The Feedback Five

As a talent manager, one of the most useful tools is feedback from your employees. Correctly attaining and utilizing this information will enhance employee development. How can you keep this tactic on the up-and-up so that it doesn’t turn into defensive reactions? A recent article from Talent Management.com author Deborah Busser offers five tips to make feedback count.

The predicament with feedback is that it can quickly become detrimental to employee engagement. The entire process of getting the information from your employees can be nerve wracking, like a performance review. How can you keep the nerves at bay and really get the honest feedback? It doesn’t need to be a high-pressure type of situation, and clearly communicating that with your employees is very important. Go for candid, constructive, two-way dialogue versus an interview style session. Here are five tips to help you stay on track when seeking feedback from your employees:

Make it consistent. Feedback should not be an “event” that’s tied only to performance reviews, or worse, only to performance improvement plans.

Don’t base information on impressions or assumptions; ask questions. For example, if an employee needs to be given feedback on not handling a client request well, leaders can consider asking questions about what they were hoping to accomplish in the interaction.

Tie feedback to employees’ personal or professional aspirations. Leaders must take every opportunity to become an “ally” rather than a “critic.”

Link feedback to the big picture. Good leaders give meaningful, informed feedback and tie it to honoring the needs and values of the business and its stakeholders.

Allow feedback to go both ways. Employees needn’t be the only ones who grow based on constructive feedback; leaders can consider soliciting it as well.

Feedback is something that can enhance not only your leadership skills, but the overall organization and your employees. The correct execution of the tactic is the hard part, but you can click here to read the full article and gain inside knowledge about how to make that feedback count.

 

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