Giving Feedback for Improvement
How to Provide your Team Feedback for Improvement
As a leader, you can be tasked with uncomfortable confrontations, like providing a team member feedback for improvement. While we know the importance of consistently celebrating your team members' wins, big and small, there are also times when you need to help team members grow to their full potential. Offering feedback for improvement is essential to success.
The stigma of giving feedback is because people find it uncomfortable and worry about discouraging team members. You might be surprised to learn that more than 75% of people believe that feedback is valuable, and it has an impact on their job performance. Further, over 65% of people want MORE feedback.
The benefits of providing feedback to your team are numerous. According to Gallop, when providing feedback to your team, you are helping by:
Supporting agility: When given correctly, feedback enables your team to pivot and adjust quickly when something is not working.
Motivating your team: Team members are 3.6 times more likely to improve performance when their manager provides regular and consistent feedback.
Increasing company retention: Today, people want to work in an environment with meaning and purpose. As a leader, it is crucial to acknowledge your team's effort and progress.
How do you provide feedback to your team that does not disengage them? Thankfully, there is a simple framework that helps motivate your team members to better themselves and their practices to succeed. This framework has helped me lead successful salespeople and has allowed me to be a happy leader.
Framework for Providing Feedback for Improvement
When a team member has done something and you need to provide feedback for improvement, it is essential to remember that your feedback is not a criticism; you are doing this to help them improve.
Provide immediate feedback. Have a conversation with your team within 24 hours. It is important not to wait any longer.
Prepare for the conversation. Make sure to write down your thoughts so that it is an effective conversation. Write down:
What specifically happened? What was the unfavored behavior?
What was the effect and result of that behavior?
What is the desired behavior? It is important to be concise, clear, and specific.
What is going to be the positive result of the different behavior?
Meet with your team. It is essential to meet face to face, whether in person or over video. Communicate the answers to your four points above, then listen to what they have to say and write it down.
How you communicate is most important when you provide immediate feedback. You want the recipient to feel that you are their coach and believe they can improve, and you are giving them this feedback because you want them to be successful. Do not focus only on the negative. Be empathetic during the conversation and listen to what the recipient has to say.
If you would like to learn more about how to be a Happy Leader, contact Tia today!
Arrive At Happy’s mission is to inspire transformation through the science of happiness. Tia Graham, founder, partners with organizations and individuals to increase their daily happiness and success in all areas of their lives. Relying on science-backed empirical data, she has gained the insight needed to prove and teach that happiness indeed leads to success.
Tia has a Certificate in Happiness Studies and a Certificate in Teaching Happiness from Harvard’s Tal Ben-Shahar and The Happiness Studies Academy. She is a Certified Chief Happiness Officer from Woohoo Inc., Europe’s premier Happiness at Work organization.
Sources: Oak Engage “Employee Feedback Statistics you need to know for 2022” and Gallop, “How Fast Feedback Fuels Performance”