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Master Your Game: Providing Effective Feedback

Written by: Jacque Small

Article Overview: Great managers understand the value of providing feedback and its impact on high performance. Feedback is any communication that gives your employees information about how you perceive them and their behaviour. This article will assist you to recognize barriers that might be preventing you from providing feedback. You will also learn guidelines for providing quality feedback to support those around you to take their performance to the next level.

Master Your Game: Providing Effective Feedback

Great managers understand the value of providing feedback and its impact on high performance. Feedback is any communication that gives your employees information about how you perceive them and their behaviour. This article will assist you to recognize barriers that might be preventing you from providing feedback. You will also learn guidelines for providing quality feedback to support those around you to take their performance to the next level.

Importance of Feedback

When you offer your opinion or provide an evaluation of someone's behaviour or performance, you are providing feedback. Feedback demonstrates that you care enough about your employees to tell them the truth and that you trust in them to accept the truth as part of self-development.
Acknowledgement in the form of feedback is a powerful form of reward. Honest, sincere and appropriate praise can prove to be as great an incentive to most employees as monetary and other rewards. Individuals welcome acknowledgement for who they are as much as for what they do. High achievers constantly seek feedback or ways to track their success. Studies have shown that individuals soon lose motivation and enthusiasm if they believe their leader does not care about their performance.


Challenges to Providing Developmental Feedback

Feedback should be built into the relationship between you and the employee. It should be an ongoing process that allows for review and continuous growth. Unfortunately, many avoid providing feedback or make the mistake of delivering it at inappropriate times in a rushed, abrupt, and negative fashion.
Reasons for not providing developmental feedback are often linked to a lack of skill and confidence. Some may have a real fear of offending people. Or some may simply believe it really does not matter. It does. I have worked with people who feel very bitter about their leaders who lacked the courage to provide them with developmental feedback. They feel like they have been cheated from the opportunity to grow and be more effective.


Guidelines for Giving Effective Feedback

Great feedback is specific and timely, and should be given shortly after the event (unless you are angry, in which case a cool down period is warranted). For a successful feedback session, consider these guidelines:
• Be clear on your intent for providing the information.
• Ensure you are not giving feedback in anger or while being judgmental.
• Prepare what you want to communicate. Choose your words, your tone and your body language.
• Deliver your message in non-emotive language with the emphasis on the behaviour rather than the person.
• Provide objective data to support your comments.
• Always communicate the impact on others or the organization.


Moving Forward: The Manager as Coach

The ability to give constructive feedback is one of the major roles of the manager as coach.
Zeus and Skiffington in "The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work"
As a leader, it is imperative that you clarify your expectations (see Master Your Game,
Issue 3, Expectations that Generate Results). If there are performance issues, you should be prepared with some solutions, but ask permission before providing your solutions. It is vital that you are there to support this person in working through their challenges. This is where your skill as a coach will be most important.

Your ability to ask powerful questions to shift the individual's perspective and behaviour is a key skill to develop. You may want to ask questions such as: What will get in your way of taking these actions? How will you deal with these blocks? What support do you need? Who could provide you with this support?

To hone your leadership skills, ask your executive coach for other great ways of providing more effective feedback.

Wishing you successful coaching,

Jacque Small

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Article Tags: high performance, performance feedback, providing feedback, quality feedback



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