The Art of Effective Feedback

As a business leader, you’ll occasionally be called upon to provide feedback to vendors, employees, and partners.

Good, honest feedback is essential to reinforcing good behaviors and correcting bad ones, but what makes some business leaders so effective at providing quality feedback?

In a recent Entrepreneur post, Gwen Moran explores five key elements of effective feedback.

Integrate

Like establishing any habit or routine, making the act of giving feedback a natural part of your workday will build your proficiency in this area. “Give frequent feedback as you go about your day, recognizing good work or performance while you’re in the moment.” Moran notes that when employers wait until the performance review to address behavior that needs correcting, the effectiveness is diminished.

Calibrate

Effective feedback doesn’t look the same for all employees, so it is important that business leaders know their teams and understand what kind of feedback works best for each of them.

“Being too detail-laden with some people may make them think you’re micromanaging, but not being specific enough may not get your point across.” Some employees may respond better to an in-depth discussion while others need a simple redirect to get them back on track.

Educate

Use feedback as an introduction into organizational goals, and explain how the individual contributions of each employees plays an important part in achieving those goals.

When employees see how they fit into the processes and systems of your organization, any feedback you offer will be more effective and put into action more quickly. They will also respond by offering feedback of their own.

Escalate

Don’t be afraid to take more serious action if your offered feedback isn’t getting the results you want. Employees that are still engaging in poor behavior or performance after several corrections may require a more focused, in-depth conversation to discuss issues more specifically. Moran reminds business leaders to keep feedback respectful and let cooler heads prevail.

Motivate

Praise good work publicly and often, Moran says, and you’ll motivate others in your organization to up the level of their work as well. The most valuable feedback includes a blend of things being done well and things that need further attention or improvement. Leaders who don’t recognize the positive and focus only on the negative risk losing the respect of their team.

How do you provide effective feedback to your teams?