the early days. Constructive feedback comes at a price in most instances, as nobody likes being told they need to change or improve. I like to think of this using a banking analogy. You can make a deposit in their emotional “bank account” by giving regular, honest, sincere praise for things they are doing right. Then when it comes time to give them some constructive feedback, you will only be making a withdrawal from their account, and not becoming overdrawn.
Feedback needs to be given in a way that the person understands and that they will be receptive to. In my experience, it is also important to find out how your people like getting their feedback in order to make it optimally effective. When I join a new team I always have an honest discussion with the staff about feedback. In my initial one-to-one conversation, I always give them all a form that they can fill in so that I can get to know them better and individualise the way I feed things back. Everyone is different and they like their feedback done in a certain way. By doing it right, you will be setting you people up for success.
It is very important that feedback is not just spoon-feeding people information and techniques. It is more important to get people thinking for themselves and to help them become more independent engaged employees rather than dependant robots. I have found that making improvement a "team effort" by using words like "we," "let us" and "together" fosters a culture of improvement and shows your team member that you want to help them improve.
As much as positive feedback can reinforce good habits and behaviours. We must be careful not to only focus on this. We must not gloss over the constructive feedback, because as nice as it is to be the good guy, we need to be honest with our people. Feedback is the only way to help people to grow and improve. We also cant only focus on the negative, as this will demoralise them. We need to find the happy medium.
Most important characteristics of good feedback:
Honest and direct - Don’t beat around the bush as your message may get lost.
Timely - Give it as soon as possible so that nobody makes the same mistake over and over
Be sincere - Use your tone of voice, and your manner to indicate how you feel and whether the feedback is positive or constructive. Avoid displaying emotions such as disappointment and anger.
Listen - It is important to listen to identify knowledge gaps or different perspectives, there may be a legitimate reason for what they have done that are justified.
Specific - The feedback needs to be problem focused and they need to understand why they are getting the feedback.
Personal - Avoid using email, text or other impersonal means to give feedback as these are more often than not misinterpreted. Face to face feedback is always best.
Avoid assumptions - Make sure your feedback is only about what you see, not about what you assume or infer from the situation.
To make feedback better, it is important to coach for improvement, not perfection. Perfection is rarely achieved, and we want to set our people up for success.
In the coming weeks, why not try using some of these phrases when giving feedback;
"I can see where you are going with this, and it's much improved from last time. Lets try XYZ next time to make it even better"
"This is really good work, what do you think would make this area of the work even better"
"There are lots of positives about this piece of work, I'd like you take it back, have a look over it, and come back to me with three areas you could improve on."
“This area of the work is well done, this area could do with some fine tuning. How do you think it could be better?"
“This isn't quite there yet? I suggest we try X and Y, what else do you think we could do to take this from good to great?"
A phrase that does wonders when giving feedback is "I am giving you this feedback because I know your potential and I expect great things from you." Using this at some point in the feedback will leave your staff member feeling valued and supported.
Having people re-assess or re-evaluate their own work with a critical eye reinforces their own learning and results in sustained improvement.
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