Giving Constructive Feedback
How to Use Feedback to Motivate Employee Performance
The best way to give negative feedback constructively is to draw it out of employees with supportive questions.
Every manager needs to give feedback to employees to improve their performance. Managers are like investors: they want the best return out of their resources. It is not enough to assign people to a role (to invest them in a particular place), you also have to keep them motivated and develop them. Managing people is more like property development than investing money. When you invest in property, you need to maintain it and upgrade it to improve its value.
Ineffective managers fail to give constructive feedback because of poor timing or because they lack the emotional intelligence to manage people well. The timing is poor if you give negative feedback when you are upset by what an employee has done or not done. Obviously, if an employee is causing serious harm, then immediate feedback is essential. But if it can wait, it is better to conduct feedback meetings with each employee once a month.
Benefits of Regular Feedback Meetings
With unplanned feedback, the employee is caught offguard and defensive. This approach also conditions employees to expect bad news every time you approach them. The resulting fear is not conducive to open communication.
With regular feedback meetings, employees are prepared. There are two keys to making these meetings a success. First, focus on what has gone well since the last meeting before you get into what has not gone well. Second, get the employee to do most of the talking. So, you begin by asking what has the employee done that he or she is particularly pleased about. Then ask what has not gone so well and what the employee feels he or she should do differently. This way, the manager only has to give feedback if the employee does not recognize or admit that something has not gone well.
Over time, employees will prepare for feedback meetings by thinking to themselves: “What can I do this month that I can say has gone well?” By giving employees a chance to talk about their successes, you motivate them to achieve more successes to have something positive to tell you about. Of equal importance, because they look forward to this part of the meeting, they won't be so anxious and defensive when unsatisfactory performance needs to be discussed. Also, employees simply get used to regular negative discussions handled through sensitive questions
By using questions to draw employees out, you can bring performance problems to their attention, by asking: “Why do you think Tom reacted that way to your statement yesterday?” “What could you have done differently to have avoided Tom's reaction?” The advantage of giving feedback through questions is that they are less confrontational and damaging to self esteem than statements. Clearly, you may on occasion have to state what you think, but these times can be minimized by a coaching approach.
