By Bob Hewes, PhD, Senior Partner at Keystone Partners
Master effective feedback for managers with proven strategies. Learn how to give feedback at work, manager feedback best practices, and leadership development techniques.
Effective Feedback for Managers
People need more of it on a timely, regular basis. The challenge is that many managers don’t provide enough of it, don’t do it on a timely basis, or avoid until an annual review. Don’t do that!
We need to provide effective feedback for managers and teams far more often than we do currently. As an executive coach, lack of good feedback is one of the top topics that comes up in our work with clients. It is surprising how much it is needed.
On the flip side, if you practice giving regular, timely feedback and ‘just’ make it part of the course of work, it is much less dauting and even can become easy – or easier. Don’t save it up. Make it a common thing you do.
Here are three elements for providing feedback that are often overlooked.
1. Set it up.
This is an often-missed step. Let your direct report know that as part of a given job, you’ll have regular feedback discussions. So, as part of a task or assignment, you might say:
“I want you to think what worked well and what to do differently next time” and “we’ll go over it.”
Once you have this setup, when you go to talk about an assignment, the idea of feedback at work is already there. This forward-thinking step can make all the difference in some working relationships. It sets up a pattern of: do work → debrief on the work → get better!
This also demonstrates and sends a signal that as a manager and leader, you are creating ownership and setting an example of continuous performance improvement. This also helps employees get better at receiving feedback.
2. Provide clear expectations.
This should go without saying, but we have to say it. Lay out what you are looking for on a job, assignment, or task. Do it very clearly with as much clarity as possible.
For a given assignment describe:
- What is it?
- What does the deliverable look like?
- When is it due?
It is surprising how often when there is a feedback or delegation challenge, the issue is really about clear expectations. It goes back to the beginning. Here is a good approach: once, you have laid it out, ask them to give you their understanding. A remarkable thing may happen. You thought you were clear, crystal clear. But upon their saying it back, you can tell you don’t have agreement yet. This provides you the opportunity to go over it again and achieve clarity and agreement.
3. Prepare!
Yes, you need to prepare what you are going give for feedback. This doesn’t have to be some long ordeal – in fact, if it is, that likely indicates you haven’t given feedback regularly enough.
So don’t go into a meeting cold. Have your feedback ready. This gets easier and easier to do with practice. Your prep time will likely get shorter and shorter. Regular preparation is a hallmark of manager feedback best practices.
4. Practice
Feedback as a concept is easy to understand; that is not the issue. This is a “doing” capability. A great example: you can’t learn to ride a bike by reading how to ride a bike — same here.
To practice, make giving feedback something you do every week – just as a matter of course. Make sure to set it up and provide clear expectations. If you have not done that, regroup on an assignment and start there.
As a next step, practice “setting it up” on the very next assignment you have to delegate. Once you do, it will just become part of what you do and what people expect.
As a step to apply these ideas, provide feedback twice this week and every week for six weeks.
In the end, we should be giving feedback where it is needed not just on a fixed schedule, but at first start that way. Becoming much better at giving leadership development feedback is something any manager can do.
About Keystone Partners
At Keystone Partners, we help organizations and their leaders achieve measurable results through effective leadership development, executive coaching, and career transition services.
If you’re interested in strengthening your managers’ ability to give and receive feedback—or enhancing performance conversations across your organization—our experts can help.