INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE between a low-performing team and a high-performing team? Nine times out of ten, the difference is a coaching-style manager who knows how to keep individual performers focused and motivated day after day. FAST Feedback is a system that encapsulates the best practices of such managers, based on the continuing workplace-interview research conducted by Rainmaker Thinking.

The FAST Approach

Fundamental to FAST Feedback is the emphasis on feedback itself, which is, by definition, a responsive form of communication. Coaching is an ongoing series of responses to someone’s performance. Giving feedback is the core competency of every coach. According to our research, the FASTer the feedback, the better the coach. Our formula’s acronym, FAST, stands for frequent, accurate, specific, and timely—the four qualities that employees most often ascribe to feedback from “the best manager [they] ever had” and feedback they need but don’t get from most managers.

With this formula as its guide, FAST Feedback takes a direct approach to teaching the key skills and best practices of coaching-style managers. Anyone in a position of supervisory responsibility can learn these essentials and, by applying them in the workplace, contribute to such active improvements as:

   Providing employees with regular guidance as needed

   Giving employees a greater feeling of being “in the loop”

   Building managers’ credibility with employees

   Increasing the quality of manager–employee interactions

   Making responsive coaching the centerpiece of supervisory relationships

   Encouraging ongoing results-oriented dialogues between managers and employees

   Enabling responsible delegation through regular, built-in review and revision

   Linking performance evaluation directly to concrete action steps

   Separating performance evaluation from annual raises and promotions

   Accelerating turnaround time and increasing productivity

Why a Second Edition So Fast?

Over the last several years I have shared the FAST Feedback approach in hundreds of speeches for tens of thousands of business leaders all over the world and in my work with many of our Fortune 500 clients. In response to our clients’ requests for more resources to teach managers FAST Feedback skills and best practices, my associate Susan Haney and I recently developed a full-scale management training program, which will soon join our expanding line of HRD Press products. I learned a great deal from working on the program. In fact, it taught me so much that I decided the first edition of FAST Feedback, though relatively new, deserved a revision. My knowledge has grown—and as a result, I bring you this second edition.

A Brief Look at the Second Edition

You will find all the following features, and more, in the pages of this guidebook.

   Clear and simple explanations of the FAST approach

   Examples from real-life workplace case studies

   Entire chapters devoted to each of the four FAST Feedback best practices

   An informative discussion of the need to turn managers into coaches

   Concrete action steps

   Room for productive brainstorming

   Appendices with suggestions and practical tools to help you implement the FAST approach

As you read this second edition, please remember that FAST Feedback is really about the day-to-day relationships between managers and the people they work with most closely—their direct reports and other valued coworkers. This pocket guide, like the FAST Feedback training program, focuses primarily on the four best practices and corresponding skills of the most effective coaching-style managers. If you add these best practices and skills to your management repertoire, you will have the essential tools for transforming your relationships with those you manage and consistently bringing out the very best performance they have to offer.

FAST FEEDBACK