5 Reasons Powerful Leaders Provide Feedback

Managers must to give feedback. If you want your business to continuously learn and grow, so you must utilize feedback as a tool. The issue might be: do you know how to? What do you say to an employee who is struggling? Let's say you want an employee to be in a more professional manner. Maybe you want your employee to relate better and smile when talking to customers. He was trying, but he kept forgetting. Or, perhaps, his work is dogged by mistakes and followed by angry customers. How do you approach the situation?

Feedback Step-by-Step

1. Your opinion doesn't matter - analysis does. Focusing your observations on what has worked in the past, or in a similar situation, is a very efffective strategy to provide feedback. Feedback is a lot more difficult to provide than an opinion because analysis isn't personal. Opinions can be offensive, and make an employee defensive. Sound fact, however, is easier to absorb. Analysis moves the situation from "personal" to "factual."

2. Give feedback at the correct time. If an employee is doing several things incorrectly, it's a good idea to let them know that several things can be improved over time, but pick only one thing to work on for now. Trying to get someone to change more than a couple of things at a time can get overwhelming for anyone. Also, experiencing success in one area will give your employees confidence to progess and keep getting better.

3. Accentuate the positive. Don't forget to mention the postive. Talking about what your employee's doing well allows them to feel good. It psychologically puts both of you on the same side of the table and helps make changes easier.

4. Empathy. Looking at things from a different perspective opens up a wider range of solutions. Viewing things from their perspective will also help you communicate those solutions.

5. Experiment. Try something new to break up the monotony. A bored employee is an employee who makes mistakes.

As you implement the above suggestions, your feedback will improve. Closely observing a situation can reveal small changes that may make a huge impact. For example if you notice a technician struggling to talk to a customer, you might suggest he focus on what he knows about your products or on asking open-ended questions to a customer.

Receiving Feedback and Improving 1% Everyday

Just as giving feedback is a skill, so is receiving it. Even if the feedback is correctly given as analysis, it can still feel personal to the person receiving it. It is difficult to be told you are doing something wrong. But, when feedback is given without criticism, it increases the chance that positive changes will take place. And make sure to remember, without feedback there would be no improvement.

As an employee, view feedback as an opportunity to improve and get better. You know you aren't perfect. In fact, you probably know precisely what your strengths and weaknesses are. Feedback is simply a way for a superior to help you make changes.

You are probably familiar with Thomas Edison—he completed over 3,000 experiments in order to perfect the incandescent light bulb. He was using feedback, not failure, as his benchmark. This is the same principle in business today. With feedback everyone improves. Working on the feedback and making small, incremental improvements each day results in huge improvements within just one year. A 1% improvement each day produces a 3,700% improvement over a year.

Feedback given and received correctly = many small improvements. And small continuous improvements make a BIG difference.


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