Three mighty feedbacks which can elevate your leadership role to the next level

I recently completed yearly performance evaluations for my direct reports. I truly admired the process and the power of giving useful feedback and how much it can influence employee’s morale and productivity. I used to serve as Toastmaster for several years, where I developed several mentees through evaluation programs. Over the years, I have seen the apparent contrast of giving feedback in formal and informal settings. The power of providing useful feedback is massively underrated.

I had my share of lessons learned as a people manager. I realized how giving wrong feedback can affect reputation as a leader and, at the same time, impacts his/her contribution. On the contrary, the right feedback to staff at the right time can significantly boost his/her morale, deliverables, loyalty, and of course, our credibility as a leader.

When it comes to feedback, there are several variables to consider. Not all feedback is the same. Every feedback solves a specific purpose, and it has its own merits and demerits. We can classify them in 3 simple categories. Choosing the right feedback category at the right time is momentous to create a long-lasting impression.

Appreciation

Appreciation is the most straightforward form of feedback and the most effective. What I like the most about this is its effectiveness with little or no side effects. As Mary Kay Ash puts it, “There are two things people want more than sex and money… recognition and praise.”

Every person, irrespective of gender, race, culture, craves appreciation. Our society, as a whole, diminished the value of recognizing others. No wonder our children are addicted to video games, which continually gives rewards & appreciation for their every step.

Appreciating the effort is critical irrespective of its outcome. People tend to give appreciation only when the mission accomplished. But in reality, appreciation is most needed when a sincere effort is doomed to failure due to unfortunate situations. Make use of every meaningful opportunity to appreciate your teammates. Appreciation is like sugar in coffee. Little or no sugar will leave your coffee bitter; too much will make the coffee undrinkable. The right amount depends on the staff’s personal preference, precisely like their taste of the coffee. So knowing your employees a bit closer will help a lot in their appreciation need. Taking them for coffee will indeed help.

Finding the right effort to appreciate your employees is an art. Appreciation for insignificant things will diminish the value of your appreciation. Appreciation needs to be timely and crisp.

Evaluation

Evaluation is the most challenging form of feedback. Being a Toastmaster, I have done 100s of evaluations, where we taught to find the positive aspect of a person and appreciate it before giving constructive feedback. In the corporate world, we talk about sandwich methods, where we provide the harrowing points between appreciation. As Frank A. Clark said, “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots. That’s why I prefer Toastmaster style because it insists on the SMART objective focusing on the top 3 improvement areas. Giving an evaluation at the year-end stating the employee did not perform a specific task only shows the incapability of a leader. Manager in the Serial Winner category (Refer my Linkedin article) will look for data points throughout the year and give continuous timely evaluation points and rate the staff on that basis. This is not an easy task, especially in technology domains. That’s what makes a people manager’s job exciting. Leaders need to do some critical thinking for every employee throughout the year to accomplish evaluations. Post evaluation employee needs to be clear on where he/she stands in terms of where he failed irrespective of its continuous inputs from the manager.

Evaluation is like a Gantt chart where an employee can see where he/she stands in terms of its expected deliverables. That brings the most important aspect of goal setting for every employee. If the objectives are not clear, the evaluation will tend to fail miserably, creating unhappy, dissatisfied staff leaving him/her to look for another job or deliver mediocre performance for yet another year.

Coaching

Leaders typically don’t take up this form of feedback as it’s complicated and most time-consuming. Coaching needs constant monitoring of employees. Leaders need to work with the employee regularly to help him/her changing behaviors and habits. Leaders need to pinpoint mistakes and improvement points on a real-time basis as it happens.

Neither managers have time to do this, nor it’s possible in today’s world where we are told to deliver more with less consistently. But I am very fortunate to have managers walk with me in my journey for which I am indebted forever. But leaders should open up this option to their direct reports where they can touch base on a case to case basis as needed and add significant value to his/her members. Leaders should hand over the ownership of coaching to respective employees. We have to encourage staff to ask for help. As Barack Obama says, “Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.”

These 3 impactful feedbacks surely change the way your staffs see your leadership, and you will reap the benefit in terms of high motivation, loyalty, and improved productivity.

We all have different conditioning & prospective, which make us see things differently. When managers give feedback, it’s vital to understand data points he/she shared are viewed using the same pair of glasses by the staff. It’s strange to note that we all have our blind spots. As leaders, we need to be extremely careful that our blind spots don’t come in the way of our feedback.

Feedbacks are powerful. Using appropriate types of feedback at proper times is a skill every people manager needs to master. Corporations need to understand every manager represents the brand to their staff. Corporates need to enable platforms to allow continuous feedback not just for managers but across all levels.

What’s your preferred feedback method? I hope I have given some value to ROI for your time. Now it’s your time to provide me with feedback. How did I write this article? Your leadership transformation starts from this click :)

#leadership #feedback #personaldevelopment #peoplemanagement #motivation

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.