Providing feedback is something you do constantly as a leader, not just in formal situations such as appraisals and job-chats, although they too are important. Every day, as you interact with your employees, you offer feedback; sometimes, this can be job-related or, on other occasions, it may relate to aspects of the individual’s behavior and performance.
Given that feedback is so integral to the leadership role, all leaders need to understand not only how best to deliver it, but some basic elements of psychology that lie behind how people cope and react to feedback.
Self-awareness and sharing
Many people lack self-awareness, so they have a limited view of their personal strengths and shortcomings; aspects of how they behave may cause difficulties for others, but they genuinely are unaware of this.
Equally, most people are private to some degree and it takes time and trust before they are willing to divulge certain information to another person. It is only though developing bonds of trust with others that our willingness to open up about ourselves, and to listen to other people’s opinions of us, increases.
This is vitally important for all leaders to understand. Feedback, if it is to have any value or to achieve any tangible outcomes, is dependent upon some depth of relationship existing between the giver and the receiver.
Therefore, you cannot consider feedback in isolation from the wider relationships you have with your team-members. The better those bonds are, the greater the results you will achieve through giving feedback.
Delivering feedback
Even when feedback is delivered informally, there are still some general principles to adhere to because badly-delivered feedback results in no performance improvement and can damage the relationship, sometimes irreparably. So, even for ad hoc, informal feedback, keep the following points in mind:
- Time and place are critical when delivering individual feedback should never be given in front of others.
- The object of any feedback is to create awareness in the individual so they can work towards improvement in the given area.
- The context (tone and body language) for delivering feedback is as important as the content (words) in terms of getting the employee to accept it.
- Feedback always must focus on performance, not personality, and must be directed at behaviours that potentially can be changed.
- Feedback must be based on evidence, not opinion; so, when giving feedback, you must have practical examples to support it.
- Hitting someone with a ‘dose of feedback’ infrequently is likely to have little impact; it should be ongoing and address issues while they are fresh.
- The aim of feedback is to help an individual to raise their performance, or change their behaviour in some way; it should always be presented in a constructive manner.
- The goal of feedback is not to tell the person the problem and the solution but rather to help them to identify their own areas for improvement and contribute to finding a solution; thus, question technique and listening skills are vital when giving feedback.
- There is no point in only focusing on positives; improvement comes from translating areas of underperformance into strengths, so negatives have to be addressed but in a helpful way.
- However, if employees only ever hear negative feedback, then they close their minds to it entirely and simply go through the motions.
- Feedback should always end on a positive note.
These basic principles are applicable in some way to all feedback activities and require you to have high levels of assertiveness, great communication skills and the ability to empathies with others.
Structuring feedback throughout the year
Employee feedback should be seen as a year-long activity combining formal and informal components, as shown:
Although these are only suggested timelines, you can see that feedback for employees has a number of elements:
- Ongoing feedback throughout the year.
- Semi-formal job-chat at the end of the first quarter.
- The formal appraisal mid-year.
- The pay review just prior to preparing the budget for the next year.
Adhering to this approach means that an employee has ample opportunities to get formal feedback on their performance. For you as leader, you can give feedback at the job-chat, then measure progress at the formal appraisal and give additional feedback, then determine how well the employee has progressed at the pay-review, which influences their pay-scale for the next year.
This cycle of linked feedback is far more effective than ad hoc or one-off approaches and is not overly time consuming as the job chats, annual appraisal and pay review should amount to no more than two hours per employee per year. In a large team, your assistants should be conducting some of these meetings, so logistically it is not onerous.
