We’ve all been in positions where we have had to receive feedback for work that we have done, be it in the formal setting of the workplace or even through the comments sections of sites like Steem. Many of us have also been placed in the rather unenviable position of having to provide feedback, which is a task that seems like it should be easier than it actually is. In fact, many who have to provide feedback find that they struggle to do so in the manner that is required to ensure the feedback is constructive, without veering too far into negativity that the person they are speaking to becomes offended.
This means that there is a certain art of feedback that revolves around what you say and, crucially, the way that you say it. It is certainly essential, with as many as 75% of people stating that receiving regular feedback is important to them, with some stats suggesting that people are around two times more likely to become disengaged at work if they feel as though management is ignoring them. So how do you go about doing it right?
Should I Go Positive Or Negative?
The first question that is likely to arise when you are tasked with providing feedback is whether you should go in with a positive slant or a negative one. Unfortunately, there is no real black and white answer to this as the truth is that you are going to have to incorporate both.
This has led to the rise of a technique called the “compliment sandwich,” whereby positive feedback is provided, followed by something negative, and then wrapped up with something positive again. It is a technique that we have all been subjected to, but even that may be a little too cut and dry. In fact, some believe that it is entirely ineffective as a means of providing feedback.
In reality, it is usually best to consider the individual who is receiving the feedback and what their needs are. As a general rule, those who are new to a company or role need to be provided with more positive feedback than negative, as it is important to keep morale high and encourage that person to develop. This isn’t to say that the negative aspects must be avoided, but they should certainly be carefully phrased. Instead of telling somebody that “You’re doing….wrong,” you could say something along the lines of “Have you considered this approach?”, or “What if we tried…” This encourages further thinking on the part of the receiver, without degrading them via flat statements of negativity, and around 92% of people believe that negative feedback delivered appropriately can be very helpful.
Conversely, those who have achieved a high level of expertise will usually be much more receptive to the negative side of things. After all, if you are proficient in a task, you don’t need to be told so again and again. Instead, information about what you can do to build your skills and where you may be going wrong is much more valued, so you can consider being a little more straightforward in your feedback, though not to the point where you are actively insulting the person.
So when it comes to the choice of whether to provide positive or negative feedback, you really need to take the individual into account. What is important is that the negative is not ignored entirely, as you will be missing the point of giving good feedback.
Creating A Comfortable Environment
So now that you have decided on the gist of what you need to say and how you want to deliver it, you need to consider the environment that you are going to place the recipient in when providing feedback. According to Kevin Ochsner, who is a neuroscientist at Columbia University, those who receive feedback apply it about 30% of the time and much of this has to do with how comfortable they feel when receiving the comments.
Naturally, anything that feels confrontational is likely to raise the ire of the person receiving feedback, as is the feeling that they are being ganged up on by multiple people. While this doesn’t mean that you should avoid group feedback sessions entirely, it does mean that you need to be careful with them. If they devolve into everybody pointing fingers at a single person in the group, you are much more likely to see that person saw “screw it” and not bother actually listening to what is being said.
Perhaps the best tack to take is to make the session as conversational as possible. When providing feedback, make sure that you give the individual the chance to respond and engage with what you have said. Allow for questions to be asked and be honest in your answers. Creating a safe environment is of the utmost importance, so be aware of where you say things, as well as what you actually say.
Try to Offer Advice
Employees want feedback. It helps them to develop as professionals and offers them the opportunity to find out what they need to do to advance to the next level of their careers. This is borne out by the stats again, with 65% of people claiming that they want more feedback than they are currently receiving.
That point about advancing professionally is vitally important to consider when offering feedback. Talking for talking’s sake is going to do no favours for anybody and simply highlighting a person’s flaws, or even their positives, makes the session too dry and doesn’t result in anything actionable that can be taken forward.
As such, for every point that you want to touch upon when providing feedback you need to ensure that you have some meat behind it that employees can actually get their teeth into with the aim of making improvements. If you have something negative to say, make sure that you discuss the real-world implications of what the issue can cause and, more importantly, what can be done to fix the issue.
Perhaps more difficult is offering advice when you are praising somebody. After all, if somebody is receiving good feedback that means they must be doing something right. However, again you need to consider development. Just because something is good, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be made better. Furthermore, if you feel positive about a person’s performance you can generally feel safe about asking for more. This sort of advice could even be conversational in nature, resulting in the two of you spit balling ideas to see what improvements could be made.
The final thing to consider here is that you need to be specific in the sort of advice that you give. Vagaries like “you should be more assertive in meetings” do little to help anybody. Instead, break down the issue that you see and offer specific advice on how a person could assert themselves amongst others. You could perhaps ask for that person to offer at least one opinion in meetings going forward, or discuss things like the use of body language in order to demonstrate confidence in what they say and make it more likely that people will listen.
