One of the greatest skills a leader can possess is the ability to provide feedback directly and respectfully to others. Regularly and consistently giving feedback to your team can make the most immediate positive difference to employees, suppliers and other stakeholders of the business.
Though feedback is one of the main drivers of both personal and professional development, it can be a challenge to deliver good feedback. In this blog, we will explore what good feedback looks like, how you can give it, and why good feedback is so important in helping your referral network to thrive.
Giving a great and specific feedback
Ambiguity in your feedback can lead to confusion and make it difficult for others to know how and where to improve. For feedback to be effective, whether it’s a critique or praise for an action or contribution, it should specifically tie into a larger overall goal, rather than being generic, and should outline a course of action.
Providing feedback that is specific to an actual behaviour or action, with suggestions for improvement, will help all involved in the conversation to understand what specifically needs to be improved or was improved and how to make headways.
Saying, “I had a bad referral” may not be helpful if you don’t take into consideration the factors that could be causing workflow backups or helping the individual identify ways to improve referrals passed.
Identifying the cause of the error and asking the individual to utilise one to one and other networking tools and provide updates not only identifies the issue, but also provides the individual with an action plan and clear path to improvement.
Leadership with Specific Action Points drives progress and success
Providing your team with real steps they can take to improve their present scenario is just as important as providing feedback.
When you provide feedback, particularly if the feedback is meant to be constructive, it should provide some instruction and guidance so they will know exactly which steps to take to improve.
For a successful team with winning and continuous improvement mindset, this sort of feedback is particularly valuable. Keeping the feedback specific provides action that drives progress and success in many organisations.
As you think a potential performance could improve, make sure they know what great work in their role looks like so they can set a course for meeting those standards.
Leadership with Time Bound Action Points
Feedback is so much more useful when it’s given in a timely manner.
Providing feedback, whether positive or negative, while the specifics are fresh in your mind makes it more effective. Feedback should be offered as close as possible to the action in question. It makes no sense to say, five months after the fact. This is why it’s important to give feedback before the window of being able to reflect on and change a behaviour has passed.
It is particularly important to provide negative feedback (as positively and politely as possible) in a timely manner when an immediate correction is needed. Some harshly given feedback can have the opposite of the intended effect.
This means not putting feedback off until it’s time for that annual performance review. It’s important for a strong team to receive feedback on their behaviour and performance more frequently than the annual review allows for. By the time those semi – annual or yearly reviews roll around, your feedback, if given in a timely manner, will have helped your team improve their performance well in advance of their performance review or goal setting sessions.
Polite Feedback Sessions for Leaders
In a competitive environment strong emotions can be at play on both sides, even seemingly innocent feedback can go wrong. While you always want to maintain a polite and positive tone when providing feedback, avoiding harsh criticism that just focuses on what the employee did wrong, giving effective, actionable feedback can be a more complex process, requiring a nuanced approach.
Focusing on a person’s character rather than on the person’s behaviour that has necessitated swift and meaningful feedback or a lack of clarity or clear guidance on how to change and why change is needed can also thwart the feedback process.
Research has shown that a team whose leadership feedback was delivered in a more positive manner (even when the feedback was critical), felt inspired to improve or positive about knowing how to do their work better. These employees are more likely to be engaged than employees who felt hurt, and who may actively look for another job.
Feedback that is given compassionately, politely, and positively helps the team member identify any issues that need fixing in a supportive manner that is much more likely to result in improved performance and will make others and themselves more comfortable receiving and responding to feedback when it’s offered.
All types of feedback are Good Feedback
Many studies have revealed that positive feedback may sometimes produce other results than the desired points, and negative feedback can also be constructive than what we usually think.
Thriving and progressive organizations uses feedback as critical measure for growth and development of performance year on year and appreciate it more than the absence of feedback at all. When leadership focuses on weaknesses rather than engaging team members, those team members become more engaged.
To keep your referral system highly developed and engaged with motivated team looking to always perform well, it’s essential to let them know what a job well done looks like by regularly providing good feedback. Say your testimonials loudly and thank you frequently.
For more details about leadership opportunities at BforB email us at centralservices@bforb.co.uk

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