.
Giving Eff ective
Feedback
Giving your employees feedback is critical to helping them succeed in their
jobs. Positive feedback reinforces good work. Praise and coaching advice
can create genuine bonds between you and your employees. Those mo-
ments when you tell your direct report, “You’ve done a great job! Congratu-
lations,” are powerful connections that build trust and respect for you as
a leader.
Corrective feedback urges the recipient to change course or adjust prac-
tices that aren’t working. Managers—even experienced supervisors—often
dread these conversations. Nobody likes having to tell a direct report that
their work is subpar, or that they need to adjust their attitude. But when
handled well, these conversations produce real change in your employees’
behaviors, skills, and outcomes. These interactions create value for yourself
(a more productive team), for your organization (better outcomes), and for
the employee (pride in their resilience and growth).
156Managing Individuals
Whether you are preparing to give a performance review, looking for
ways to turbocharge a star’s abilities, or simply need to help a struggling
employee get back on track, this chapter helps you deliver feedback in a
way that your employee can hear, understand, and implement.
Giving feedback in real time
Your organization probably has several defi ned mechanisms for giving
feedback to employees: coaching sessions, annual reviews, performance
interventions, and so on. Each serves an important role. But feedback con-
versations aren’t just a hoop to jump through when these formal appoint-
ments roll around. Instead, they should be a continuous practice in your
everyday work.
The best time to give feedback, whether positive or constructive, is
in the moment. Sharing your real-time reaction to an employee’s perfor-
mance or behavior allows you to acknowledge what you appreciate or offer
workers the chance to turn their failures into successes right away. It can
be stressful to issue corrective feedback, so you may be tempted to hold
off until the behavior occurs again. Don’t! Whether you’re praising your
employees or admonishing them, you will communicate most effectively
about the situation when it’s fresh in your minds.
Contrast these two approaches to the same situation:
You’ve noticed that a bottleneck is occurring during a produc-
tion phase overseen by your direct report Gerhard, who normally
prides himself on his effi ciency.
Approach 1: Gerhard’s been kind of touchy lately, and you’re wary
of what he’ll say if you point out that he’s holding up the rest of the
team. Plus, you fi gure Gerhard usually knows what he’s doing—he
must have a plan, right? You decide it makes the most sense to wait
a few days to see if the problem gets worse before you talk to him
about it. The next week, two other employees, Britta and Daniela,
request a meeting. They explain that because Gerhard missed a key
deadline, the entire production schedule is in jeopardy. And the
Giving Eff ective Feedback157
problem may be too late to fi x—you may need to ship the product
to your client later than promised. Once Britta and Daniela leave,
you know you need to talk to Gerhard. This conversation will be
much harder than the one you would have had a few days ago.
Approach 2: After chatting with Gerhard’s teammates Britta and
Daniela to understand more fully what is going on, you approach
Gerhard. You acknowledge the quality of his prior work and ask
what he thinks is happening now. As he describes the issue, you
discover that he has mistakenly understood that a new step in
the production process requires more recordkeeping than it really
does. You clarify the requirements, and Gerhard is delighted to stop
doing work that had been both time consuming and frustrating.
Within a day, the production schedule is back on track.
In the fi rst scenario, delaying your feedback caused you to miss a key
piece of information and put an important revenue stream in jeopardy.
Your choice to avoid providing real-time feedback did both the business
and Gerhard a disservice. Gerhard will still feel badly about his perfor-
mance, and you still need to have a tough (now tougher) conversation with
him. In the second scenario, your conversation with Gerhard quickly leads
to a valuable change. By intervening early, you get tangible results and also
help Gerhard to feel good about his work again. Real-time feedback also
positions you to check in later for progress.
By making praise and constructive criticism a routine part of your
managerial approach, you create countless new opportunities to track im-
provements, make adjustments, share resources, and offer support. Here
are some scripts to try:
• “This work is excellent. Here’s what I like about what you’ve
done . . .”
• “I think you can do even better. Here’s what I’m thinking of spe-
cifi cally . . .”
• “Can you help me understand your thought process here?”
• “Can I offer you another way of thinking about this?”
158Managing Individuals
Giving diffi cult feedback
One of the reasons that we avoid giving corrective feedback in the moment
is that it can be unpleasant to deliver criticism. Many managers worry
that:
• Criticism will set off a heightened emotional reaction, like anger
or crying, or the person will shut down and fail to engage in the
conversation.
• The problem they need to address touches too closely on the em-
ployee’s identity and will challenge this person’s sense of self as a
competent professional.
• They may have to tell an employee that their paycheck or job secu-
rity is at stake.
To mitigate these factors, follow these steps:
Step 1: Understand the situation objectively
INSEAD professor Jean-François Manzoni suggests you begin by examin-
ing why you need to give feedback in the fi rst place. Too often, he says, we
draw strong conclusions about a situation without entertaining alterna-
tives. For example, if we suspect that one person’s diffi cult personality is
causing a team confl ict, we rarely look into secondary theories, such as
whether the employees in question have clashing work styles.
We also tend to see the stakes of our feedback in win-lose terms. Be-
cause we have a hardened preconception of what the source of the problem
is, we think we know the only solution. And if a feedback interaction ends
without the employee accepting that solution, it must be a failure.
Once you’re aware of these biases, you can correct for them. Start by
analyzing what you actually know about the situation:
• What have you observed fi rsthand? What biases might be coloring
your memory?
• What have other people told you? What are their biases?
Giving Eff ective Feedback159
• What other cues are you interpreting—tone, body language, a
sequence of events? How much weight should you give these
interpretations?
• What don’t you know? What didn’t you witness? Whose perspec-
tive haven’t you heard?
• What are other possible explanations for the employee’s actions
and behaviors?
In general, the fewer conclusions you draw from these facts, the better.
Instead, identify questions you want to ask your employee.
Step 2: Plan the conversation
Write down your key points before you go into the meeting—questions
raised in step 1, or any other information you want to convey, like the
behavior that needs to change or the goal of the change. That way you’ll
know what you want to say as you begin the conversation. These notes
can also help you reorient yourself in the middle of the meeting if you get
distracted.
Rehearse ahead of time if you can, by yourself or with a colleague.
Role-playing can help you see the situation from your direct report’s per-
spective and fi gure out what approach will work best.
Also let your employee know ahead of time what you’ll be discussing,
so they don’t feel blindsided: “I’d like to speak to you tomorrow about the
effi ciency of the production process lately.”
Step 3: Lead the meeting
When the meeting begins, it’s generally best to jump into the negative
feedback right away. Sometimes managers try to ease into an unpleasant
conversation by asking leading questions (“Are you happy with your perfor-
mance right now?”), but if your employee doesn’t know how to play along,
or chooses not to, you’ll both feel frustrated. Another common tactic to
diffuse the awkwardness is the feedback sandwich: open with praise, move
to criticism, close with praise. But if you don’t have any genuine accolades
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.