Give your Staff Meaningful Feedback

Giving and receiving feedback is essential to ensuring the goals of the individual and the organisation are met. It gives encouragement and direction.

Feedback is forward thinking and not about assigning blame for what has already happened. Consider feedback as an education process where the desired outcome is an employee better equipped to do his or her job.

Giving feedback is a skill that can be learned and mastered just like any other leadership skill. Here are a few key points to help you become more successful at giving feedback as a leader.

Observations not impressions

When giving feedback to a team member, remember to state observations about the person’s behaviour. There is quite a difference between stating observations [to see, watch, perceive, or notice] and impressions [a strong effect produced on the intellect, feelings, conscience, etc.]. The dictionary explanations, thus, let us know that observations are more about facts, whilst impressions are about the way things make us feel. While our feelings about things we observe in our staff’s behavior are of relevance, when giving feedback, it is imperative to stick with our observations: what did we see or notice done.

Be sincere

State what you have observed, how you consider that to be either good or bad; be specific as to whether you would like that particular observed behaviour to be repeated or not. It is quite insincere and confusing to use “Yes… but…” sentences when giving feedback.

This can be starting with a positive statement and then adding “but” to give the negative one, e.g. “I think you did a good job of helping the customer with his order this morning, but you forgot to …). In essence, you have just negated what you said in the first half of the sentence.

 

Express Appreciation

Praise your team member and be very specific in mentioning what behaviour elicited your appreciation. Take for example a team member who took initiative and made an effort to help out in a very busy time. Express in detail what this action meant for the business or the team, how it created value, alleviated stress, made a good impression on a customer, etc. How often it is said that we learn from our mistakes; I think that we learn more from our successes, especially those that are pointed out to us.

Watch for my next blog for more on giving feedback that your staff will enjoy.

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