Introduction to Sharing Feedback as a Manager
Sharing feedback has its own advantages and disadvantages
According to the studies, 69% of the employees would have worked harder if they got feedback from their managers and their efforts were recognized by the organization.
Now, if you’re an employee, put yourself in the place of a manager. You will find that sharing feedback to an employee who is a great performer is a piece of cake, while sharing feedback to an employee who is struggling to perform is a bit difficult.
Sharing feedback is one of the most important aspects of management through which people perceive you as an influential leader.
So, let’s hop on to the topic of sharing feedback as a manager to find out the most efficient way to set yourself up for a successful path as an influential leader.
What is Feedback?
Definitions –
“Feedback is the receiver’s basic response to the interpreted message,” write Bartol and Martin. According to Bovee and others, “Feedback is a response from the receiver that informs the sender how the communication is being received in general”. Now, let’s understand giving and receiving from the employee and manager’s perspective.
Employee feedback is defined as the process by which reporting managers, supervisors, and peers make helpful comments or constructive responses or suggestions to employees. However, this process does not stop there; employee feedback also includes feedback from the employee to his or her management, peers, or the business as a whole. Employees and organizations can benefit from feedback to continuously improve their performance.
Employee feedback is an essential component of the employee experience process and a technique that will increasingly assist employees in improving their performance and the organization in developing a better workplace culture. Employee feedback is considered a powerful tool for the enhancement of employee performance. It offers proper guidance and constructive criticism of an employee, which results in workforce improvement, great relationships between employees and managers, improved communication, and builds trust.
Different types of feedback
Employees’ subsequent performance is heavily influenced by the type of feedback they receive. Managers must understand the differences between the three basic types of feedback in order to provide effective feedback:
Sharing Feedback-Constructive Feedback
Specific information, issue-focused, and based on observations Constructive feedback comes in four varieties:
- Negative feedback consists of corrective remarks about past behavior. It focuses on unsuccessful conduct that should not be repeated.
- Positive feedback consists of comments that confirm previous conduct. It focuses on successful behavior that should be sustained.
- Negative feedforward consists of remedial remarks about future performance. It focuses on future behavior that should be prevented.
- Positive feedforward consists of remarks that confirm future behavior. Concentrated on future performance-enhancing behavior.
Sharing Feedback-Praise
Positive remarks regarding the subject. The majority of workers will respond to praise by becoming more confident, self-assured, and/or self-sufficient.
Sharing Feedback-Criticism
A judgment, view, or comment that is unfavorable to the subject or their actions. In general, criticism is ineffective at boosting performance at work because it provides destructive feedback.
What are the different sources of feedback?
Almost anybody in a company has the ability of sharing feedback. This includes comments made by peers, coworkers, managers, and customers. The sources of input that businesses employ are described in more detail below.
- Peer feedback is given by a coworker to another when they are on roughly the same level within an organization. This criticism can be witty or, occasionally, brutally honest.
- Feedback from employees: This kind, sometimes referred to as “upward feedback,” is provided by subordinates to their superiors. Self-evaluations of their performance or a judgment of management’s performance may be included in this feedback.
- Feedback from the supervisor: Unsurprisingly, this entails managers providing advice to individuals who report to them. This might take place in a formal environment, such as a performance review, or it might not.
- Customer Feedback: This is considered receiving feedback from outside of the organization. According to most business owners, it is the most harsh feedback of all but still constructive feedback.
Also Read: 5 Amazing Tips for Resolving Conflicts
What are the different types of Sharing feedback for a manager ?
Appreciation feedback, guidance feedback, encouragement feedback, forward feedback, coaching feedback, informal feedback, and formal feedback are all forms of feedback used in workplaces.
While they don’t encompass all of the types, they offer a decent place for managers or leaders to start when attempting to comprehend feedback styles and integrate them into team culture. Knowing about all seven can help managers give each employee the kind of feedback that works best for them.
- Appreciation Feedback
Giving employees positive feedback demonstrates to them that their managers value their efforts. Hard work is not unappreciated. Receiving positive feedback can serve as a motivating factor for many people. This kind of feedback might be brief, such as thanking someone for meeting a strict deadline, or detailed, such as praising them for the effort they put into a challenging assignment.
Specifics are the key to effective appreciation feedback. When used too frequently, a general “well done” becomes hollow and meaningless. Specifics offer the remark a more personal touch and provide the recipient a genuine cause for celebration.
- Guidance Feedback
Guidance feedback gives leaders the chance to not just compliment but also to counsel their team members. This type can offer moderate reprimand without coming off as obnoxious or unpleasant when accompanied with feedback that expresses appreciation. Improvement recommendations are one form of guidance input. Because it gives the recipient the opportunity to clarify anything they are unclear about, this does not imply that it is an indirect method.
Making guidance a frequent component of feedback encourages employees to continuously look for ways to improve. When done correctly, many people might actively seek advice, which encourages self-motivation. By guiding individuals in the right path without pressuring them to follow orders, leaders that use this kind of feedback genuinely exemplify the job of a leader.
- Positivity Feedback
Giving positive comments is another technique to increase motivation. Similar to the earlier sharing feedback categories, encouraging feedback is a great way to raise spirits, especially if someone is having a hard time. It also applies when someone is, for the first time, venturing into unfamiliar areas.
For instance, when starting a new job, freshly hired employees could feel overburdened. They get a lift from positive comments that encourage them to persevere. As a small instant message or fast office discussion, this sharing feedback truly shines. It just goes to show that when it comes to feedback, a little really does mean a lot.
- Forward Feedback
Sometimes mistakes are made, but it’s during these times when various forms of sharing feedback could be most useful. Feedback that is given with an eye toward the future avoids being mired in the past. That is not to say that leaders excuse errors, but they do realize that dwelling on the past too much hinders present-day growth.
