Business Coaching Corner: "On a Scale of 1 to 5, You're a 1!" Giving Effective Feedback

I have chosen to discuss the important and always challenging subject of "feedback" in this month's Coach's Corner. You'll read more about giving effective feedback to your business colleagues and employees - and a wide range of opinions on this subject - in this month's book review. (The book I look at this month is "First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.) The book profile examines the critical role the manager plays within an organization and how the manager can help to develop the unique talent of any employee. Feedback is essential to this process, and plays a critical role when it comes to people development in the workplace. With that said, I want to share some tips that I believe will help you be a better manager and help you develop your people more effectively.

When it's time for you to give one of your employees their year-end review, do you think that it would be difficult for you to tell that person, for their overall review score, "You're a one." I would imagine that some would reply, "No, if that's what that employee deserves, then that's the score." Others may agree that this low score is justified, but may still not be completely comfortable going into that review session. Further, what if that employee is totally taken by surprise by such a low evaluation, and they never saw it coming?

As a manager, how comfortable are you with this scenario -- delivering that abysmal year-end score to an employee -- now? Whether your employee deserves The fact is that you, as a manager, dropped the ball. One of your employees may be surprised by a difference in one rating in one category or another, but if your employee is surprised by their final overall score, then you failed as their manager -- at least that year. the score at this point is almost irrelevant.

I know from experience just how much multi-tasking is required of a manager these days. Hitting month-end numbers, attending meetings, writing budget reviews, handling people issues, meeting project deadlines, not to mention the proverbial senior management "fire drills." After all this, where does a manager find the time for people development? As a manager, this is one of the most crucial parts of your job -- and you have little to no time for it. As a matter of fact, some managers are never appraised on their ability to develop people.

Since you can't do everything yourself, you need your team. I want to share some tips that will help you get the most from your people, and also help your employees achieve recognition and success. The most fundamental aspect of effective feedback is being candid. If you can't be candid, you can't expect to see improved performance on the part of your employees -- and if you're not candid, that lack of improvement is more your fault then theirs, especially with young people.

Effective feedback is:

Not delivered in the form of a feedback "sandwich" - This "sandwich" is the strategy of squeezing the negative, constructive criticism you're giving an employee between a couple of positive thoughts or comments. There are a lot of reasons to use the "sandwich" approach" - "he tried really hard," "she has been having a tough time coming up the curve," "maybe I wasn't clear enough," and so on. It doesn't matter if a goal was missed, if an employee's behavior is negatively impacting productivity, or if team morale is lagging, all of these situations need to be addressed specifically, and without distraction. By "sandwiching" your important evaluation between two more positive comments, what you have done is lessen the significance of your evaluation. If you opt for the "sandwich" approach, don't be surprised if you end up with the same undesirable behavior a month, six months, or a year later.

Timely - When it comes to giving an employee a negative feedback, the longer you wait, the less effective the feedback. With the passage of time, you remember less of the situation you wish to correct, and therefore you may soften your comments. Your employee has also put the situation out their mind, or rationalized why the undesirable situation ever happened. (As time passes, they may even see the situation as someone else's fault.) Now that time has passed since the incident in question, how many chances has your employee had to work on improving their behavior? If you haven't delivered the feedback the answer is none. As a manager myself, I've frequently said, "I don't have the time now to speak to my employee, I'll do it later." Putting it off for a few hours quickly turns into putting it off until tomorrow. Pretty soon, it's three days later, then a week later, and now you're reluctant to deal with the situation at all.

Specific - I've received a lot of feedback over the years -- some good and some bad. By this, I don't mean "negative" or "positive," I mean effective. Effective feedback is something I can work with to get better or feel good about. One incident always comes to mind when thinking about effective feedback. It wasn't a pivotal moment in my career, but it was a classic example of unproductive feedback. After I had delivered a Powerpoint presentation, the only other person left in the room besides myself was one of our company's senior managers. As he walked out he said, "Good job, but you need to make it more tight and work on it." I thought sarcastically to myself, "Thanks! That was very helpful." You're not helping a person unless you explain specifically what was wrong. It would have been far better for this senior manager to say, "Bill, you need to give more background on the root cause." He might also have said, "You didn't give enough time to the alternate scenarios." Comments like these would have actually been helpful.

Objective - Remaining objective when giving feedback can be a challenge, and I'd like to share a few lessons I've learned over the years about objectivity. First, don't be temped to give an employee more credit than they deserve for one of their strengths just because it is one of your own weaknesses. Because I am not always great with managing each step of a process, I recall being very impressed with one of my employees who could pick apart a process and improve it. I continued to score him very high until one of my bosses reminded me, "It's his job, his focus, so don't get too carried away." Another example of just how difficult it can be to offer an objective evaluation concerns a manager I worked with who had always had a difficult time giving negative feedback to the people he was personally close to. The better he knew the person, the harder it was for him to manage objectively. I reminded him that regardless of the relationship, you are not helping your employee by protecting him or shielding him. I encouraged this manager to try and maintain some distance. You have to be close enough to know the person, but not so close you can't provide critical and necessary feedback when required.

Delivered as part of a smooth process - It's a smart idea to develop a process to collect data and note employee progress on an ongoing basis, especially if you have direct reports that have direct reports. Remember, feedback is meant to spur along progress, and make it possible for employees to achieve and exceed goals. You can't keep track of everything, so ask your employees to be part of the process. Ask them each to submit monthly or bi-monthly accomplishment reports to you. This will allow you to track progress, recognize outstanding achievement, and also address a lack of progress in real time. For example, I can't tell you how many times I found myself wishing I had known more about the progress of a project earlier as a deadline approached. I also recommend scheduling regular one-on-one meetings or other meetings where individual performance can be discussed. If you don't make a conscious effort to do this, you'll certainly come up with countless reasons and excuses not to do it. You'll find yourself saying, "I only have 10 minutes before my next meeting," or "I can't go over this now; this employee has a deadline to meet for me and I can't afford for it to be late," or countless other good reasons and bad excuses.

There's no doubt that systems for delivering effective feedback can be challenging to establish, but the benefits are well worth the effort when it comes to achieving and exceeding ambitious goals, and when it comes to employee morale. Be sure to e-mail me and let me know about feedback strategies you've found to be successful!