Here are seven practical steps for making feedback easier:
1. Schedule Regular Feedback Meetings.
2. Positive First, Negative Second.
3. Future Focus
4. Depersonalize
5. Questions, not Statements
6. Receive Feedback Positively
7. Receiver Led
1. Regular feedback meetings
Because feedback is hard to give and to receive, it is best to schedule regular feedback meetings, at least once a month between managers and individual team members.
2. Positive first
Negative feedback is easier to give and to receive if positive feedback is given first. Managers should say what they like about the employee’s performance first, stressing achievements and strengths, before going on to review less positive actions.
3. Future focus
Negative feedback is easier to accept if it focuses on the future, what the employee could do next time to be more effective. This is more constructive than focusing on the past, how the employee failed. Further, it can be framed in terms of the employee’s desire for development and future career success, as an opportunity rather than as a setback. Effective feedback conveys the message that the employee is doing relatively well but could be so much more successful with a little fine-tuning.
4. Depersonalize
Feedback on practical improvement steps is easier to accept than a comment on personality traits and helps to take the emotion out of the discussion. There is nothing gained by dumping on the employee, complaining about how much grief the employee’s actions have caused the manager. Placing blame is a lose-lose tactic.
5. Questions, not statements
Wherever possible, it helps to ASK employees what they might do differently in future.
6. Receive feedback positively
To minimize the emotional temperature, it’s essential to say thank you for feedback and to stress how it will help you improve. Still, it’s OK to ask: “Can you help me understand exactly what I did so I know better how to handle such a situation next time?”
Suppose someone else was at fault. Instead of blaming that person, ask yourself and your manager what you could have done differently. Could you have warned your boss that someone else might be likely to let you down? Could you have asked for your boss’s advice earlier?
7. Receiver led
With receiver led feedback, the manager asks team members to list their achievements, everything they are pleased about, since the last meeting before asking what didn’t go so well. If the employee can’t think of anything the manager can ask a series of coaching questions such as: “How do you think X went? How could it have gone better? How could you handle that issue more effectively next time?”
Good questions, asked supportively, can draw everything out of the employee that the manager needs to address. However, it takes repeated practice over a good deal of time to achieve the required level of trust and openness to make this approach successful.
Selection and Thanks to http://www.lead2xl.com
