Who Dares Provides Feedback

Feedback a Recent Reflection

As long as I can remember I have always viewed the giving and receiving of feedback as a critical skill for leaders to acquire. Recently I reflected  back to an article I had read some years ago that cemented this belief. It was about desensitization chambers and the importance of feedback.

You see, such chambers are designed to deprive the inhabitant of sensory feedback. In one such experience subjects enter the chamber naked and lay submerged in salty water floating on their back deprived of all sensory information; the subject can’t see or hear anything and after some time floating in the water they don’t feel anything either. During this experience many people lose track of time and start to hallucinate.  Put another way - if people are deprived of ‘normal’ sensory feedback their minds start to make it up. Wow! What a revelation it was to me.

Since reading this article I have remained resolute that providing feedback on performance at work, is critically important in the same way as it is in the desensitization chamber- if we don’t receive feedback then we make it up.

A Reflection on the Role of Leaders

What I have witnessed more recently, is a subtle shift in the role that leaders have in the feedback process. The older view positions leaders as the owners and deliverers of feedback. In times gone by many organisational leaders considered feedback as the domain of those with supervisory roles. Feedback was regarded by many as a skill that leaders often used as part of their command and control armoury. The further you go back in time the more mechanistic and unhelpful this view appeared to be.

It seems to me that the older approach has seen it’s day and is unlikely facilitate people to be engaged.

Fast forward to the present and some organisations are beginning to see their people as developing organisms to be nurtured and supported to grow.  Leaders are viewed as regulators of the organisational climate so that the  giving and accepting of feedback becomes a value add in all organisational conversations. Feedback as a ubiquitous activity across the organisation is perceived to be much more helpful and makes much more sense than leaders alone as the providers of feedback.

So it appears that the leadership role has started to change but does that make any difference to the way we provide feedback?

Check out the list below to see if you are aligned and up to date in the way that you provide feedback under the new paradigm.

Key Characteristics of Effective Feedback

 1.     Leaders as Participators in Feedback

Leaders not only provide feedback but also invite others to provide them with feedback. The days of ‘hero’ leaders/teams being the sole providers of feedback is being challenged.

2.     A Relationship of Trust is Essential

The ‘right of passage’ to provide feedback  is for the feedback giver to be trusted source of feedback and must demonstrate that they have the receiver’s interests at heart.

3.     Feedback Requires Strong Listening Skills

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review  “The more you listen the better you are as a feedback giver”.

 4.     Feedback on Behaviours as well as Results

Effective feedback targets both desired results as well as the behaviours that lead to the result. The behaviour is critically important - it is actually the behaviour that leads to results. Read more from the Behavioural guru Aubrey Daniels about the unintended outcomes that arise from focusing on results alone.

5.     Share Commitments and Expectations

Understanding others’ commitments and expectations creates alignment regarding the criteria for feedback. It also provides a strong opportunities for positive reinforcement.

 6.     Provide Feedback that is Balanced

The feedback you provide is a choice ( See also Leaders as Listeners – listening is a choice). Feedback is most effective when there is an appropriate balance of positive reinforcement and correction – typically the must impactful ratio is 4:1.

 7.     Provide Feedback Individually

Feedback has much more potential to be effective when it is provided one-on-one. For more detail.

8.     Be Objective

Stick with what is observed, without providing your interpretation. For a great explanation for need to provide objective feedback.

9.     Provide Measures in your Feedback

To gain reliable information on the strength of a behaviour we need to count the number of times the behaviour occurs. For example, observing someone crying in the office once might be viewed differently than observing them crying in the office every day. Counting behaviour allows us to better understand the strength of people’s habits. Read the article from the Harvard Business Review ‘Feedback without measurement won’t do any good’.

10.  Build Internal Capability

Coaching provides certain performance improvement advantages that feedback alone does not achieve. View this article titled the ‘Difference between Coaching and Feedback’ to better understand the difference. Consider coaching as a viable addition to performance feedback.

At the end of the journey now. Thanks for listening and feel free to contact us if you would like support?