On the job FEEDBACK is about FEEDING

On the job FEEDBACK is about FEEDING

What would you feed a child with? Healthy, nutritious food, designed for growth and development, or food that stunts the child’s progress?

In the same way you can analyze your feedback. What are you feeding your colleagues, and staff with? Do your words enable others to grow, develop and achieve more, or do your words have some other impact?

In the operational hustle and bustle, we all find ourselves in, we may forget about feedback.

When we do remember to give feedback, it is usually to vent our frustration and anger “But I told you so many times. You just never understand.”  Yet words such as these cause damage. The recipient seldom learns the right way of doing things. Moreover passion, initiative and commitment for doing the job usually dwindle after such feedback.

Nutritious feedback

1. Some psychologists believe that when new behaviours, are expected of staff, giving praise for even the slightest improvement, has more long-term impact than criticizing shortcomings. So powerful feedback, can be positive feedback.
2. What happens when things go wrong and you are angry? How do you give feedback, then. The same rules apply to preparing food and to giving feedback. When angry avoid the kitchen until you feel calm enough to prepare the best meal. Otherwise you will spill the milk and burn the meat.
3. Never in the presence of others. In private the recipient will be more open, more likely to absorb what you have to say, rather than resorting to defensive tactics.
4. Be specific and not general.  Transform generalized statements like “You do not care about anything” to specifics such as “This is the second time the report was not delivered on time.” The recipient then can understand what the exact problem is.
5. Preserve the self-esteem of the recipient.  People with higher self-esteem are more likely to work at improving what they do. If the recipient’s self esteem is knocked down, he/she is less likely to have the confidence to sort out problems and create the desired improvement. So avoid accusing statements like “You are stubborn.” Substitute with a question, “What other methods can we use.”
6.  Point out or discuss consequences. “When you do not deliver your reports on time, we cannot make the right purchasing decisions.”  Or let the other person acquire a deeper understanding of the problem by thinking about it. Ask questions like, “What do you think happens when your reports are not delivered by the deadline?”
7.  Agree on how to avoid repetitions of the problem. Using open questions let the recipient come up with feasible ways of improving performance. “What can you do, to ensure punctuality?

Using these guidelines you can give high value feedback to your colleagues and staff that will truly enable them to grow and develop. If you would like to give me any feedback on the above methods please e-mail on aleen@peopleachieve.com

Aleen Andreou
Programme Director