Feedback is an essential component of any organisation's growth and development.
However, it is often one of the most challenging practices to execute effectively.
Companies that prioritise giving and receiving feedback regularly outperform those that don't. But why can it be so difficult for us to engage in this practice?
Why should you give feedback frequently?
If you are a manager, denying feedback to a team member equates to denying them a chance to improve. It also robs you, as a leader, of the enhanced performance this individual could deliver through effective coaching. Thus, the consequence of not providing feedback is on the person and the organisation.
Often, organisational stagnation is a direct result of the silence among team members who should, instead, voice their perspectives.
This brings us to the 'Abilene Paradox' concept, coined by management expert Jerry Harvey. It refers to a group situation where all members collectively agree to a course of action, even though none individually support it. It's essentially a "failure to manage agreement."
Being a fair manager means engaging in straightforward dialogue with your team. Fear of instigating an argument or hurting someone's feelings often obstructs expressing sincere sentiments. But being a manager requires the bravery to maintain open, honest communication.
Here are some key takeaways:
- Feedback should be direct yet constructive and supportive.
- As leaders, our role is that of a coach - our success is linked to our team's growth and achievements.
- Providing feedback isn't about stating things we're unhappy with; it's about guiding team members towards success and fostering their learning.
How can we mitigate the anxiety associated with giving and receiving feedback?
Consider your organisation: Have there been instances where the absence of candid feedback adversely affected a team member? Have you been a victim of this kind of communication failure, missing crucial feedback from a manager?
Often, managers and team members develop a culture of harmonious coexistence, maintaining silence and avoiding conflicts. Yes, they may survive. But does this environment encourage learning, continuous personal improvement, or the development of others' skills and contributions?
The absence of straightforward communication or reluctance to express our genuine opinions about others' performances leads to groupthink. This can stifle an individual's growth potential and undermines the necessity of giving and receiving feedback for effective team functioning.
Frequent causes of poor performance among team members include a lack of honest feedback or 'straight talk'. So why do we suppress our thoughts and avoid sharing them with the team?
We may justify our silence with thoughts such as:
- “If I'm the only one with these feelings, then the issue must lie with me.”
- “Raising this subject will trigger an argument I want to avoid.”
- “Being honest about my feelings might hurt them and exacerbate the situation.”
Here are a few guiding thoughts:
- Is the feedback meant to be genuinely helpful to the individual or group?
- Can it be expressed to encourage positive action rather than mere criticism?
- Can the feedback be delivered in a manner that respects the individual's dignity, focusing on specific behaviours instead of personal traits?
If your responses to these queries are 'yes', it's likely time to share your feedback with the individual or group.
Google's extensive research on factors contributing to exceptional teams and managers has revealed some key findings about effective feedback. They discovered that the primary characteristic of effective managers is their ability to coach. Good coaching, according to Google, includes:
- Providing timely and specific feedback.
- Delivering tough feedback in an inspiring and considerate manner.
- Adapting communication styles to meet individual needs during regular one-on-one meetings.
- Practising empathetic "active" listening and being fully present.
- Being aware of your mindset and that of the employee.
- Asking open-ended questions to explore an employee's understanding.
Managers wield a powerful tool in their words; they can 'construct' or 'destruct' with them. Google recognizes this delicate balance and instructs its leaders to maintain consistency when delivering feedback across their teams, ensuring an absence of bias. They are taught to balance positive (motivational) and negative (developmental) feedback, to stay authentic and appreciative, and to clearly and compassionately communicate areas for improvement.
To sum it up, fostering an environment of continuous improvement requires a lean approach to giving and receiving feedback. This lean methodology eliminates 'waste', such as the negative impact of withheld or poorly delivered feedback, and adds value, promoting personal and organizational growth.
With courage, empathy, and a focus on development, managers can facilitate a feedback culture that drives improvement and leads the entire team towards success.
Cultivating Values That Foster Effective Feedback
The efficacy of our feedback hinges significantly on our thought processes, values, and beliefs about others. Here are six essential values that enhance a leader's ability to offer honest feedback:
1. Integrity
Integrity is the bedrock of trust between a manager and their team. Trusting you as a leader makes me more receptive to your feedback; conversely, a lack of trust could lead me to dismiss your advice. Naturally, integrity isn't built overnight but is the outcome of consistent actions and fair treatment of others.
2. Compassion
Google's study of high-performing teams and managers highlighted genuine concern for employees' personal lives and well-being in creating a safe team environment. If your team is convinced you genuinely care about their growth and development, they will be more receptive to your feedback.
3. Empathy
Closely linked to compassion, empathy is the ability to understand and share others' feelings. Empathising with your team members' concerns goes a long way when providing feedback. Employees grappling with personal issues outside the workplace might experience a dip in performance. By listening and empathising, you can build a trust that will help your team member absorb your feedback more effectively.
4. Humility
Contrary to the portrayals of boastful, arrogant managers on television, research like Jim Collins's "Good to Great," suggests that the best leaders are humble. They acknowledge their team's contribution to success and understand their role as just one part of the larger picture. Arrogance impedes learning, while humility smoothens the path to improvement and learning.
