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Newsletter April 19, 2011 Motivate Your People With Feedback |
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Do you get the kind of feedback from your manager that helps you do your job better? Do you get any feedback from your manager? If you answered "No" to these questions, then you are not alone. In study after study, employees report that they get very little feedback from their managers that motivates and inspires their performance. Of course, there is the obligatory once a year performance appraisal, and the majority of people feel they are very ineffectual and no more helpful. If you are a manager, how much time do you spend giving feedback to your people? What priority do you give it in your very busy schedule? Again the answers are not very affirming. It is important to note, however, that very few organisations train their managers in how to give constructive feedback. Yet constructive feedback can have significant effects on the performance of your people, on their attitude to their work and on their energy levels. Learning how to give it and how to follow up afterwards is an important soft skill for all managers to learn. In this issue of the newsletter, we look at Six Important Keys About Giving Feedback. Feedback takes practice. We don't read a few tips and strategies and then go and make it happen perfectly. If you take even one of these six keys and work on it, it will make a difference to the outcomes you achieve with your people. Check out the Special Offer in the newsletter for people who want some coaching on giving feedback. Let me know how you go by sending me your comments or questions.  Maree Harris. PhD.
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Six Important Keys About Giving Feedback Key No. 1 Be Clear About Your Motivation In Giving Feedback. How do you feel about this person? These feelings are what you take into the discussion. Will they have a positive or negative impact? Are you a perfectionist and want them to be perfect like you? Have you a command and control style of leadership and just want them to do it your way? Is your management style transactional or transformational? Negative attitudes to your people will bring negative responses, positive will bring positive. That sounds fairly obvious, but if we don't stop and think through this first key point before we proceed, we often end up doing exactly the opposite to what we believe. Key No. 2 As Soon As You Have A Concern About Someone's Performance, Act On It Immediately. If you don't and let it simmer, for whatever reason, most managers build up negative feelings about the employee. By the time they have to deal with it - because it is unavoidable - it has become as big as Ben Hur! At the outset, many issues can be addressed in a simple conversation. Key No. 3 Be Clear About What Behaviour You Want Changed And Why. Separate the behaviour/issue from the person. Address the behaviour/issue and don't make comments about the person's personality. This means no blaming or criticising and no judging and moralising. The key is to motivate, inspire and support him/her to change the behaviour. Key No. 4 Work With Your Employee And Engage Him/Her In The Solution. There are 7 helpful steps here. Step 1. Start with saying something positive about the person's work. Step 2. Raise the problem/difficulty as you see it. Be concise and objective. Step 3. Explain why it is a problem/difficulty for you as the manager. From this point on you stop and put one mouth and two ears into operation and LISTEN, LISTEN,LISTEN to your employee. Draw him/her out. "Seek first to understand, then to to be understood" - Stephen Covey's 5th habit of highly effective people. If you listen and try to understand his/her point of view, you are more likely to have him/her understand yours. Step 4. Check out the understanding and acceptance he/she has of what you have said. Give him/her the opportunity to explain the behaviour. Check out whether there are personal issues that have triggered the behaviour, especially if it is out of character. Step 5. Discuss with him/her how "we" can change this. Using "we" and implying that you are in there with the person wanting to help and support usually takes some of the tension out of the discussion. Ask if there is anything you could do differently that would help. Plan a response together that you both agree on. Write down what you have agreed on. Step 6. Set a time to review or follow up. Make it within a fortnight. Step 7. End with a compliment. If he/she has worked through the process with you in a constructive way, it may simply be acknowledging that. Key No. 5 Develop An Organisational Culture Where The Giving And Receiving Of Feedback Is Inherent To Its Success - Not An Add On Or An Extra. This is a culture where mistakes are seen as opportunities to grow and learn, rather than as something to be blamed and criticised for. Such a culture is one where managers are trained and supported to make the giving and receiving of feedback part of their leadership style. Key No. 6 Learn The Art Of Receiving Feedback Yourself. There is a real art to being open to receiving feedback without being defensive about it. Some managers are better at giving feedback than others. Learning how to handle the feedback of those who don't do it so well, and what to do with that feedback also makes a huge difference to developing our leadership skills. Summary. If we can put the feedback process and the behaviour change we want into a career advancement and professional development context, rather than a context of failure, inadequacy or lack, it can make a big difference. In other words, align your expectations and those of the organisation with the person's career goals and help them understand how important this behaviour change is in helping him/her achieve those goals.
SPECIAL OFFER TO READERS. Expires 31st May, 2011. Follow-Up One Hour Coaching Session on Giving Feedback in Your Particular Work Situation Special Discount $99.00 (including GST) (Usually $167.50) Phone for appointment on 03 5333 2900 or 0408 351 631. Face to face where appropriate or by Telephone/Skype.
How To Be More Productive - Just A Few Ideas! Do you often get to the end of a day and be frustrated at how little you seem to have achieved? But how many of you then take time to examine why that was so? If we don't then we can't change and become more productive tomorrow. That's the recipe to becoming disengaged. So here are a few tips for making each day more productive. I have done all of these in various situations and have found they have enormous value. Work in Focussed Bursts. For example, choose a time in the day, say between 9.30 and 10.30 a.m. Focus on a particular task during that time and don't allow anything to interrupt you. Arrange for all calls to be held until after that time. Turn off your email alert and close your door. You may need to tell your colleagues what you are doing so they can support your initiative. There are organisations that do this across the whole organisation. They allocate a certain time of every day for focussed, uninterrupted work. Do First Things First. Every day select the most important task you have to do that day. Do that first - even before checking your emails. It may be something that takes half an hour or it may take 3 hours. If it is the only thing you then get done that day, you will feel good even if the rest of the day goes haywire and you end up achieving nothing more! Manage Your Relationship With Email. This has become a major source of stress and overwhelm as well as loss of productivity. Take control of what you can control. Most important take control of your own urges to check it!
If you are the CEO of an organisation, here's some important "trivia" for you. If a staff member on $75,000 year salary spends 2 hours day on email (which often is very normal), the cost to your organisation in the year is $20,192.31. This has been estimated by allowing an additional 40% to salary for overhead costs (office, phone, equipment, benefits, etc) and then multiplied by 200 days per year. (Source: Solutions for Success)
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