Episode 32: How To Give Feedback That Doesn’t Suck
You’ve got a full plate already and taking the time to give feedback sometimes gets pushed down on our to-do list.
When you give regular feedback to employees you are signaling to them the things that are important to you and the business so that they are able to focus on so that things get done and goals are met.
It also helps to build better relationships, which improves retention. But admit it, most feedback we get sucks. So don’t give sucky feedback to your team!
In this episode of the podcast I’m sharing:
➡️Why feedback is important
➡️What your feedback should include
➡️How often you should provide feedback
➡️Following up on feedback that is given
Full Transcript:
Welcome back to the Upgraded Career Podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we are talking about how to give valuable feedback to your employees. So last week I shared a story of a client of mine who is super, super senior in her career, leads like a, like over a billion dollars in project. Revenue with her global team and her boss that she's been reporting to for quite a few many years shared with her that she thought, he thought that her.
[00:01:38] Executive presence could use some work. And she was just really confused by this feedback because it just wasn't valuable, it wasn't helpful. So I'm here today to help ensure that you as the amazing leader you are, are just giving that really great feedback to your employees. How do we actually do that?
[00:01:55] And feedback. As we know is just so important to our employees and just to our business to ensure that we're, you know, driving our business forward and our employees are doing, are doing their best work possible. And I found that a study that PWC did a few years ago, and they found that nearly 60% of survey respondents said that they wanted more feedback.
[00:02:18] They wanted feedback on a daily or weekly basis. And for the respondents of the survey who were under the age of 30, that number actually increased to 72%, which makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you are early in your career, if you're someone who. That's right outta school, for instance, you are accustomed to getting regular feedback by the way of grades, by your professors and by your teachers, right?
[00:02:46] So you're so used to getting regular feedback. You always knew where you stood in terms of how you were doing in school. And then all of a sudden we tossed them into the corporate world and they are now. Running around trying to, trying to figure things out. And they are not given the type of feedback that they're accustomed to anymore, or especially they're not, it's not given to them as regularly.
[00:03:09] So why is feedback important anyway? It feels like it can take a lot of our time, a lot for us in terms of our time as leaders, which is certainly true.
[00:03:19] We know that we could be doing a million different things every single day at work, but by you giving regular feedback to your employees, you are signaling to them what are the right things for them to be focused on. What are the things that are important to you? What are the things that are important to the business that they should be ensuring that they're spending the most focused?
[00:03:38] Time on, obviously another. You know, main reason why you would want to give feedback to an employee regularly is to correct any issues, right? If there's some challenges or if they're just not meeting the mark on certain parts of their role, this is a way for you to correct those issues before they really get outta hand.
[00:03:58] This is something that I saw in my corporate HR days where managers hoped that, oh, you know, that performance blip, you know, it'll iron itself out, or I'm sure it won't happen again, or, I don't wanna be nitpicky, or I don't wanna be viewed as micromanaging or anything like that. So they tend to not say anything until the problem gets to a place where, They just can't stand it anymore or it's really, really causing some major problems.
[00:04:27] And then the employee's like, well, dang, I wish you would've just told me about this, how long ago I would've corrected it then Now it's probably at a place where it's gonna be really difficult to correct, or again, the. The, um, the fallout from any of those mistakes or issues or whatever could really be big at this point now.
[00:04:47] Um, and if the manager had just said something earlier on, we wouldn't have a big thing on our hands at this point. Right? So the other reason why you would want to make sure you're giving regular feedback is just for motivation and engagement of your employees, like again, People want to hear how they're doing good and bad.
[00:05:07] Your employees want to hear, I. If they are hitting the mark, if they're meeting expectations, if they're not, and how, how can they continue to grow? That is one of your best tools in your toolbox in order to ensure that you're motivating enga and engaging your teams. And of course, if you are motivating and engaging your teams, that leads to retention.
[00:05:30] I think I've shared a story here on the podcast in the past about an employee that. Amazing. Amazing employee, total Rockstar. No one ever told her this. No one gave her this regular feedback that she was viewed as a high potential and one of the top performers on the team, and when we needed to make some changes.
