Art of Giving Feedback
By: Hamdi Küçük
Tags: Feedback

Feedback is an essential element for everyone in an organization’s workforce. Giving feedback is a task you perform again and again as a manager or supervisor, letting people know where they are and where to go next in terms of expectations and goals — yours, their own, and the organizations.

Feedback is a useful tool for indicating when things are going in the right direction or for redirecting problem performance. Your objective in giving feedback is to provide guidance by supplying information in a useful manner, either to support effective behavior, or to guide someone back on track toward successful performance

Some situations which require giving constructive feedback include:

Ongoing performance discussions

Providing specific performance pointers

Following up on coaching discussions

Giving corrective guidance

Letting someone know the consequences of their behavior

Some clues that constructive feedback is needed are when:

Someone asks for your opinion about how they are doing

Unresolved problems persist

Errors occur again and again

An employee’s performance doesn’t meet expectations

A peer’s work habits disturb you

Throwing Away The ‘Feedback Sandwich’

The “feedback sandwich” (or “s**t sandwich” as it’s affectionately known by many!) framework involves giving feedback ‘sandwiched’ by praise. In other words, you deliver praise, followed by feedback, followed by more praise.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem too bad. Give praise to get the recipient in a good mood. Deliver well-thought out feedback and improvement points. Finish by reaffirming their value through more phrase.

Makes sense, right?

If only.

It’s ironic that a feedback framework designed to be more emotionally intelligent than simple, blunt feedback has actually created more problems than it solved.

Here are some useful tips to try when giving feedback:

1. Be clear about what you want to say before you say it

You might have already sensed what feedback you want to convey. However, you should be clear to yourself about what you want to convey and how you want to convey it

2. Share your feedback in a concise and specific manner, then you can embellish

People often lose specificity when they speak because they say far too much, rather than not enough. Or, they speak about general themes and patterns.

When giving feedback, first share what you saw or heard, what you want instead, and how the person can achieve it.

Then you can add more descriptive information if necessary.

3. Avoid generalisations

Avoid use of the words “all,” “never” and “always.” Those words can seem extreme, lack credibility and place arbitrary limits on behaviour.

Be more precise about quantity or proportion, if you address terms of quantities, at all.

4. Be descriptive rather than evaluative

Report what you are seeing, hearing or feeling.

Attempt to avoid evaluative words, such as “good” or “bad.”

It may be helpful to quickly share your particular feeling, if appropriate, but do not dwell on it or become emotional.

5. Own the feedback

The information should be about your own perception of information, not about the other’s perceptions, assumptions and motives.

Use ‘I’ statements as much as possible to indicate that your impressions are your own.

6. Be careful about giving advice

When giving feedback, it is often best to do one thing at a time — share your feedback, get the person’s response to your feedback, and then, when he/she is more ready to consider additional information, share your advice with him/her.

Important Note. Although these tips are useful when you are planning on giving feedback, you should also remember your feedback techniques should be specific for each individual. Tailor the level of criticism/recognition based on how you think your employee will react to each of them.