We are sometimes asked “if there was just one thing that a team could do to improve its overall performance, what would it be”? There is little doubt in my mind: the ability to deliver personal feedback to each other in a constructive and helpful way.
“If you were doing something that was annoying / upsetting / or just racks others off, and you didn’t know what it was, would you like to know”?
Having run this session hundreds of times by now, the answer is always “yes”
So do we always do it? Do we heck
There are all sorts of things which get in the way.
Reasons I have been given are:
Fear the reaction, which might range from tears to violence
Fear the consequences, especially if I want to tell my boss something
Fear of losing a friendship, your best friend will seldom give honest feedback for this reason
Fear of damaging the good working relationship we have developed over time
But these are only our perceptions, which seldom produce these reactions in reality, and remember, all people would like to know…!!
So is it possible to learn a technique to overcome these difficulties.YES is the answer.
One of the most useful and practical ways I have discovered (and it works for me) is to try this. Before delivering some feedback that may be described as negative, think about something positive that you have seen the person doing.
For example if you have sat through a presentation that actually took twice as long as it should have done, going to someone and just saying it was far too long, is not very helpful
Next, always offer an alternative that they might like to consider trying next time. If you can’t think of anything you would have done differently, then don’t just criticise.
Deliver the feedback in a structure of:
- What I liked
- What I disliked
- What they might consider doing differently next time
So the technique in practice might sound like:
I really liked the way you illustrated your presentation with interesting pictures and diagrams.
What troubled me was the length of time you took to complete each section.
In order to retain everyone’s attention, in future you might want to think about how you could still cover the content but take less time in doing so.This is a delivery technique that can be learned, but there is only one way to learn how to do it effectively by doing it.
Often something happens between what we want to say, and what we actually say when faced with a real situation and the person sat in front of us. However, providing the feedback is genuine, sincere, and meant to help the recipient improve, by practicing, it will become second nature to you, trust me I have been practicing and improving for a good while now.
