Giving Feedback - Essential Skills for Leaders

Have you ever worked somewhere management did not provide feedback? You weren’t sure if you were doing a good job or not. Maybe you had to ask if you were doing a good job. It’s an awkward place to be for most while for some they just assume no news is good news.

Feedback is threefold: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. 

Appreciation motivates and encourages. Coaching helps increase knowledge and skill. Evaluation lets people know where they stand. Employees need all three. 

As a leader, giving feedback to your employees is essential.  If you do it right, your employees will see it more like a gift that shows you care.

Here are the key ingredients:

Be Timely, Specific, and To the Point

Timely: Give feedback in the moment or at least that same day. If you wait, your employee may not remember the situation. Also, when considering timeliness, consider whether you should be giving feedback in private or on the floor. Praise can be given publicly in most cases unless you have a shy employee who doesn’t value public recognition. Corrective feedback should be given in private unless someone’s safety is at risk.

Specific: It doesn’t do anyone any good to tell them “You do such great work.”  People want to know you understand exactly what they did, and you want to encourage repeat performance. It’s much better to say, “When the machine went down today and you jumped in to troubleshoot the issue it saved us from costly downtime. Thank you and please continue to help like that.”

To the Point: Don’t beat around the bush when it comes to providing corrective feedback. Especially don’t sandwich corrective feedback with positive feedback. It confuses the employee, and they walk away not clear on what they need to do. Clarify the intent of the feedback and be sure to keep your focus on the behavior and not the person. Describe the situation and allow them to share their thoughts on the situation. Align expectations for the future and the why behind the need for this change. It’s helpful to end with, “I’m saying this because I care.”

Set a goal for yourself to give at least three people a day positive feedback and see how this changes your workplace culture. It also builds a platform of trust that makes it easier when you need to give tough feedback.