For instance, instead of asserting, "Here's what you need to do," which can come off as arrogant and unappealing, try a more humble approach: "Here's what I'm observing (of course, you might see it differently), and here's what I believe it implies, and what you could potentially do differently."
5. Empiricism
Empiricism is the practice of learning systematically from your surroundings, much like the scientific method. Effective managers believe in data. Factual, data-based feedback outperforms opinion-based feedback about someone's performance.
6. Excellence and Continuous Improvement
Excellence isn't a tangible entity or a destination. It embodies the relentless pursuit of higher levels of achievement, a lifelong commitment to improvement, and a constant quest for new challenges. The opposite of complacency, excellence is a form of creative dissatisfaction - discontentment with the status quo coupled with the desire to reach higher levels of achievement.
By embodying these values, leaders can bolster their feedback delivery, thereby fostering a culture of transparency and continuous improvement. You can transform feedback into a constructive tool for individual and organisational growth with integrity, compassion, empathy, humility, empiricism, and a commitment to excellence.
Principles for Effective Feedback
Much research has been conducted on behaviour change and the impact of feedback. Summarising this research, the following principles can enhance feedback effectiveness:
1. Immediacy
The longer the gap between an action and its subsequent feedback, the less impactful the feedback will be. A common pitfall for managers is "hoarding" feedback for an annual/quarterly review or another formal event. This strategy reduces the potential for improvement and elevates the stress associated with such events.
2. Frequency
Immediacy and frequency often go hand in hand. If you provide immediate feedback, you're more likely to do so frequently. Regular feedback is critical as it reduces the stress of each feedback session. If you provide feedback sporadically, you're probably mainly delivering negative feedback. Embrace the four-to-one principle and ensure you provide regular and positive feedback.
3. Highlight Positive Behavior
When offering feedback to alter behaviour, it's crucial to detail the positive and alternative behaviour. Each negative behaviour needs to be substituted with a different behaviour. Don't assume your employee will infer this; it should be a discussion between you and the feedback recipient.
4. Own Your Feedback
Avoid giving feedback based on the observations or feelings of others, as it lacks credibility. Provide feedback based on your observations and feelings. Take responsibility for your insights.
5. Empathetic Listening
As mentioned earlier, listening well and expressing empathy for the other person's situation and feelings will enable them to be more receptive to your feedback.
6. Praise Publicly, Correct Privately
Avoid criticizing or making negative remarks about an employee in front of others. This approach is humiliating and can trigger a significantly negative emotional reaction. The individual will likely respond with anger and denial rather than seriously considering ways to improve.
By adhering to these principles, leaders can ensure that their feedback becomes a powerful tool for facilitating personal and organizational growth.
Cultivating the Correct Mindset
Managers often enter feedback discussions burdened with their own emotions, which can inadvertently create a challenging situation. It's essential to avoid giving feedback when you're upset. Doing so can trigger the recipient's "emotional brain," overpowering their "thinking brain." Your role is to assist your employees in learning and growing. Expressing your emotions in a charged manner may cause the recipient to shut down their "thinking brain," making them unable to process your feedback constructively.
Before you initiate a feedback session, ask yourself the following:
- Is the feedback I intend to give genuinely meant to assist the other person or group?
- Can I express it in a manner that encourages positive action rather than merely venting anger?
- Can I deliver the feedback in a way that doesn't demean the person but instead focuses on specific behaviours?
The Spectrum of Engagement
How you converse with an employee or team member can significantly influence their likelihood of taking meaningful action. In a more traditional "old-school" management style, the manager assumes the role of an expert while treating the employee as less knowledgeable. The manager might feel it's their responsibility to instruct or command the employee.
However, most modern workplaces don't favour or find this traditional management style effective. If our role as managers is to foster learning and growth in our employees, we need to engage them in dialogues acknowledging their maturity and good intentions. We want to foster discussions that facilitate engagement.
When employees are involved in problem-solving and decision-making, they're more likely to embrace behaviour change rather than being passively told what to do. While it may seem quicker and easier to "tell" an employee what to do, this approach usually only results in short-term changes. On the other hand, when an employee is actively involved in thinking, discovering, and deciding, they're more likely to engage in lasting change.
Guidelines for Providing Feedback
To give productive feedback to an individual or a team, consider the following guidelines:
- Ensure you intend to be helpful to the other person or team.
- Think it through. Be clear on what you want to express. If you're uncertain about your feelings or reasons, it's okay to communicate this ambiguity.
- Emphasise the positive. Show them that your feedback comes from a place of care and a desire to help them improve.
- Be specific. Refrain from general remarks or exaggerations, such as "You always..." Such comments can make the other person defensive. Be precise about when and what the person or group did.
- Focus on pinpointed behaviour rather than the person. While you value the individual, their specific behaviour may be the issue, and this is something they can change.
- Own the feedback. Use 'I' statements to convey that these are your feelings and experiences, which may not be universal.
- Your tone and the emotions you display matter. Be direct, but also be kind and helpful. Ensure your sincerity comes across.