In fact, it can undermine their confidence and make them more pessimistic. People receive the required context from forward feedback, which gives them objectives to strive for. It identifies each person’s role in those initiatives and clarifies the “why” behind many corporate strategies. In essence, forward sharing feedback develops the habits that will enable people to soar to new heights.
- Coaching Feedback
When providing coaching input, the leader will behave exactly like a coach, devising winning tactics that aid individuals in understanding their place on a team. Compared to some of the sorts of sharing feedback mentioned above, coaching feedback is typically more formal.
It frequently entails routine reviews that incorporate backward and forward input. Leaders can motivate employees through this feedback, motivating them to be more productive at work and keeping them away from acts that might prevent them from achieving their objectives, much like a coach motivating the team’s players.
- Informal Feedback
Any of the feedback styles mentioned above can be broken down further, such as giving it in an informal manner. Informal feedback has numerous major advantages, including the elimination of the need to wait for scheduled events before providing it. It is a more spontaneous type of feedback that occurs in the present. It should happen during the course of normal business. According to Ed Batista in the Harvard Business Review, feedback must “appear in everyday life—on a walk down the hall, at the end of a meeting, over a cup of coffee.”
- Formal Feedback
Leaders should create a structured feedback policy, whether they are just establishing a business or running an established one. As expected, this feedback occurs in more formal contexts, such as a performance review or job appraisal. Formal feedback comprises the utilization of detailed information gleaned from an employee’s job to provide a more in-depth assessment of how they’re performing. This is where leaders can assess whether they are meeting established goals and contributing effectively to the team.
Also Read: Tips for Building Team for a Manager
Feedback To Avoid
Not all the feedback is useful. Positive feedback encompasses the forms of feedback listed above. However, far too often, the type of criticism most individuals hear is negative. Leaders should avoid giving this form of feedback since it has the lowest likelihood of producing positive results. According to the study, negative feedback, for example, rarely contributes to improved performance.
Sharing Feedback- Negative Feedback
Negative criticism emphasizes faults and deficiencies rather than development and improvement. Negative feedback is rarely constructive, and when presented with it, many people feel belittled and discouraged. Some may even interpret it as a personal attack, which will only exacerbate existing issues such as resentment, disengagement, and conflict.
While some people may turn negative comments into positive results, the bulk of people come away feeling bad about themselves. To put it another way, avoid negative feedback as much as possible.
Ways to Share Effective Feedback
Here are some tips to help leaders and managers sharing feedback that is efficient and effective and get your desired results.
- Do not offer unsolicited advice.
Only one-third of people think the input they receive is useful. This is because it is frequently unsolicited, which can cause a great deal of stress for the individual receiving it.
If your direct report does not request sharing feedback directly, either in person or via Request Feedback function, make sure to ask them if, when, and how they would like to receive it.
By doing so, you can give your employee control and enhance the possibility that they will act on the feedback you provide. Allow your employees to direct the feedback agenda by making them feel secure and comfortable enough to request it.
- Be precise
Employee feedback should be solution-focused, concise, and to the point. If you intend to corrective sharing feedback, generic comments such as “Your work has to be better” or “I wasn’t very satisfied with those reports” are acceptable. “You have to do better than that” can leave your employee perplexed and unsure of what area of their job needs to be improved.
Be precise about what you want your employee to accomplish and provide assistance on how to apply the criticism. “I saw you were late on your last two deadlines,” for example. I’d like to work with you on time management to ensure you’re not taking on too much and that you complete each of your chores on time.
- Bring a strong sense of empathy.
“Sharing feedback that reveals a significant gap in self-awareness necessitates an extra level of sensitivity.” The sting of discovering such a profound separation, like peeling off a scab, frequently produces powerful emotions that can easily be misinterpreted as defensiveness. If you’ve had to bear the brunt of a problematic colleague’s behavior, make sure you can lay those frustrations aside in favor of the empathy you’ll need for this dialogue.
Be prepared to allow your coworker the space they’ll need to feel stunned after receiving your critique before approaching them. “Remember not to perceive that as increased resistance to your message,” says Ron Carucci, an organizational consultant.
- Do not wait for a quarterly evaluation.
Employee feedback received immediately after an event has the greatest influence on performance. Employee engagement is highest when sharing feedback is on a weekly basis. If problems are not addressed, they can multiply in a domino effect. As a result, by the time the quarterly performance evaluation arrives, you’ll be confronted with a slew of concerns that may have been prevented if brought up sooner.
Another disadvantage of saving input for the performance review process is that problems will be forgotten and the opportunity of sharing feedback will have passed. Daily or weekly sharing feedback will help you avoid the recency bias, which primarily reflects recent work and happens infrequently enough to correspond with the employee’s workflow, and can make tracking and analyzing a challenge.
- Keep it private.
Never ever criticize anyone in public.
Even praise, according to some, is better conveyed in secret. Some folks simply do not enjoy being the focus of attention. Consider providing employee feedback in the form of a written response. This allows you to reflect and respond more thoughtfully.
Feedback is not only unpleasant for the receiver; it may also be unpleasant for the giver. You can help to reduce some of the underlying pressure by relocating the location to a more informal area.
- Avoid the “sandwich approach.”
The purpose of sharing feedback should always be to help someone improve, but sandwiching critical feedback between two pieces of positive feedback will not ease the sting. This strategy confuses the receiver, weakens your feedback, and can reduce trust levels.
Although it may be more awkward for the provider, being upfront and transparent with corrective sharing feedback lays the groundwork for an authentic conversation. Instead of beating about the bush, concentrate on providing sharing feedback tastefully.
Also read: Common Mistakes to Avoid as a Manager