[00:05:53] In, in the organization, we decided to put together this Tiger team to go after this really specific segment in the market and we're like, let's put our top performers on it. And when I started, we, we communicated that to this person and apparently she wasn't super thrilled about it. And a couple weeks later she ended up resigning and I had, um, I had an exit interview with her as part of my role in hr.
[00:06:17] And I was like, oh my gosh, you know what happened? You know, I. You know what happened? You were just put on this team and she was like, oh, I didn't know what was going on. I thought I was being punished, and I was like, oh my gosh. No, you, I. You are a rockstar. You were, you were chosen as one of the top performers to be put on this really important project, put on this really important team to go after this really important, um, market for us as a business.
[00:06:43] And she was like, oh, well, no one ever told me that. So she thought she was being punished, so she quit. You know? So again, if we want to motivate and engage and, and on the other end of that, retain our top employees, we need to make sure that we are giving them so, Really, really focus in specific regular feedback.
[00:07:01] Again, both good and bad. Your top performers want to hear all of those things. They wanna hear when they're doing really well and they wanna hear the areas where they can do even more or you know, step up their performance even further. They want that. Your top performers absolutely want that. And finally, one of the benefits of.
[00:07:19] Providing just really great regular feedback to your employees is you're developing really strong relationships and really trusting relationships, right? Because again, you're not going to be giving feedback to somebody if you don't care. So for me, I remember getting some really tough feedback from a leader in my career, and that brought us even closer together because, You know, she cared enough about me and my performance, not just about the business, but she's like, you know, I want you to do well, and I see you're struggling right now with this.
[00:07:51] And it just, it meant a lot to me that she came out and shared and shared that piece of feedback with me and I was able to adjust and shift and move forward. And again, what that did was it really, really strengthened our relationship. And I'm still again, close with that leader today. So we can all agree that feedback is super duper important as part of our roles as leaders.
[00:08:18] So how do we actually give really good feedback? How do we, how do we actually do this? Because I can appreciate that. We want to make sure that we're saying the right things, we're saying it at the right time, and we're doing it in a way that's motivating for each of our employees. So the first thing that I would say is, how do you wanna make su how?
[00:08:37] How can we make sure you are actually giving valuable feedback? Well, first and foremost, we have to start by laying the foundation of having clear expectations. It's kind of unfair or, and challenging to give really clear feedback to someone if you haven't already established. What good looks like, right?
[00:08:58] If you haven't told somebody what good looks like or establish what those expectations are, you're gonna have a harder time providing that feedback. And they're probably not gonna take the feedback very well if they're like, well, that was never explained to me that that was an expectation. I didn't realize that that was.
[00:09:15] Something I was supposed to be doing or doing it in this particular way. So again, first and foremost, we can't go any further in this feedback conversation until we have established super clear expectations on what good looks like. And again, your employees want to know that. Your employees want to know what they should be doing, what they should be working on, because they don't wanna be spin spinning their wheels.
[00:09:40] I can tell you that I personally have felt. You know, really demotivated and super frustrated when I didn't know what I was supposed to be focused on. What were the expectations? I, that was super frustrating for me, and I see, hear that from my clients as well. So let's lay that foundation and groundwork with super clear expectations.
[00:10:01] Then whenever you are going in to give, um, your really clear feedback, first and foremost, I also think we should be giving, um, getting their perspective and listening as well. I think that, again, most of the time your top performers probably know. When they're doing well, and they probably know when they're missing the mark.
[00:10:24] So again, for me, I am super self-aware when I mess something up, I'm su, I'm highly critical of myself. Go back and listen to the podcast episode on perfectionism and I talk more about that there. But I am super self-aware whenever, whenever I mess up or I'm, or, you know, I'm not, I'm not hitting the mark.
[00:10:44] So sometimes you might think, okay, let me actually kind of start this conversation with my employee with just first getting their perspective. Because then you can either, yeah, I agree with your perspective or your assessment of how you were, how you did in that meeting, or how that project went, or whatever.
[00:11:03] And then you can close any gaps if there are differences. So first I recommend, you know, getting their initial perspective on, Hey, how do you think that presentation went? Or, Hey, how do you think the project's going? Just, you know, it's a really great, easy way also to open the conversation if you're like, well, Not really sure how to start the conversation and not have it be awkward.
