What can a broken speedometer teach us about giving feedback?
If you are an HR executive or a leader in a business function, you might know the challenge of ‘giving more feedback’. If you are working in the field of HR, the following article might help you to make your executives aware of the importance of feedback.
Imagine the speedometer of your car stops working. Unfortunately your workshop of choice is closed, so you just carry on. For a few days everything is fine as you have been driving long enough to accurately guess your speed. Things change, however, on a long drive across the country. Suddenly you see a police car in your back mirror with flashing lights and a siren instructing you to stop the car.
You stop and the officer steps to your door and tells you that you were speeding. “I’m so sorry, but my speedometer is broken” you reply. He then fines you not only for speeding but also for driving a non-roadworthy car. This experience is likely to leave you feeling aggrieved and even unduly punished.
Many employees feel as punished, as in the example, when it comes to feedback.
They do their jobs, some even try to do their very best and the main feedback they get is silence. Thus they carry on performing their roles and tasks in the same way day after day.
It is just like in the car example; if an employee does not get feedback on a regular basis then how can he or she know if they are on track? Just because you don’t get fined does not mean that you drove at the correct speed!
Not receiving feedback on a regular basis is one of the risk factors when it comes to long-term employee dissatisfaction. This gets worse if their boss approaches them and says, ‘I need to give you some feedback’. Whenever this happens, employees expect bad news. While they are sometimes surprised with a positive conversation, more often they receive what they feared.
For these reasons, feedback has unfortunately developed a tarnished image.
If you nurture flowers, they flourish. If you give feedback, your employees flourish. The vast majority of employees, 87% globally and 91% in South Africa, according to Gallup’s 2013 Workplace Report, are disengaged. This is first and foremost related to a lack of trust and connection between employees and their superiors.
Feedback is a crucial part of creating a ‘we’ mindset in a company.
I’m not suggesting running around every morning and telling all the employees things like, ‘you are great’, ‘you did a fantastic job yesterday’ or ‘even if your presentation sucked, you are great’.
I’m talking about telling your people how you see their work since it shows them, that you actually see them. This includes letting them know what you do not like, what you expected to be done differently and where you were not satisfied.
Now tell me, have you ever received ‘negative’ feedback in a constructive way?
Chances are you did not. Most definitely not in your business environment but perhaps you did in a sporting environment.
Athletes achieve great success not because their coaches tell them only what they want to hear!
World records are not broken with coaches just highlighting what the athlete is doing right. This is of course one part of the medal. The other side is to push the athlete to do what he doesn’t enjoy and to get stronger in areas beyond the comfort zone.
Every sports coach has his own style. What they all want to achieve is to make their athletes better. By hiding the truth from them, they punish them more than by giving them the appropriate and perhaps ‘negative’ feedback.
Employees are desperately waiting for positive and negative feedback. They are waiting for honest feedback. There are simple and effective feedback techniques for leaders that everyone can learn. It seems to me that these are not taught at any MBA course in the world.
‘Negative’ feedback means explaining what was wrong from your perspective and then pointing the employee in the direction of where he can find a solution.
A great teacher doesn’t tell you what to see, he shows you where to look. When I run leadership development trainings the best feedback I receive always comes when the sessions push the attendees in facing their challenges and overcoming them.
A muscle grows only by exercising with ever-increasing weights - not by avoiding them.
More important than having an arsenal of feedback techniques is the behaviour required of executives to turn the so-called ‘tough’ task of giving feedback into a normal act of collaboration.
The lack of action in giving feedback is an active step towards demotivation and mediocrity.
It’s your choice.
