Have you ever given feedback to members of your team, only to discover it has had no impact?
Giving feedback in a constructive and effective way, to manage performance and achieve the results you want, requires some planning…
• Collect any evidence you need and list examples of specific behaviour or incidents you want to mention
• Ensure you have somewhere quiet to have the conversation away from interruptions and dedicate enough time
• Be clear about the outcomes you want, and the expectations you have for improvement
• Play through in your mind how you want the feedback session to go
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When it gets to the meeting you need to:
• Talk about the issue, not make it a direct attack on the person
• Be specific, don’t make vague generalisations – you will quickly lose credibility, and this is where feedback can fail
• Be positive – don’t allow this to become overly negative. You can achieve this by highlighting some of your employee’s strengths, or things they do particularly well
• Tell your employee how this is affecting you or the business
• Give them the opportunity to talk about it from their perspective – there may be an underlying cause you’re not aware of
• Agree together the actions that will be taken to improve performance – be clear about your expectations, and agree timescales
• Check what help is needed from you to support the employee
• Document your discussion – you should send your team member an email detailing what you have agreed whilst it is fresh in your mind
Remember to check in with your employee, to see how they are doing, and if they are experiencing any difficulties with the actions you have agreed. This also gives you the chance to check your feedback has hit the right note, and had the impact you wanted.
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