Give meaningful feedback to get the results you want

If you often lament that your colleagues, peers, and direct reports don’t produce the results you desire, you should take a good long look at the type of feedback you provide and maybe more importantly, how you deliver that feedback. Giving feedback requires diplomacy, tact, and excellent communication skills. Giving insight into how someone’s performance is progressing can help to identify issues and solve them. Good managers should deliver feedback in a positive way so that it can do what it is intended to do: help improve and grow your business.

Here are some tips in providing feedback that will drive the results you want:

Be positive. A client was working on a project with a deliverable to the sales team. She sent her boss a spreadsheet for him to review, and rather than provide her with any useful advice, he responded by saying: “There’s an error in one of your calculations. I want you to find it.” Yeah. At this point, my client became enraged and replied with “I am working hard to get the sales team the information they need. Your response is exceptionally unhelpful.” This “observation” was neither positive, nor was it useful. It was a dig disguised as feedback. Don’t do this.

Be specific. “I just don’t like it” is not valid feedback. What is the recipient supposed to do with that? And are you supposed to like it? Is that important? It would be best if you articulated your expectations explicitly. “You need to speak up more in meetings” doesn’t say what you expect. Instead, try, “You have such great ideas. Why don’t you make it a point to share at least 3 of them in tomorrow’s meeting?”

Be sincere. Some people enjoy giving gratuitously negative feedback. This helps no one. Give feedback with the genuine desire to motivate a change in behavior, not to just cut someone down. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but I will tell you this anyway. Don’t be a jerk.

Be reasonable. Everyone has different styles of working. Providing feedback like “You should start working on the press release before the day the first draft is due” is not reasonable. What is essential is that the deliverable is completed within the agreed-upon timeframe. Just because you would tackle a task one way does not mean it’s the right way. Check your own biases before giving feedback.

Feedback is incredibly powerful. It can help people grow and develop and improve the performance of the organization. Be sure to get it right.