20 Jul Providing Effective Performance Feedback without Damaging Relationships

I got glowing feedback via email from one of the participants who attended a workshop I facilitated this past Tuesday on the theme “Providing Performance Feedback Effectively.”

This complimentary feedback wasn’t exceptional. Every time I facilitate this topic, participants find it relevant and engage with me to learn more.

They understand that providing feedback, especially performance feedback, isn’t easy.

Many star employees don’t want to take leadership initiatives because leading requires holding others accountable.

Unfortunately, one can’t excel at holding others accountable to improve performance without mastering effective feedback that delivers results without damaging relationships.

In my book Overcoming 1st Timer Syndrome p. 165 – 169, I:

1. Discussed the three types of feedback.

2. Offered a 5-step framework to provide effective feedback that delivers results.

3. Shared a couple of considerations to make the feedback effective.

Below is an excerpt from my book entitled “Overcoming 1st Timer Syndrome”.

“8.3. Give performance feedback

Providing feedback is very important, but many leaders don’t do it at all or do it badly. In both cases, they shouldn’t be blamed. Providing feedback is hard, especially negative feedback. However, as a first-timer leader, if you haven’t yet, you should begin to provide feedback to your people and your superiors. Of course, providing feedback to your bosses is beyond the scope of this book, but take note and make it one of your future growth goals, which we will cover in the last chapter. One of the qualities upper management looks for from junior leaders like yourself is your ability to offer constructive feedback to your peers and supervisors.

For now, let’s focus on how you should give proper performance feedback to your team members. I’m sure you have given feedback before. How do you feel about your past ability to provide feedback? Do you think you did it properly? Did your feedback improve performance? If not, what was lacking? To help you assess your past feedback approaches and make adjustments, let me give you some tips.

Overall, in the workplace, we can divide feedbacks into three types:

1. Instant feedback. You give this feedback on the spot, whether privately or publicly. Such instant feedback can’t wait or doesn’t make sense if you do it later. For instance, if you can’t hear someone over the phone or in a virtual environment, ask them to speak up. But don’t give instant feedback that can wait. Performance feedback can wait at least until the next break.
2. Performance-driven feedback. You should make providing performance feedback a culture. People need to know where they stand in terms of their performance. You can use feedback once in a while to let your people know what is working that they should keep on doing and what areas need improvement.
3. Growth-centered feedback. You may decide to grow some of your team members to succeed you or someone else. You need to give them opportunities, such as delegation, to learn the ropes, and then give them periodic feedback to help them grow and become better.

Here, our focus is giving performance-driven feedback. The Center for Creative Leadership has a nice model called Situation-Behavior-Impact. Most feedback-giving models share these three steps. First, you state the situation you’re concerned about, the behaviors you noticed, and the impacts of these behaviors. After that you can use this model as is or customize it to fit your objective conditions.

After trying several versions, I came up with the following steps based on how I have been giving feedback that has worked for me. I will bypass some of the steps when necessary. Try it, and feel free to modify it for your own use.

1. Set the stage. Choose your timing and place. Don’t give performance feedback publicly. Find a private spot. Don’t offer feedback if the person isn’t in the right mood. If she just lost one of her family members, that is not the right time. If she is preparing to go on vacation, that is bad timing. But don’t wait too long to give feedback. It should be given before they forget it.
2. Be as specific as possible. Don’t beat around the bush. Go directly to the issue at hand. State the Situation and Behaviors. Let them know from the start why you’re there. Give them specific examples of the performance behavior you noticed and the impact you’re attempting to alleviate. It might go like this: “I’d like to talk to you about your report (Situation). You were supposed to submit it at the end of last week. Instead, you submitted it early this week (Behavior).” If you wait for the employee to respond, you don’t need to ask any follow-up questions. They will tell you the very reason why that happened. After listening carefully, explain the Impact of their behavior.
3. Offer suggestions(s). After explaining the impact, you may ask them first to suggest a fix to alleviate the impact. Then, if you’re not satisfied or if you have a better solution than theirs, suggest it.
4. Come up with a plan of action. You can simply ask, “How do you plan to address this performance issue?” If they don’t come up with a good plan or if you have a better one, propose it.
5. Monitor and evaluate. Set milestones to measure success and how the two of you will communicate progress.

Here are a couple of considerations as you give feedback:

• Make it conversational. Ask instead of tell. Listen instead of talk. Create the feeling that you two are one team and are there to address the common issue as partners. Put aside your boss’s hat for a while.
• Avoid being judgmental. Don’t come to premature conclusions.
• Listen attentively. You must understand the situation well by listening actively. Don’t listen at level 1, listen at level 2 and 3.
• Demonstrate care. The person is more important than the situation that caused the performance issue. Regardless of how significant the impact has been, treat the person with respect and empathy. You can be tough on the issue but soft on the person.
• Show flexibility. Don’t make up your mind too soon. Be open to being influenced on how to address the performance issue.
• Be supportive. Performance issues take time to resolve. Be patient and render support until the performance issue is resolved…”

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