The Do's and Don'ts of Giving Feedback

Being able to give effective feedback is not just a good skill to possess in business, it is a great life skill to have. Because when you are masterful at giving feedback, not only can you help your employees to sustain continuously improving performance, you can also improve the performance of the baseball team you coach, the cleaning lady at home, or the performance of your own children on completing their chores. Any person's performance in any activity can be positively impacted by effective feedback. Isn't that a powerful skill to have? Wouldn't you want to be a master at giving really useful and impactful feedback?

The good news is that it is not difficult to be good at giving feedback. It does take some effort and practice. But it is definitely a skill that can be learned. So, to get you started, here are the Do's and Don'ts of giving feedback.

Let's start with the Do's:

Be Timely: in order for feedback to be effective, you need to act quickly. If months have gone by before you bring up an incident, the person receiving the feedback will interpret your delay to imply that it couldn't have been that important, and the effect of the feedback is greatly diminished.

Be Specific: talk about your feedback in very direct and specific terms ("I noticed there were several calculation errors in last month's report"). If you are vague ("your work is unacceptable"), how can you get the message across? Focus on the action and the results. Be very factual in your discussion.

Be Open and Offer Suggestions: if the objective of your feedback discussion is to produce an improvement of performance, then come equipped with suggestions (again be specific) on what the person can do to affect that change. Be open to their perspective and be willing to discuss how they see that situation. Enroll them in coming up with a solution that they can buy into. If you don't get buy-in, change will be happen.

Create the right environment: feedback is best done in person, and in a private setting. In a business setting, arrange a time and place for your discussion. Don't just catch people on the fly and throw a few comments their way as they are heading down the hallway and expect your comments to have any impact.

Check for understanding and buy-in: if the feedback discussion is about a performance issue, make sure you check-in on how your comments have landed with the person. Establish some sort of accountability to verify their buy-in. For example, if you have an employee who constantly misses deadlines. During the discussion, ask for a commitment that he will meet all deadlines for the next quarter. Make sure that the commitment is specific, and not something vague like: "I'll do a better job of meeting deadlines next quarter."

And now for the Don'ts:

Don't Make it personal: there is a difference between giving feedback and criticizing. Do not make it personal. Don't interpret actions (showing up late) and pass judgment on the person (he is slacker and isn't truly dedicated to this job). Criticism destroys relationships. If your employee feels like he is being attacked, he is not going to be very open to hear what you have to say, he will immediately become defensive, and your job becomes much harder. Focus the discussion on the action, not the person. Make your employee feel that he is being supported, even if his performance is not up to standard.

Don't Only give feedback when there's a problem: if you're their leader, people need to know where they stand with you. If you have a great employee who always exceeds your expectations, take the time to give him just as much feedback as your biggest challenge. As a matter of fact, make it a point to give more positive feedback comments than "constructive" ones with every person. You'll be amazed at how much more motivated your employees will become with consistent positive reinforcement.

Don't Address multiple issues in one discussion: your employee will go into overload and you will lose the impact of the discussion. If there are multiple issues, have different discussions and just concentrate on addressing them one at a time.

So there you have it, a short list of Do's and Don'ts you can apply to whatever feedback you need to give. Remember, most people, even your rebellious teenager, want to do a good job and to please. They do need some clues as to how they are doing and what they need to change. So master the art of feedback and you can really help each other.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Do you need some structure and accountability to propel you forward? Personal Coach Inez Ng has worked with professionals and entrepreneurs to transform their aspirations into reality. While focusing on specific areas, her coaching positively impacts all areas of her clients' lives. Learn more about coaching with Inez at http://www.RealizationsUnltd.com

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send me a copy of your reprint at mailto:Inez@RealizationsUnltd.com

More resources:

RELATED ARTICLES

Document management : A dream of paperless office
What is document management: When we think about "Document Management" we usually see a picture of paperless office. It is not an easy task to make an office paperless due to several existing problems based on Industrial needs.

Its All In The Systems
Have you ever noticed french fries taste the same at every McDonald's? The same can be said for Subway and its Italian BMT. How do these fast food icons replicate themselves at nearly 40,000 locations when some eateries struggle to get it right in a single restaurant? The answer is simple: it's all in the systems.

