Give Small Amounts of Balanced Feedback – Shorter is Better

When you use GPS in your car for driving directions, the GPS only provides one direction at a time. GPS tells you what to do now and what to do next. Your car can only go one direction at a time. And humans can likely only remember one or two directions at a time. When you coach people, you are their GPS, supporting them in achieving a desired goal efficiently.

Coach and give feedback like your GPS. Give one or two pieces of feedback at a time. Then give the person time to make changes and improve before giving more feedback.

What I hear every day, and every day it makes me shudder:

Manager: “One of my employees has been making a lot of mistakes. He seems disengaged (p.s. “disengaged” is Cap’n Crunch, vague and thus not real feedback). I’m not sure what’s happening.”

Me: “Have you talked to him?”

Manager: “No. Performance appraisals are coming up, so I’ll just wait to give the feedback until then.”

Me: “When are performance appraisals?”

Manager: “In six weeks.”

Most people hoard feedback. We wait for the right time, aka when we’re comfortable. That time will never come. The right time to give feedback is when something happens or shortly thereafter. Practice the 24-hour guideline and the one-week rule. Wait 24 hours to give feedback if you’re mad, but not longer than a week. Give feedback when you’re not upset, but soon after the event occurs, so people remember what you’re talking about. 

Feedback is hard on the ego. The more feedback we receive in one conversation, the harder it is to hear. People need to feel successful. Receiving too much feedback at one time makes us feel we can’t be successful, so why bother. Pick the biggest and most impactful behaviors. Wait. And then give more feedback.

When it comes to feedback, keep this mantra in your head – recency, frequency. Recency, frequency. Short, weekly, feedback conversations – five minutes long – are better than sixty-minute feedback conversation once a month or quarter. You’ll see more behavior change and protect team member’s ego. Shorter and more frequent is better.

Ask for Specific Feedback – Make Performance Appraisals More Useful

My son’s first soccer coach would frequently tell the kids, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” As adults receiving performance appraisals, I think we can do better.

Performance appraisals are, for many, the most dreaded day of the year.  Most employees anticipate the meeting, wondering what their manager will say. In addition to hearing about the situations your manager and others in your organization observed throughout the year, why not tell your manager what you’d like to know?

It’s perfectly appropriate to tell your manager if you’d like feedback about a specific aspect of your performance or about your work on a certain project or piece of work. And the time to ask for this feedback is at least one month BEFORE your appraisal meeting.

Most people don’t like to be caught off guard or feel that they can’t answer a question. Asking for feedback in the moment, that your boss can’t address, may embarrass your manager. Don’t put managers on the spot. Set your boss and yourself up for success by asking for specific feedback BEFORE meetings, and give your manager a chance to observe you doing that kind of work.

If you want to know how you manage telling internal or external clients “no”, give your boss a chance to see or hear you do this. If you want feedback on how you built relationships with peers virtually this year, give your boss a chance to observe that behavior or time to ask your peers for input.

Ask a vague question, get a vague answer. Ask a specific question, get a specific answer. If you want specific feedback, let your manager know and give her time to observe you doing the actions you’re asking about BEFORE the feedback conversation.