[00:11:25] Start there. Just ask 'em how they think they're doing and then listen. Truly pause and listen to their response, and then you can, you know, share, share your thoughts.
[00:11:38] So after you get their perspective and you listen to how they feel, the project or the situation or whatever, whatever it is that you're talking about is going, then you can go in with your own. Feedback, and it's so important at the stage to make sure that the feedback is specific and constructive.
[00:11:57] Again, remember when I was talking about that my client that she's like, I can't do anything with this feedback. It doesn't feel constructive. It doesn't feel helpful. It doesn't feel useful. In fact, it did the opposite and she ended up stewing and spinning on it and getting really, really frustrated. Um, by, by this really vague feedback.
[00:12:14] So let's be super specific and super constructive on it. We're not here to tear people down and nitpick and all of those things, and I know that about you. You're an upgraded leader. I know that about you, but I think it's still worth saying that for you as a leader, you're not going in here trying to hurt somebody's feelings.
[00:12:30] That's, and you're not going to do that as long as you're making the feedback, again, specific and constructive. And the next thing I would say is ensure that the feedback is future focused and actionable. Again, I can tell you that I am super self-aware about my performance and how things are going, especially on the flip side when things are not going so well.
[00:12:52] So I don't need anyone to hark on the mistakes that I made, or, boy, that was terrible. Or do you remember two months ago when this happened? I don't need that, cuz believe me, I've already replayed it over and over in my head 30,000 times. So, Again, we wanna honor what happened previously, but we want the feedback or the, the next steps to be really actionable and more future focused.
[00:13:17] Like, Hmm, yeah. So that, that, um, presentation, you know, didn't, didn't go so well. It sounds like the customer was, um, not really following and was, was kind of confused about what was going on. So how can we, um, fix that moving forward? How can we make sure that we don't fall into that trap? Next time and again we're, we are recognizing that maybe a mistake had ma had been made or, or that the performance wasn't as great as it could have been or we expected it to be so.
[00:13:46] So now let's just talk. We can't change that, right? We can't change what, what the past, what past happened, right? We can't change that. So let's now focus on how do we move forward and make the feedback super actionable. There is nothing more frustrating than someone being told about. A piece of feedback or something that like, they can't do anything with it, right?
[00:14:10] Like, I can't action on this, I can't make it better. Um, so again, and even, and, and the feedback that is, you know, keep doing what you're doing, that's not feedback either. There's not, that's not actionable, that is not constructive, that's not helpful, that's not specific. The next thing to consider when you are giving feedback to your employees is just to decide when the right time and place is.
[00:14:35] So first and foremost, feedback should be regular. It should be as timely as possible. We should not be holding fee feedback from our employees until an annual performance review, right? Your annual performance review, or even if you do quarterly reviews. That should, those conversations should just be, again, reviews of conversations you have already been having all along.
[00:14:57] a Gallup study recently showed that employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to do outstanding work when their manager provides daily feedback versus just annual feedback. So again, Daily regular feedback is super, super important to, again, motivating your employees, helping them really reach their top performance and really reaching their potential, which in turn is moving the business forward in a really big way.
[00:15:25] But the other thing to consider here is just when is the right time in place to have this feedback? You'll have to kind of judge that based off of your employee's personality or just judge that based off of the situation. So, I recommend asking someone, when is the best time to hear that feedback, or maybe setting the stage up front to say, Hey, we're gonna go into this customer meeting, and then we're gonna schedule some time afterwards to debrief and walk through it together.
[00:15:53] That's, you know, you're setting the stage that somebody's, you're gonna provide feedback to that person. At that time. But you might again, consider ask, just asking someone like, Hey, how did you think that meeting went? You know, well, um, when, when would be a good time for, for you, when you're in the best mind space to kind of process how that went.
[00:16:14] And then for me to share my perspective and my feedback, just ask them. Um, because again, some people might need more time to kind of, Again, decompress maybe after a big customer meeting or after a big presentation or something. And some people might like, I wanna talk about it right now because it's top of mind, so you're just gonna have to decide that.
[00:16:33] But again, especially if things didn't go well, especially if things, if, if you're, if your feedback is more, um, on the constructive side or more on the. Um, more on the improving performance side. You might again decide, okay, let me give this person a few minutes or a couple of hours, or maybe let's talk about this tomorrow versus in the moment right after it happened, right?
