FAST FEEDBACK is a straightforward approach designed to teach anyone in a position of supervisory responsibility the key skills and best practices of the most effective coaching-style managers. This chapter looks at the FAST formula for those skills and practices and its importance in today’s workplace. But first, let’s address a question that is fundamental here: What exactly is feedback?
What Is Feedback?
Feedback is a reactive form of communication; that is, a response to some kind of action or input. For example:
An answer to a question
Fulfillment of a request for information
Reply or rebuttal to a point of discussion
Suggestion for work revision
Evaluation of job performance
Figure 1. Basic Feedback: A Response to Input
Imagine a game of Ping-Pong: the serve is not feedback, but the return most certainly is, and each subsequent return as well. (The volley ends when a player is unable to provide adequate feedback.) We can apply this analogy to Figure 1: the employee “serves” input to the manager, and the manager “returns” feedback.
Feedback is how we gauge the world’s response to our words and actions. When operating in a new environment, people rely on feedback to learn what works and what doesn’t—“How do they do things around here?”—and so most will actively seek out feedback. The same is true when it comes to dealing with a person or a team for the first time.
Why Is Feedback From Managers Important?
In today’s workplace, managerial feedback is a crucial factor in the successful performance of most employees. It answers many of employees’ most important questions and helps them do the following:
Stay focused and motivated
“Does anybody know I’m here adding value? Does anybody care?”
Keep moving in the right direction
“What should I do next?”
Steadily improve performance
“What am I doing right? What do I need to improve?”
Extend the range of individual responsibility without compromising work quality
“Should I take on more responsibility, or will the quality of my job performance suffer?”
Find out, in this era of constant flux, what’s changing and what’s staying the same
“Is the strategy that worked for me yesterday going to work for me tomorrow?”
What Is FAST Feedback?
FAST Feedback is a practical method for giving employees the kind of feedback they need the most. It is based on the formula FAST, an acronym that stands for:
According to our research, these are the four elements employees most often ascribe to feedback from “the best manager [they] ever had.” These are also the four elements employees most often say they need but don’t get in the feedback from most managers. As we keep these important facts in mind, let’s take a closer look at each of the FAST elements.
Some employees need feedback more often than others—each one has a unique “feedback frequency.” Giving employees feedback at their individual rates of need is the first key behavior of the best coaching-style managers. Identifying and tuning in to each employee’s frequency is the corresponding skill of this behavior.
Every instance of feedback has an effect on the employee’s trust and performance. Giving feedback that is thoughtful, balanced, and true is the second key behavior of effective coaching-style managers. Its corresponding skill includes taking the time to reflect, question assumptions, check facts, and rehearse the feedback’s delivery.
Telling people exactly what they do right and wrong is not specific enough—you must also tell people exactly what next steps are necessary to achieve the best results. This is the third key behavior, with setting concrete goals and deadlines, and providing clear guidelines, as the corresponding skill.
The closer in time feedback follows the performance in question, the more impact the feedback will have on the employee, and the better the chances that any needed improvements will be made. Giving feedback immediately is thus the fourth key behavior of good coaching-style managers. Effective time management is its corresponding skill.
Why FAST Feedback Now More Than Ever?
The rapid change and immediacy that largely define our world today are nowhere more evident than in the new JUSTinTIME workplace. Reengineering and restructuring are constant realities as business leaders attempt continually to adapt to chaotic markets, fierce global competition, and unpredictable staffing and resource needs. Everyone is perpetually inexperienced because everything is always new—new people, new information, new products and services, new rules (no rules). In such a workplace, it’s hard to know what to expect.
— What works and what doesn’t work TODAY?
— How do they do things around here TODAY?
— What is changing and what is staying the same TODAY?
These conditions have made feedback an imperative while, at the same time, leaving traditional feedback in the dust. But FAST Feedback is right there, in sync with the JUSTinTIME workplace.
The FAST approach can keep pace with the JUSTinTIME workplace because it’s based on an understanding of what people need right now in terms of feedback: quick, quality turnaround on their input, whether that means getting a question answered, performance evaluated, or any other type of feedback delivered. The truth is, the JUSTinTIME workplace has yielded a JUSTinTIME workforce in need of JUSTinTIME coaching from managers and co-workers. And FAST Feedback can address that need. It offers managers a new and effective way to guide their workers through the difficult terrain of constant change in the new workplace and the new millennium.