Don’t Forget On The Spot Feedback
Having said all that, not all of the feedback that you provide needs to come in a formal environment. In fact, 80% of the so-called “Generation Y” claim to prefer on the spot recognition over more formal feedback sessions.
This is an important stat to take into account when providing feedback and you need to recognize that there can be a certain amount of dread that envelopes the traditional annual feedback sessions, especially amongst people who are not used to them.
On the spot recognition can do a lot to bolster confidence quickly and help the employee understand that they are on the right track. A little bit of public recognition, especially if it is off the cuff, will also show the team as a whole that their work is appreciated and recognized by management.
That isn’t to say that only positives need to be confronted in this way though, as this technique can also be used to build an employee’s confrontational skills. Of course, you again need to frame any on the spot negatives correctly. Challenge employees to provide you with answers about why they have made certain decisions and don’t do it in a bombastic way that is intended to humiliate the person in front of their peers, as this will often just create resentment.
So as a general rule, be loud and proud when providing positive on the spot feedback, but keep things quieter and more conversational if you need to discuss a negative.
When You Should Act
This brings us to our next point of when you should act once you have spotted something that merits giving feedback. Of course, on the spot recognition can be provided instantly, but what about subjects where you need to go into a little more detail?
Many managers save all of this major feedback for annual reviews, which often means that the issues that they want to cover have gone a little cold by the time they actually provide their feedback. This isn’t going to help at all if you need to offer feedback on a specific project or an issue that is affecting the workplace right now.
The importance of maintaining regularity in feedback is also demonstrated by the fact that 43% of people who are considered to be highly-engaged workers receive feedback at least once a week.
With that in mind, you could consider creating a weekly model where you hold a sit-down session with the employee to discuss their work over the previous week or so. Not only will this allow you to provide the feedback that you wish to talk about, but such regular sessions will also allow you to stay informed about the progress of projects and may even highlight further issues that need to be expanded on.
Of course, being too regular in your feedback, such as trying to speak to your employees every single day about work-related issues, can lead to some feeling as though they are being singled-out, takes the employee away from their work too often, thus breaking their flow, and also reduces the initiative of your team members. So keep it regular, but don’t go overboard.
Don’t Be Afraid To Receive It
As a manager you are probably going to be more used to receiving feedback from your superiors and providing it to your teams. This is nice and structured, but it also ignores the fact that the people who are working directly with you are often going to have useful things to say about what you could do to improve.
As such, you should not be afraid of receiving feedback from employees. After all, professional development isn’t reserved for those who are lower on the totem pole. This also ties into the safe environment issue we discussed earlier, whereby if an employee feels as though they can speak freely without fear of reprisal, it is more likely that good progress is going to be made by the collective.
Of course, you will likely need to deal with the fact that many employees are a little hesitant to offer feedback to their managers, so use prompts like “What can I do to help you?” and “How can we work together to resolve this issue?” Most importantly of all, don’t flare up if you receive something that you perceive to be negative in response. Maintain your professionalism at all times and be wary of such sessions devolving into emotion-based shouting matches that end up achieving nothing of any worth.
The Final Word
So what conclusions can we draw from all of this? Well we can certainly see that offering feedback is a little more complex than some would have you believe and it often takes management professionals a little bit of time to get things right. These final pointers should offer a good foundation in the art of providing feedback, but your efforts to improve shouldn’t cease just because you are hitting all of them:
- Be positive in tone and presentation, but don’t be afraid to confront the negative issues that need to be dealt with.
- Create a safe environment for the receiver rather than being actively confrontational and accusatory.
- Provide feedback regularly to keep employees engaged with their work and ensure they feel valued by the company.
- Offer actionable advice and try to set goals based around the topics that you cover.
- Consider multiple ways of providing feedback that extend beyond the sit-down meeting.
- Don’t be afraid to receive feedback from your team, as this can help you to make the collective more efficient and productive.
Keep all of that in mind and you should find that your efforts to provide feedback have more effect.
My wallpaper a few years ago :)
Haven't seen that one before. Ouch on #8 hehehe :)
Sometimes feedback isn't always wanted and if you give it without warning, it can be taken badly.
If you're unsure, ask if the person you're talking to would like some feedback. This helps prevent misunderstanding and opens the receiver to hearing what might otherwise be seen as negative criticism.
Most of the time it's individual specific, true. I think more eccentric personalities tend to not want feedback. These types of people are usually a gem to have, but very hard to get to work with others.