[00:16:56] They just, it, it, that might not be the right time.
[00:17:00] So again, we want feedback to be as timely and as regular as possible, but use your judgment, use your leadership judgment with that particular person or that particular situation to see, you know what, this might not be the best time to have a productive conversation around somebody's feedback. You know, so maybe we'll share with them, Hey, let's talk tomorrow about how that meeting went.
[00:17:22] You know, why don't you think through, you know, how you did anything that you would do differently next time so we can come together and talk about it together. Set the stage that you are gonna talk about it. But again, in right in the moment, especially if things aren't going, didn't go so well, you might decide to wait a couple of hours or even the following day to have that discussion with them.
[00:17:42] So the next point in giving really valuable feedback to you, to your employees is to ensure that you are being balanced with a feedback. This is, Really, really, um, important, particularly when we're talking about helping somebody navigate poor performance and really helping somebody, you know, come out of that and really improve because we want, again, to be clear and specific about what's not working, what good looks like, and where those gaps are.
[00:18:11] But we also don't want to be in a place where we, again, are nitpicking. We're just like, nothing is going well, everything is bad. You know, and that's probably not true, right? I'm sure there, there are. I'm sure there's some aspects of their performance that is good. But what we also don't wanna do is dilute the overall message.
[00:18:29] So this is why it's important to give feedback regularly, and we don't hold feedback until, you know, once a month or once a quarter, or. Good gosh, once a year. If we are regularly giving feedback and catching people doing good stuff, then particularly for those employees who might be struggling, you know, they're getting those small doses of reinforcement that like, Hey, you did improve on that thing.
[00:18:54] Hey you, I, hey, I noticed that, um, your, uh, that your report was, didn't have as many, um, Didn't have as many uh, errors this time, you know, that's really great. Keep that up. You know, let's, let's, let's get that to, you know, 98% air free or whatever. So again, we want to make sure that we are focused in our message and we're not diluting the message, but we also don't, um, we also want to be balanced and make sure that we are, um, helping our employees, particularly the ones that who are struggling, really come out of that with some positive reinforcement.
[00:19:32] The next way to ensure that you are giving. Really valuable feedback to your employees is making sure that you are focused on the behavior and the impact. Don't focus on personality traits or, again, things that are really vague. Um, one time I had an, I had a manager come to me and wanted to pull an employee off of a project because he thought they were weird.
[00:19:54] He was like, they're weird. I can't put them in front of customers. And I'm like, Okay, explain what weird is. They're like, we're, they're just weird and awkward. I'm like, okay, we're, we're focused on personality traits here, not on act, the actual behavior or the actual impact that it's having on the customer.
[00:20:11] The manager could not give me any clear, clear, clear examples of, of what being weird meant and what being awkward meant. And I was like, I'm not pulling somebody off of a project. because of this really vague and feedback that's really just about somebody's personality, and it turns out the employee was autistic and n neurodivergent.
[00:20:38] And so I. That's also discriminatory and harassing behaviors. So we don't want that. Um, so again, we wanna make sure that we are focused very specifically on the behaviors that we are observing and the impact that the, that the behaviors are having. So, you know, one thing that. An employee might question or wonder is, well, what does this matter?
[00:21:00] What does it matter if, you know, this is the language that I use in meetings? Or what does it matter if, you know, if I bring in, you know, additional, uh, I bring in additional revenue, like both good and bad, right? Like, what is the impact that by you doing this, You are bringing in more paying customers.
[00:21:21] They're, we're upselling our customers and which is generating more revenue for the business. This is amazing. Like we wanna understand the impact of the great things that we're doing, and we wanna understand the impact of maybe the things that. Aren't going so well, particularly when we're talking about behavior, because, you know, sometimes it can be really easy to give feedback to people when it's like super clear about numbers and metrics and things that are, that are really, um, objective.
[00:21:47] But a lot of times in my, and again, in my experience, a lot of times the feedback that we need to give our employees are a little bit more behavior based and just a little bit squishier, right? And so, So making sure that we're, um, that we are sharing the feedback and feedback in a way that helps people understand, hey, when you talk over people in meetings, it makes people feel like you don't care about their perspective and that you're the smartest person in the room and that, um, their information does not matter.
