Giving Productive Feedback

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Giving and receiving feedback can be a delicate process. Yet it can help to identify issues and solve them. Business owners should manage feedback in a positive way, so that it can do what it’s intended to do – help improve and expand your business. Here are five tips that can get you on track to giving productive feedback:

1) Create safety: People who receive feedback apply it only about 30% of the time. If the person receiving the feedback doesn’t feel comfortable, this can cause the feedback to be ultimately unproductive. Your feedback won’t be productive if it’s focused on making the other person feel bad or making them look foolish in front of peers. Instead, create opportunities to build confidence and skills. This is especially effective when people are expecting to be graded. Confined situations in which people know they are being evaluated are good for giving feedback while learning skills.

2) Be positive: Give at least as much positive feedback as you do negative. Positive feedback stimulates the reward centres in the brain, leaving the recipient open to taking new direction. Meanwhile, negative feedback indicates that an adjustment needs to be made – the threat response turns on and defensiveness sets in. Don’t avoid negative, or corrective, feedback altogether, just be sure to follow it up with a suggested solution or outcome.

3) Be specific: People generally respond better to specific, positive direction. Avoid saying things like, “You need to be more talkative in meetings.” It’s too ambiguous and can be interpreted in a lot of personal ways. Say something specific and positive pointed at the task you want accomplished, such as, “You’re smart. I want to hear at least one opinion from you in every meeting we’re in together in the future.”

4) Be immediate: The adult brain learns best by being caught in action. If you wait three months to tell someone that his or her performance is average, he or she usually can’t grasp the changes needed in order to switch direction. The advice is far too ambiguous and relies on memory, which can be faulty. Productive feedback means giving it frequently. That way, performance reviews are just another collegial discussion.

5) Be tough, not mean: When someone drops the ball at work and you have to give feedback, start by asking his or her perspective on the situation. Resist saying how stupid his or her actions were, even if they were. Next, give the objective, specific, forward-moving type of feedback described here. Ask whether he or she understands everything you expect. Inform the person that he or she is being graded, and that you’re there to help him or her succeed. As the saying goes: “People have a habit of becoming what you encourage them to be, not what you nag them to be.”

(Source: Globe & Mail, July 5, 2011)

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