Exactly. A lot of time ends up being spent fighting to get your point across and removing the notion it's a personal attack, which feedback isn't.
Sadly sometimes you're just unable "to remove the notion it's a personal attack"... I have personal experience when a person says to my face one thing and I'am left in believe that everything is fine, but then I discover that actually she've understood me all wrong, and for two years no improvement to the situation, she just wouldn't talk to me honestly. So I left all attempts of feedback and keep silence and distance, unfortunately this brings unpleasant consequences for a child she is raising. :(
I find that the art of "tough love" works best both online and offline
The art of "tough love" is something you first encounter if you've ever worked in the cooperate world. I'm not a fan TBTH, very ruthless mentality and very KPI based. I prefer startup style feedback when everyone works together in a more chilled out fashion.
I guess it has to do with the person as well.
As a professional author and editor, I deal with feedback and criticism all the time - both giving and receiving, and I agree with most of your points about how to provide feedback.
Being positive in tone and presentation is certainly one of the best approaches in my experience. There's a reason it's called "constructive" criticism. Using an opportunity to give feedback and just running someone down is never going to result in the person receiving the feedback taking it to heart.
This is of course more of an issue with creative types than those in the business world - especially when it comes to fine art and literature. Artists are notoriously thin-skinned, and unless you ensure that you provide negative feedback in a positive way, creative content creators can get very upset - and then the feedback doesn't have the desired effect.
Glad I read through the comments and found this post. I think you're right that writers and artists can be sensitive to criticism but, at the same, if someone has engaged with your work closely enough to be able to criticise it, then that's a pretty good start. It shows that there's something there that the reader thinks it's worth drawing out, and if they are prepared to spend their time making your work better then that's a great compliment.
Anyway, I'm excited about what your skills as an editor and an author can bring to the fiction community on Steemit :)
I think you've hit it right on the head there. The idea is communicating to someone you're giving feedback to is that you're invested in their success enough to want to improve it, and make it the best it can be, helps people - especially creative types - understand that even if you're telling them ways they can improve, it's coming from a positive frame of reference.
And thank you! I'm doing my best to offer feedback where it's wanted and just general help in many of my posts.
I read the word "wise" here my upvote.
.... Thanks
Great post. Thank you for it.
For the record, I found it thanks to this post:
https://steemit.com/dailydiamonds/@asuran/daily-diamonds-from-authors-worth-to-learn-from-4
Cheers to @asuran For picking this post !
Thank you for this awesome post. I am struggling a lot with feedbacks. Recently I changed my style to point out good things first and encouraging future development. This helped me to encourage others and people received my opinion more openly.
I featured your post because I liked it: https://steemit.com/dailydiamonds/@asuran/daily-diamonds-from-authors-worth-to-learn-from-4
Thank you very much @asuran.
I would also add: 'give specific advice'. Instead of saying 'you did a good job!', say 'I really appreciate the way you dealt with the problem of Mr. X.'
keep it up!
Receiving feedback is tough for a lot of people for sure including myself. And sometimes when someone says something constructive it is easy to just get mad and say to yourself. "They don't know shit." But sometimes part of what they say might actually be valuable insight. Thank you for posting!
Great read, thanks! Yes I agree feedback is always good no matter positive or negative, outcome is that it helps you to grow, do things different, better!
I view it positively :D
Kind words. Thank you kita.
yes,,, I liked your article
Sometimes it's tough to accept negative feedback. I rarely do so on Steemit, rather leave none at all, which depending on the influence of your vote, is pretty much the same thing.
Although business orientated, it can be applied to SteemIT pretty well. Negative feedback (or opposing thoughts to OP) usually creates a backlash of rebuttals, rage flags and in general a bad vibe IMO.
I saw a post yesterday that was essentially a means to put affiliate links out there. I thought about giving negative comments for that, but opted to not.
For SteemIT ? I did a similar post around a month ago because Dan and Ned haven't created a roadmap of the future growth for Steem.
They was Amazon Affiliate links for books
the hard part is not trying to turn an other's project into something you want it to be -- you've got to help the author mold it into what they want it to be
That usually happens in smaller companies or startups that aren't really sure what the product/service etc will be. In cooperate companies there's no chance you will have this kind of flexibility hense my dislike of "their" system.
I love this post! You really dug deep into the subject, An easy but informative read. Its definitely important to give and receive feedback on things in life so you can adequately improve. Thank you.
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I like the way you touch on the intent of feedback. It's very important! If you're interested, I've just written my take on critique and offered a helpful framework for it here: Hey! Checkout blog post on Steem https://steemit.com/design/@spencec6/a-critical-analysis-of-feedback