PART 1 | Giving Effective Feedback: Strategies for Constructive Communication
Introduction
Is there anything more awkward about being a manager than giving feedback? Why does it feel easier to critique a friend's pasta sauce for needing more salt, yet telling David from work that he fell short on his deliverables feels as daunting as if you're jeopardizing his career?
Every 2 out of 3 managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees and nearly 40% of those stem from having to give direct feedback about their performance. But, here’s what goes unnoticed, employees crave feedback. In fact, those who receive recognition from management are around 70% more likely to do better work.
In working with several industries, we’ve realised that with the right tools, anyone can give effective feedback.
Summary
Feedback can be categorized as either positive or constructive, and it can be given to others or for self-assessment.
Structure your feedback using the Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI) framework to avoid bias and assumptions.
Give feedback on behavior and not the person.
In all types of feedback, the importance is specificity.
Feedback is just one of the elements that drive good performance. It is important to understand the role that high Energy levels, clear Goal alignment and reinforcing a culture of Growth have through our framework of Collaborative Team Development.
Types of Feedback
We tend to give feedback as either positive, what we term as ‘Celebrate’ at OnLoop, or constructive, which is an ‘Improve’. Celebrates are usually easier to give others but incredibly awkward when recognizing for yourself. On the flip side, finding areas to improve feels like a reflection for yourself, but just uncomfortable when expressed to others in your team.
But how do we minimise what is awkward and tough, while aiming for growth?
Situation, Behavior, Impact
At OnLoop, we leverage the SBI™ feedback tool, developed by The Center for Creative Leadership, which focuses on being fact-based through specific instances. The SBI model enables precise, clear and specific feedback, avoiding assumptions or biases from creeping in, here’s how that works:
Situation - Outline the situation you're referring to so that the context is clear and specific.
Behavior - Discuss the precise behavior that you want to address.
Impact - Highlight the impact of the person's behavior on you, the team and the organization.
Important is to BE SPECIFIC
Imagine this scenario. As a manager, you get a last-minute request to present some data to a cross-functional team and hand it off to a member of your team who has responsibility for the area by asking her to prepare a presentation and present it to the team the next day. Afterwards, “You did well in the meeting” is nice to hear, but not very helpful besides giving good vibes.
Instead, say this - “You did well in this meeting. I was impressed by how you managed to pull together a great presentation despite time constraints, and presented the content logically so that everyone could understand and get on the same page.”
The person now knows that:
The cross-functional team meeting went well,
Her overtime to get the presentation together is rewarded and presenting content logically is a strength that she should continue to develop, and
Teams across the organization benefitted with clarity.
Similarly, with the awkwardness of giving constructive feedback, remember to give feedback on the behavior, not the person.
Consider this, Brad from your team is extremely extraverted and feels comfortable asking all his clarifying questions real time, instead of waiting for Angelina to finish her pointers. Instead of saying ‘you were rude’, the focus should be -
‘During the last two monthly reviews, Brad interrupted Angelina multiple times, after which she started looking at her phone and didn’t say a single word in the whole meeting after.’
This focuses on a specific scenario for Brad without calling his personality out and helps him understand the impacts of specific actions.
Using AI to Structure Feedback
There’s one catch though, as individuals, we are generally much better at making observations rather than structuring feedback, and this is where generative AI comes in.
At OnLoop, we use AI to turn your raw thoughts, notes, recordings or voice notes into structured feedback that is meaningful to your employees, promoting their growth with tailored specificity.
Feedback in a Larger Framework
That being said, we believe that feedback is just one of the levels that drives good performance. We have developed a framework called Collaborative Team Development (CTD), which explains the different levels that drive high performance - Energy, Goals, Celebrates, Improves and Grow.
To learn more about CTD, read about it on our website here and about effectively aligning on Goals here.
Ready to unlock the full potential of your team with OnLoop? Book a meeting with us today and discover how our AI-powered platform can revolutionize your feedback process while fostering a culture of continuous growth!