Organizational Techniques - Tickler and Chron File
One of the biggest problems we encounter in our consulting with businesses, and our students is time management and organizational techniques. This article will concentrate on some good organizational strategies.

How to Meet Quality Standards with ISO 9001
In today's hectic business environment, it is vital that we are all on the same page, right? But how do we know if we meet those standards? Business owners and executives can avoid the uncertainty, and that's where ISO 9001 certification comes in.Standardizing Quality SystemsThe ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, was established in 1947 to develop international standards for everything from electronics to management systems.

Before You Head Off, Make Sure You Know Where You Are Going - The Importance of Clear Objectives.
The title of this article sounds like simple advice, but so often we undertake activities and projects without really understanding how they are going to help us to achieve our aims. I have outlined below some of the causes of this cavalier (and costly) approach to business improvement along with how we might approach things differently.

How to get an Audiences Attention
A trainer dryly discussing how to motivate people in an organization basically has just another "point-by-point" presentation. But suppose that he mounts the podium and begins to speak.

Implementation the Catalyst of Change for Management to Reach that Next Level of Success
From the personal and professional experiences of other colleagues and myself, one of the more critical success factors for management is implementation. Through my observations, I have discovered that people and organization spend a great deal of resources including time, dollars and the cumulative total of the energy generated from these efforts to create business or strategic plans.

Effective Meetings Begin With a Real Agenda
Everyone knows that an agenda is the key to an effective meeting. But an agenda that consists of a list of nouns, such as budget, software, and picnic, is useless.

Appraisal Systems - Not Living Up to Their Objectives
Almost, if not all organisations have them, they've been around for a very long time and some organisations swear by them, however on the whole the average appraisal system fails to live up to the expectations of the organisation and often they can cause more trouble than they are worth."So, minister, here we are at the end of your government and the record doesn't look to good, crime is up, hospital care down, the economy still shaky and poor public services.

Enable Continuous Improvement of IT Services through ITIL
One of the major benefits, if not THE benefit of process orientated approaches to managing your IT services and infrastructure is that it enables continuous improvement.This means that you are never totally satisfied with the current state of affairs and that you always want to improve your services.

Don't Get Down - Manage Up!
"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." - Aldous HuxleyEver have one of those supervisors that just didn't quite get it?Perhaps you even wondered from time to time how in the world this person ever became a manager in the first place?The truth is that most of us, at some point in our career, will experience this firsthand.

Setting Direction Within an Organization
FINDING DIRECTION: An organization can't succeed without direction. Direction means having clear goals and guidelines; set goals and guidelines for staff to follow.

Organisational Culture for Continuous Improvement
I have been working with leading Business Improvement guru, Tim Franklin, preparing the PR for his latest book which offers an introduction to Continuous Improvement (CI) at beginner level, encompassing Lean, TQM, Six Sigma and the other related methodologies of CI.He was developing an analogy of a geographic expedition to describe Continuous Improvement.

Magnificent Meetings - 5 Tips for Success
Your impact at meetings will determine in a big way how well you do in your career. In other words you will rise as high as your communication skills will let you.

The Professor Makes A Minus Power Move
If you think the power move has costs, consider the alternative. We are talking -- four friends -- bringing one another up to date on our personal and professional lives.

Bullying and the Not for Profit Organisation
Where there is people there is politics! Bullying is now a major workplace issue that has invaded our not for profit organisations. Take the following example.

Communicating In Chaotic Environments
How do you, or would you, communicate in a chaotic environment?That question was put to me by a reader who works in big, frantically-paced telecommunications company. Many projects operate at the same time, and many connections exist among the project teams.

Behavioral Interview Questions You Can Use Monday Morning
If past behavior is the best way to determine future behavior then behavioral interviewing is a requirement for anyone serious about hiring top talent. This skill isn't something that should be taken lightly, but everyone's got to start somewhere.

Innovation Management - Innovation or Profit?
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.

The Boss Didn't Understand Why His Staff Wasn't Reading His Mind
Many people believe that everyone sees the world exactly the same way as they do. This is never true and was the source of much turmoil in Dr.