Mastering the art of feedback is no easy task for HR professionals and employees alike. Whether it’s navigating the three distinct types of feedback, or mustering the courage to give feedback in the first place, almost everyone can agree on the challenges that arise when having these types of conversations in the workplace.
On Monday, Reflektive hosted a Salon on Evolving a Culture of Real-Time Feedback for customers and employee-minded HR leaders led by Elaine Lin Hering, Consultant at Triad Consulting. Elaine guided attendees through conversations that defined what feedback means and how to receive feedback with a positive outlook.
In order to learn how to properly give and receive feedback, it is important to realize that there are three different types of feedback: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation (ACE). This model is covered in the Thanks for the Feedback book (Viking 2014). A Harvard Business Review study found that 72% of employees thought corrective feedback could improve their job performance. The issue? Most employees don’t know how to properly ask for feedback from their managers, and vice versa.
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When we asked Elaine, she said that requesting “appreciation” feedback can be as simple as asking: “What is something that I’m doing that is making your life easier?” Being concise and direct in a request for feedback makes it much easier for a manager to provide an honest example.
On the flip side, when requesting “coaching” feedback, try something such as: “What’s something that if I were to change would make a difference to you?” This example gives the manager some bandwidth to provide coaching advice and course correction, which is the overall objective of coaching feedback.
As feedback providers, managers need to be clear about which type of feedback they are giving to avoid confusion and increase the effectiveness of feedback conversations. That being said, the best thing feedback receivers can do is ask questions and ask for examples to better understand their feedback. Rajeev Behera, CEO of Reflektive, also presented at the Salon event and briefly touches on in this video how to master the art of feedback.
At the end of the day, feedback education is important, but employers and managers need to equip their employees with the tools to ask for feedback.
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If you are looking for more tools to improve your company’s feedback culture, join us for our upcoming webinar on creating a culture of appreciation: http://evolve.reflektive.com/appreciation_webinar.html