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Master Your Game
This Issue: Providing Effective Feedback
Dear Reader,
Summary
Great managers understand the value of providing
feedback and its impact on high performance.
Feedback is any communication that gives your
employees information about how you perceive them
and their behaviour. This article will assist you to
recognize barriers that might be preventing you from
providing feedback. You will also learn guidelines for
providing quality feedback to support those around
you to take their performance to the next level.
Importance of Feedback
When you offer your opinion or provide an evaluation
of someone's behaviour or performance, you are
providing feedback. Feedback demonstrates that you
care enough about your employees to tell them the
truth and that you trust in them to accept the truth
as part of self-development.
Acknowledgement in the form of feedback is a
powerful form of reward. Honest, sincere and
appropriate praise can prove to be as great an
incentive to most employees as monetary and other
rewards.
Individuals welcome acknowledgement for who they
are as much as for what they do. High achievers
constantly seek feedback or ways to track their
success. Studies have shown that individuals soon
lose motivation and enthusiasm if they believe their
leader does not care about their performance.
Challenges to Providing Developmental Feedback
Feedback should be built into the relationship
between you and the employee. It should be an
ongoing process that allows for review and
continuous growth. Unfortunately, many avoid
providing feedback or make the mistake of delivering
it at inappropriate times in a rushed, abrupt, and
negative fashion.
Reasons for not providing developmental feedback
are often linked to a lack of skill and confidence.
Some may have a real fear of offending people. Or
some may simply believe it really does not matter. It
does.
I have worked with people who feel very bitter about
their leaders who lacked the courage to provide them
with developmental feedback. They feel like they
have been cheated from the opportunity to grow and
be more effective.
Guidelines for Giving Effective Feedback
Great feedback is specific and timely, and should be
given shortly after the event (unless you are angry,
in which case a cool down period is warranted). For
a successful feedback session, consider these
guidelines:
- Be clear on your intent for providing the
information.
- Ensure you are not giving feedback in anger or
while being judgmental.
- Prepare what you want to communicate. Choose
your words, your tone and your body language.
- Deliver your message in non-emotive language
with the emphasis on the behaviour rather than the
person.
- Provide objective data to support your
comments.
- Always communicate the impact on others or the
organization.
Moving Forward: The Manager as Coach
The ability to give constructive
feedback
is one of
the major roles of the manager as coach.
Zeus and Skiffington in "The Complete Guide to
Coaching at Work"
As a leader, it is imperative that you clarify your
expectations (see Master Your Game,
Issue
3,
Expectations that Generate Results).
If there are performance issues, you should be
prepared with some solutions, but ask permission
before providing your solutions. It is vital that you
are there to support this person in working through
their challenges. This is where your skill as a coach
will be most important.
Your ability to ask powerful questions to shift the
individual's perspective and behaviour is a key skill to
develop. You may want to ask questions such as:
What will get in your way of taking these actions?
How will you deal with these blocks? What support
do you need? Who could provide you with this
support?
To hone your leadership skills, ask your executive
coach for other great ways of providing more
effective feedback.
Wishing you successful coaching,
Jacque Small
Catalyst
Business
Coaching is a corporate development organization. It
works with people who want to achieve a greater
sense of success for both themselves and others in
the organization. It supports people to define and
achieve both personal and business targets. Jacque
Small, principal and owner of Catalyst, founded the
company in 2000.
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