Give Effective Feedback: 3 Simple Rules

This is the third in a series of posts specifically for new managers from leadership expert Dan Erwin. This week’s post is all about giving feedback, the most important thing you can do as a new manager, and yet, it is often the most overlooked. Read on to learn the three simple rules for giving effective feedback.

Ever gotten really constructive developmental feedback?  Most of my clients say absolutely not.  And they work for some of the top companies in America.  That’s one of the reasons they hired me!  Giving feedback is phenomenally difficult for most managers.

There are a lot of reasons why you don’t get useful feedback.  Your boss fears it’ll  blow up in his face.  Your boss probably never got useful feedback either.  Your boss thinks you can learn without his feedback.  Your boss doesn’t have the necessary language or process to give feedback.  Bottom line:  your boss doesn’t know how to give constructive feedback.  (This is a big reason why bosses complain about Gen Yers.  Gen Yers are asking for feedback–something their bosses can’t give them.   So blame the Gen Yers–they’re the only available scapegoat.)

Let’s break the pattern.

Here are three simple rules for giving effective feedback.

1. Don’t blame.  Dwelling on the past is a waste of time – and harmful.  There’s an important principle that you might have learned in elementary psych:  Reinforced responses recur.  So if you keep talking about a failure, that failure may very well recur because you’re rewarding it by talking about it.  Weird, eh!  But that’s how the brain works. The other principle is that performance ignored tends to disappear.  Pay little to no attention to past failures.  Enough said? 
2. What’s going well?  Get your employee’s insight into what’s going well on his projects.  Don’t misunderstand me here.  I’m not suggesting that you do this to make a person feel good before you shoot them.  Find out what they’re doing and what made it successful.  Then the same lessons can apply in the future.  Guess what!  It’ll take time to learn to look for what’s going well.  We’re just not programmed that way.  But don’t even go down the next road before you’ve worked over what’s going well and why.
3. What needs to go better? Don’t be in a hurry to answer that question for your team member.  But use my exact words otherwise one of you will be liable to veer of into the usual s–t.  Dig the answer out of her if possible.   When this question is answered thoughtfully, often all you have to do is a bit of joint problem solving.  On occasion, however, you’ll want to give some concrete, specific suggestions–in brief format. 

Admittedly, I haven’t detailed the process of feedback for you, much less written protocols or scripts (check out my white paper on giving feedback).  But, observing these three rules will go a long way toward mastering the skill of feedback and developing talent – talent for which you’re going to be rewarded as a new manager.

Dan Erwin is a nationally recognized management consultant, having coached more than 400 managers and executives from many of the finest corporations in the world, including an extensive client base from the Fortune 500. He remains at the forefront in the practical use of research from neuroscience, managerial training, development, and organizational learning. Learn more about Dan by reading the first chapter of his upcoming book Brainware or by checking out his blog.

YELL AT YOU! photo credit to katiebate.