Feedback is a feedback tool that modern companies use for effective interaction between customers, managers and employees. Thanks to it, everyone feels the positive changes from the cooperation process: business owners, their clients and direct performers of certain tasks. Feedback helps to establish communication between different links and increase overall productivity. However, feedback should not be perceived as something routine or even burdensome. On the contrary, it is important to study well both how to provide it correctly and how to react to the response received.
Types of feedback
Before considering recommendations on how to give or receive feedback, it is worth finding out what types of feedback exist. Today, experts distinguish three main options: positive, negative (or critical), and constructive.
Positive feedback
This type of feedback is considered the most effective way to non-materially motivate employees. Of course, everyone needs such feedback, but it will be especially relevant when a person really tried: exceeded the plan, met deadlines, actively showed initiative, etc.
When giving positive feedback, it's important to not just praise, but to emphasize the things you appreciate about the employee. It's also important to emphasize how their work impacted a specific project or the company's overall operations. This will help the person feel valued.
Negative feedback
Giving feedback, focusing on the shortcomings of a person's work, is not very pleasant. However, it is important to see your weaknesses from the outside, because when they affect the overall result, everyone suffers. At the same time, critical feedback should be as tactful as possible. That is, only the work is subject to discussion, but not the personal traits of the employee. Confidentiality is also important, so a private face-to-face conversation is the best option.
Constructive feedback
This is the most optimal type of feedback, because it contains both praise and criticism. According to statistics, 57% of employees like this constructive approach. In this case, the so-called “sandwich” or “pnp” method (positive-negative-positive) is most often used. In this way, a person receives both praise and criticism, and he or she has positive impressions of such interaction.
Principles and rules of good feedback
Feedback should be effective. That is, if it did not become a driver of changes and conclusions drawn, then it is obvious that some mistakes were made during the feedback. To prevent this from happening, it is important to adhere to certain principles of feedback.
- Relevance and regularity. Feedback must be timely. Only then will the comments be taken into account sufficiently to correct the situation, change or improve something. This rule also implies that it should be regular. Therefore, you should not wait for the end of the year or some other date. Feedback can be given immediately after the completion of a certain project or a major stage of work.
- Dialogue form. Feedback is not just an opportunity to make a remark to an employee. It must be two-way. This means that the employee must be given the opportunity to comment on the results of the work and respond to criticism or praise.
- Privacy. Public discussions of an employee’s work are unacceptable, especially when they involve criticism. Therefore, it is better to conduct conversations individually. In addition, it is worth allowing people to express themselves anonymously. For this purpose, special surveys can be conducted, for example, in the form of a questionnaire. As a rule, in such conditions people are more open and express what they really think.
- Constructivity. To follow this rule, feedback should be as specific as possible. When evaluating a person's work, you need to use facts and support each of your comments with them. Even a seemingly ordinary phrase, "Well done," does not carry any semantic load, so as feedback it is unlikely to have any positive impact on the employee's productivity and help him achieve better results.
- Tact. Feedback is not a discussion of a person, but only of their work. Therefore, any transition to personalities is unacceptable. And this applies to both sides of this process.
Recommendations for asking for feedback
Tips on how to ask for feedback are quite simple, as you only need to pay attention to a few points. The first question that arises is: when exactly to do it? There are no specific time limits, because this practice should be timely. That is, you should ask for feedback immediately after you have completed a certain project, spoken at a conference, or done anything else important and significant in your career.
People are also often interested in: who exactly should you ask for feedback from? In fact, it can be not only a team lead, PM or client. You can make a similar request to almost any colleague with whom you collaborate, including remotely.
Typically, each company has its own tools for asking for feedback. If they don't have them, you can write your request yourself, for example, in the form of an email.
Tips for giving feedback
Before giving feedback, it’s a good idea to clarify its purpose. Typically, you should choose one of the following three goals.
- “Keep on doing”. This goal is to provide encouragement to move forward, praise, highlight strengths, and recognize contributions to the common cause.
- “Stop doing”. In this case, feedback is needed to prevent negative scenarios, warn the person against repeating mistakes, and give advice on how to improve the situation.
- “Start doing”. This feedback should encourage professional change. It should also include information on how to do so.
There are many techniques for providing feedback. In addition to the “sandwich” method mentioned above, another popular one is the STAR. Its essence is that first the situation or problem is described (Situation). After that, the person indicates his task (Target), provides information about the actions taken (Action) and the result obtained (Result). Such a feedback technique makes it possible to evaluate all links of the process and identify weaknesses or inconsistencies.
Another well-known feedback technique is GROW. At the first stage, it is found out what the employee's goal was (Goal). The next question is to what extent the expectations were realized in reality (Reality). In this case, a ten-point scale can be used to give an answer. If you are not satisfied with the results, you should consider options (Options) on how to correct the situation. And the final stage is to find out from the specialist his professional plans (Will) and goals for the near future.
How to receive feedback correctly
Knowing how to receive feedback is no less important than knowing how to give it. First, you should always remember that feedback is purely about the work you have done, and not about you personally. That is, even if you made a bad presentation, this does not mean that you are not a good specialist. It is just that at this stage the result obtained was not as expected.
When receiving feedback, you can hear not only praise, but also criticism. It should be perceived as advice or a guide for the future, but in no case be offended. Especially when the criticism is constructive. It is an occasion to analyze your work and make certain adjustments.
After you receive feedback, be sure to thank the person who provided it. In fact, giving feedback is quite difficult, because you need to analyze a certain layer of work, choose tactful words, so it is also important to evaluate such work.
The most common mistakes when giving feedback
Even if you regularly provide and receive feedback, you are not immune to common mistakes that occur even in the most experienced employees.
- Untimely discussion of the problem. In this case, feedback will not bring the benefit it could if it were timely and relevant.
- Moving to personalities. This usually happens when providing critical feedback. To avoid this mistake, it is better to focus on numbers, facts, and metrics.
- Lack of balance between criticism and praise. A bias in one direction or another is undesirable. Therefore, it is imperative to support every praise or criticism with facts, and then such feedback will be remembered and effective.
- Lack of reasoning and explanation of the consequences of actions. If an employee receives feedback but you don't explain how it affects the results, they are likely to ignore it in their work. It is important to clearly explain the cause and effect points, as this allows you to see the whole picture.
The American Gallup Institute for Public Opinion Research found that due to employee disengagement, which often results from a lack of normal communication with management, organizations lose about $550 billion annually. Constructive feedback is the most accessible and simple way to improve the performance of each employee and the company as a whole. The benefits of such a practice are felt at all levels, so managers and specialists should definitely take care to provide feedback correctly and respond to it adequately.
