Mirco�s Advice for supervisors � Feedback, the best way to improve your team

adviceAfter discussing one-on-ones in my last blog about tools for supervisors,

this blog will focus on feedback. Feedback is your opportunity to improve the
performance of your team on a daily basis. Here I am talking about ongoing feedback
you can give your team every day, not the kind of feedback you give once a
performance year. Before I get to feedback let me remind you that this post is one
in a series of six posts on tools for supervisors:

One on Ones (link)

Feedback
Coaching (TBD)
Delegation (TBD)
Principles for success (TBD)
Pitfalls for supervisors (TBD)
While one-on-ones are probably the most important practice given the impact it has
on your team, feedback is what moves your team forward. The most important point
about feedback is to never give feedback when you are angry. The way you
communicate and what you say when you are angry will undermine the overall idea
behind feedback � to make your team more effective in the future. There is nothing
you can do about the past, move on and provide constructive feedback. You should
only give feedback when you are able to smile while doing so. This will make sure
that you are in a positive frame of mind.

There is a good reason to be in a positive frame of mind when giving feedback. If

you think about it, how often is a mistake made on purpose? � it hardly ever is. So
assume good intent. There are very few people who make mistakes on purpose. This of
course means that there is no reason to get angry, just try to help your direct-
report become more effective by pointing out the ineffective behaviour and
discussing alternatives. I will tell you how to do that further below.

Let�s not forget that you should also give positive feedback. Some tend to forget
this even though it is so much easier to give positive feedback. For it to really
make an impact, make sure to be specific about positive feedback as well. Don�t
just praise �Well done�, but rather give specific positive feedback like �When you
prepare meeting notes and send them out before I even ask you, it helps everyone
stay on top of their assigned tasks. Thank you.�

Purpose: The purpose of feedback is to encourage effective behaviour in the future.

There is no �why� in feedback, which means you are not trying to understand why
something happened, but instead trying to encourage effective behaviour in the
future. This is not a root cause analysis. If you take this purpose to heart you
will see that there is little difference between positive and negative feedback,
you simply state what your direct-report did, the impact it had and what to do in
the future (either continue or change behaviour).

How to Do: Feedback is not easy to give, especially negative feedback. The key here
is to focus on the behaviour and not implied traits: e.g. �When you raise your
voice and make sarcastic comments� is much better than �When you act like a jerk�.
Make sure the person you give feedback to understands the implications, e.g. �When
you send me your status on time, it allows me to collate the report quickly and be
on time for my report to my boss�.

Don�t argue with your direct-report about either the reason for his behaviour or
the validity of your feedback. Remember the purpose of feedback is to influence
future behaviour. If he argues with your feedback, walk away, he will either do the
same thing again and you can give him the same feedback again (this time with one
more piece of evidence) or he won�t do it again (which means your feedback has
achieved its purpose). The guys at manager-tools.com refer to this as �shot across
the bow� and this piece of insight was eye opening for me and made me avoid so many
unnecessary and ineffective discussions with my direct-reports.

There is a specific format that you could use to give feedback: Ask first �Can I
give you some feedback?�, then focus on behaviour �When you do x, this is what
happens�, and then either thank him and encourage him �Thank you, keep doing this�
or ask for an improvement �Can you do this better/different next time?� Timing of
feedback is also important, don�t give feedback on things that happened longer than
a week ago. Consider feedback like breathing, many supervisors hold their breath
and then blast it out after a while (or even just at the end of the year), try to
breathe regularly. Small bits of regular feedback will allow you to keep correcting
course and not try to turn the whole ship around twice a year.

One last piece of advice: Find a way to encourage yourself to give feedback
frequently. Put a reminder in your calendar every day to give feedback, put a
comment on your one-on-one tracking sheet to provide feedback, or do what the guys
at manager-tools recommend: Put 3 coins in your left pants pocket and every time
you give feedback move it to the right pocket. At the end of each day you know
whether you gave 3 pieces of feedback and each time you put your hands in your
pocket you get a little reminder of how you are tracking.