Feedback: Your Employees Are Hungry For It
The end of the calendar year often coincides with the end of an organization’s fiscal year. It is a time when employees want feedback to know how their supervisor feels they have been performing and if the new year will bring with it a compensation increase.
Offering your team candid, regular and actionable feedback is vital to keeping them engaged in your organization.
For high performers, feedback can outline how they can continue to meet and exceed expectations to advance their career. For medium and low performers, respectful, open feedback from a caring supervisor can help them pinpoint key changes they can make to deliver stronger results in the coming year.
In this three-part series, we will discuss the three types of feedback;
This feedback series will not cover annual compensation increases because although I encourage competitive pay, a healthy benefit package, and bonuses for exceeding agreed upon goals, I believe compensation discussions should happen separately from annual performance reviews so that the entire focus of the performance discussion is – on performance.
When delivering helpful employee feedback, the most important tip I can communicate is an employee will better hear your feedback, if he believes you care about him as a person. When you demonstrate you care about his role in helping the organization succeed, his career growth, his ability to receive increasing responsibility and your desire to create a meaningful career for him, then you’ve done your part to establish a receptive path for candid, valuable feedback to take place. You can only do your part and own your role.
Some individuals are just more sensitive to feedback and unfortunately, all they hear is criticism. But don’t let this trait cause you to soft-pedal constructive feedback because you will do the employee, yourself and your organization a disservice.
If you do not already have an annual performance review system in place, you may want to put off starting such a robust feedback system until the timing is right. Start by doing some research, evaluate forms, methods and how some of the best firms to work for deliver annual reviews to their team. A hastily thrown together annual performance review system can do more damage than good. In the meantime, begin by regularly offering “On The Spot” Feedback and consider these five aspects of effective on the spot feedback.
5 Aspects of Effective “On The Spot” Employee Feedback
1. Feedback Should Be Timely
Offering feedback promptly after an action takes place cements the good behavior and leaves an indelible impression in the person’s memory. Offering a compliment on how a teammate handled a situation can really lift her spirits and encourage repeat behavior.
2. Feedback Can Come From Anyone
If an organization has created a safe culture where employees look out for one another and work as a team, then feedback can come from any level; a supervisor, a peer or a subordinate. A compliment is pretty straightforward because everyone enjoys hearing them. Constructive feedback is often best delivered in private with a conversation prelude like, “May I share my thoughts with you on that client meeting and why Joe might have seemed upset? I hope I’m not being too forward. I really enjoy being on your team, and I hope we both feel comfortable sharing ideas to strengthen our efforts.”
3. Not All Feedback Is Positive
Yes, we all like hearing how expertly we handled a problem situation, and yet constructive feedback is an incredible gift you can offer a teammate. When you see something that could use improvement, ask yourself, “Is this a learning moment that could benefit my peer?” If so, carefully dive in. You might also ask the person how they like to get feedback delivered so it is most valuable.
4. Offer Feedback Respectfully and Don’t Nit Pick
No one likes a know-it-all. There are only so many constructive comments you can hear in a day or week. Understand which items are too nit-picky and may deal more with preferred handling methods. In other words, how your peer handles a situation may be different but can work just as well. Individuals change their behavior most permanently if offered only one or two actions at a time to change. Ask yourself, is this the most constructive feedback that I can offer this teammate to help him succeed?
5. Offer a Concrete Example of How to Change
One of my favorite times to offer feedback is in a car ride back from a meeting. I start the conversation with how effectively I felt the meeting accomplished our goals and speak about what went well and what could have gone better. I typically also share how I rate my performance and what I could have done better. In being open about giving and receiving feedback, I can help create an organizational culture of 360-degree feedback for mutual benefit. The more specific your feedback on what appeared to go well or not, why, and what behaviors you feel could have been stronger, the more actionable the feedback.
To summarize my suggestions for good feedback into two sentences; be honest, timely and compassionate. When delivering feedback, differentiate between your feelings about the person and your feelings about the performance.
