Feedback – it is the greatest gift and the greatest nemesis in our business communications!
If you have a team of people, feedback is a must to ensure the individuals ongoing development but also to support a healthy culture in the workplace, yet it is a skill many leaders, even very experienced leaders, do not possess.
But it can be so easy!
When looking for fun ways to share the importance of feedback in a training session with a team of middle managers, I came across Shari Harley, a hilarious speaker out of the US who spoke through how to give feedback. In 2 minutes you can honestly tell someone the most critical of feedback, including telling someone they smell (badly)!!
How do you do this? You follow these easy steps:
The important thing about feedback is that it has to be balanced; this means you have to give positive feedback as well as more critical or developmental feedback. You also have to consider the intent of the feedback – is it about your team member or is it about you? If it is about you – forget it! Feedback has to be about the recipient, not something you do to make yourself feel better.
It also has to be frequent to keep your team members bank account topped up – their emotional bank account! Every critical piece of feedback you give is a withdrawal from the account and will require three (3), yes three positive feedback deposits to equal it out!
So get depositing – you don’t want your team member to leave your business because they are bankrupt – make sure you can tell someone they smell but also that they smell like roses!