A Model for Providing Feedback
A simple model can guide you in delivering feedback to a person or a group:
- Ask for permission: "I would like to share an observation, if you don't mind."
- Describe the circumstance: "When..."
- Discuss the specific behaviour: "What happens is..."
- Express how it affects you: "It makes me feel..."
- Ask for their perspective: "How do you see this situation?"
- Offer a suggestion: While it's best not to insist that you know the right course of action, providing a possible suggestion can be helpful.
- Brainstorm alternative actions: Ask them what they believe could be a change from the current situation.
- Obtain commitment to action: Use an action planning form for this purpose.
- Agree on a follow-up: Decide a suitable time to discuss how things are progressing.
For instance, "If you don't mind, I would like to share my concern. (Permission) When we get onto a topic that everyone is interested in (When), we lose track of time, and our meetings run over by ten or fifteen minutes. (What happens?) I have children that I need to pick up after our meetings, making me anxious about being late. (How it makes me feel) Could we have a timekeeper give us a ten-minute warning, then a five-minute warning, before our meetings are supposed to end?" (Suggestion)...
Setting Goals and Planning Actions
To ensure feedback leads to effective behaviour changes, it's crucial to establish action steps and goals with your employees. All feedback intended to bring about changes should culminate in an agreed-upon course of action.
A common formula for setting goals is the SMART Goals framework:
- Specific: What exactly is the goal? It should be clear, concise, and detailed.
- Measurable: How will you know when the goal has been achieved? This typically involves quantifiable criteria or observable evidence.
- Achievable: Is this goal realistic, given the effort, resources, and commitment it requires? If the necessary resources are not readily available, how will they be acquired?
- Relevant: How does this goal align with broader objectives or values? Why is it important?
- Timely: When is the target date for achieving this goal? This should be a specific timeframe, deadline, or frequency.
An Action Planning form can be a valuable tool for setting these goals. Such a form can help to document individual agreements or team commitments, providing a basis for subsequent follow-ups and accountability checks. You can design a pre-existing Action Planning form that aligns with your organisation's needs.
Continuous Improvement and the Scientific Method
Lean management, such as the Toyota Production System, is underpinned by two fundamental ideas:
- Respect for People
- Continuous Improvement (Kaizen).
These ideas are based on the belief that people inherently have good intentions and will strive for improvement when provided with the opportunity and necessary information.
In lean organizations, everyone is a team member, and all teams are involved in continuous improvement. Teams examine their productivity and quality data and participate in daily huddles where they use the well-known Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle to solve problems - this is the essence of Kaizen.
When giving feedback to an employee or a team, this model should be at the forefront of your thoughts. Your role isn't to instantly magically transform an employee from their current state to an ideal state. Instead, your goal is to encourage them towards continuous improvement. This includes identifying short-term targets, planning actions, and evaluating the outcomes of those actions. Feedback should be given immediately and regularly rather than reserved for an annual or quarterly review. This Kaizen approach to individual improvement tends to be far more effective.
Shaping Behavior
Shaping behaviour is a concept from behavioural psychology that aligns closely with continuous improvement. It acknowledges that skills are a complex set of behaviours learned gradually and chained together to form a fluid sequence of actions. Small improvements must be expected and reinforced over time, leading to the development of more complex and challenging skills.
- Skills are developed by gradually refining precise behaviours and chaining these behaviours together to create a fluid sequence.
- Shaping involves reinforcing gradual improvements towards a desired final behaviour.
- A coach's job is to recognise the current performance state and assist the individual in moving towards the desired end state.
- The coach provides reinforcement (encouragement) for continued effort throughout the skill development.
Guidelines for Receiving Feedback
Everyone can benefit from feedback, provided they listen attentively and strive to understand it in a way that promotes personal growth and development.
Just as it's important to regularly give feedback, it's also important to receive feedback well.
Here are some guidelines for receiving feedback effectively:
- Understand that the person providing feedback is trying to help you. Consider the feedback as a gift from someone who wants you to succeed.
- Listen for actionable feedback. Ask yourself, "What can I do differently based on this feedback?" Focus on the feedback rather than the person giving it or your feelings towards that person.
- Request clarification. Ask when or under what circumstances you exhibit certain behaviours. Seek examples to understand the situation or behaviour better. Ask the other person about possible alternatives in such situations. Aim to understand.
- Engage in problem-solving. Collaboratively think about the problem.
- Summarise what you've heard to the person giving you feedback on your understanding of what they've communicated.
- Accept responsibility for your actions and show a willingness to change.
- Understand that this feedback is not an evaluation of your character but how others perceive your actions.
In conclusion, giving and receiving feedback is essential to personal and professional growth. It's more than just a communicative process - it's a tool that, when used correctly, can foster understanding, enhance performance, and build stronger relationships. We must adopt the right mindset, be respectful, and use empathy to instil this process effectively. Using the strategies and techniques outlined in this blog post, managers and employees can learn how to give and receive feedback constructively, paving the way for a more productive, engaged, and harmonious workplace.
Remember, feedback is not about criticism or praise; it's about growth, improvement, and moving forward.