[00:22:18] And so that's really demoralizing for them, and that makes people not wanna speak up. You know, sharing that impact is gonna be really, really important.
[00:22:26] So after you've given your really valuable feedback to your employee, you may decide that you want to create an action plan together in order to move forward. So again, if particularly if we're talking about really critical or really critical feedback with somebody that's struggling on a, in a particular spot.
[00:22:46] You might decide to create a plan together to help them move forward and kind of pull out of that. But I would also say if you have an employee who's just like, you know, really crushing it, doing a great job, what's the action plan there for them to either get to that next level or to turn around and train, you know, the next employees that are coming up?
[00:23:08] What are those actions to help this person move forward and do it next? Continue to reinforce the things that you are wanting to see out of them. And. After you create this action plan, it's also really important for you to set a time to follow up because we wanna make sure that employees don't feel like this is a one and done conversation.
[00:23:32] Set a time to follow up and actually do that. actually do that. Actually set that time and follow up and follow up again, so you can make sure that this feedback doesn't get dropped or we don't forget about it. My final piece of guidance on giving really valuable feedback to your employees is just making sure you're documenting it.
[00:23:50] And this can look a couple of different ways. So this could just be either maybe you have, you know, just a document that you have with each of your employees names on it, and you're sharing, you, you, you're just kind of jotting down the conversations that you had, just the pieces of feedback. That you provided so that when you do go get to a performance evaluation or a more formal process, you've got all of those things there that it, so you don't have to like rack your brain to remember in trying to figure out what it is that, that you talked about earlier in the year.
[00:24:20] The other thing you is that you might decide to send an email to the person, right? You might say, Hey, um, you know, Hey Kelly, thanks so much for the conversation today. Um, we talked about this, this, and this, and we agreed to this, this, and this. Keep up the great work. Let me know how I can support and send.
[00:24:38] That's it. Super simple, super clear. Again, um, it's validating again, the positive feedback that you're giving them, you know, so that they can, they can be reminded of all the amazing stuff that they're doing. Um, you can also make sure that you're doing this again, if performance isn't where we want it to be.
[00:24:59] And we're really just kind of helping the employee really see clearly in writing, you know, where they're struggling, what you see, what you discussed in that meeting. Cuz a, frankly, you might need it from an HR perspective if we need to move forward in some sort of a performance improvement plan or something like that.
[00:25:18] But also I think that's just really kind for the employee because I know with me sometimes it's hard for me to process things. Um, kind of just auditorily, auditorially, is that the word? I'm not sure. Anyway, it's hard for me to process like verbal instructions. Um, which is funny because I. My preferred way of communicating with people is verbally, but if I'm getting instructions, it's way, way more helpful for me and I'm way, I'm more likely to retain it if it's written down.
[00:25:49] So again, if you're, if you're giving some really clear instructions, some really clear feedback to someone who, again, is struggling in their performance, if you send them an email afterwards, just to kind of, just to kind of summarize the conversation and just be really clear about what you all agreed to.
[00:26:04] Again, they can read over that and they can be like, yes. Okay, now I get it. I understand. I'm able to, again, I ha can sit with this a moment and really process it, or they can, this is their, their way of being able to say, oh wait, now that I'm reading this, this is not how I thought we talked about this in the meeting.
[00:26:21] I definitely missed something here. So, you know, again, it's, it's, it's an opportunity for them to also ask some clarifying questions if. Clearly they missed something in that conversation. So again, documentation doesn't have to be super complicated, doesn't have to take you super long time. But I also, I think it's really that, um, that that next level upgraded leader who.
[00:26:44] Takes that extra step to send that documentation. So that's everything that I had for you today. I hope this was helpful and useful as you are going about the year and sharing really amazing feedback with your employees in order to again, motivate and engage and also move the business. Forward. If you like this information and you want more of it, head on over to my website@nicolekspeaks.com slash newsletter and sign up for my weekly newsletter where you can get more actionable tips and insights directly from me into your inbox every single week.
[00:27:19] But until next time, thank you so much for tuning in. And remember, your career deserves an upgrade.
