Are you afraid of giving feedback to under performing team members because you are concerned with how they will react? You are not alone! Many managers who attend our Leadership and Management Skills Courses have booked places to help them address these fears and become more confident in handling specific individuals in their teams.
Best practice in giving feedback includes:
1. Prepare for the conversation ensuring you are clear about what needs to change
2. Getting into the habit of making it a continuous learning process by providing regular feedback
3. Be timely about negative feedback normally within a couple of days
4. Provide them with the opportunity to respond to your observations/situation – they might have a good reason for their actions/behaviour. Remember you might not have all the facts! Influencing you flow both ways on getting a clearer view so be open minded to the facts before making hasty decisions on who is right and wrong.
5. Be specific about what has been done or not done avoiding the ‘You’ language. ‘I’ frame the feedback so they can only come back at you rather the ‘We’ approach.
6. Ask open questions to collect information to enable you to make an inform decisions on ‘what next?’
7. Be clear how their behaviour/actions have affected others – includes internal (colleagues) and external customers
8. Agree what the future looks like and keep the actions SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound)
9. Using a coaching feedback style with open questions to get them to identify the solution(s)
10. Reinforce improvements and/or provide more coaching to maintain momentum
11. Be reflective on how the feedback went and how you can be even more effective next time
If you need help in developing and advancing your feedback skills then join us on one of our Leadership and Management Courses – click here for more details
or call us on 01423 861122 or email us at info@ripleytraining.co.uk
