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 As you can probably tell, every week I basically wait around for Sunday’s Dilbert like it’s my job.

Anyways, as usual, this past Sunday’s comic highlights another very important aspect of management and that is performance feedback. Now I’ll admit that I’m not quite old enough and haven’t worked long enough to have people work for me, but I have been on the receiving end, and I have directed a summer camp for the past few years, have been a Co-Chair of the Hindu Students Council at Penn, and have generally held other leadership positions that required me to give feedback to my counselors, my fellow board members, etc. Performance feedback is critical to the growth and success of any organization, and yet it is often handled very poorly. I guess this makes sense though, because it is often very difficult both to give and receive feedback (especially when it is negative). In large organizations it seems that people are pawned off to each other and that each boss will sometimes pass the difficult feedback situations up the ladder as to avoid awkward confrontations with their employees. It will always be a touchy subject, but in my opinion there are a few important measures both parties can take to ensure that feedback is constructive and useful as opposed to hurtful or discouraging.

If you’re on the feedback giving end…

• Lay out clear objectives, expectations and deadlines right from the start. It may take a little extra effort at the beginning to be thorough but it makes it much easier to evaluate someone objectively and fairly at the end. Be willing to discuss these expectations and deadlines and make changes as appropriate, because sometimes the work flow may go in a direction that you didn’t expect.
• Set up regular times to chat. This helps the employee/counselor/etc. organize and schedule their work and helps both parties to catch mistakes or oversights along the way. A second set of eyes is always refreshing, and when you have to explain what you’ve been doing to someone else it forces you to clear things up for yourself first.
• If you are going to be critical, give specific examples. And, this might be a little silly, but it helps if you offer examples of when you’ve made the same mistake in the past. It makes you more human, and makes the criticism seem less harsh. Also, outline some specific steps one can take to make amends. And mentioning a general time line for improvement is useful too.
• Don’t try to sugarcoat your comments or make a bunch of disclaimers. This usually just makes someone feel worse.
• Write down what you want to say before you go into it! It’s a lot easier to think about what you want to say when you’re not face to face with someone. If you plan ahead, it prevents you from forgetting or neglecting to say something “in the heat of the moment”.
• Formally invite the other party to give you feedback. Just saying “if you have any questions or feel like you aren’t getting enough instruction just let me know” won’t cut it.
• Finally, be careful to avoid falling prey to the fact that we gravitate towards people like ourselves. Just because someone has similar interests, style, or sense of humor as you, or as Dilbert points out is particularly attractive, doesn’t mean their work is better (although it’s great if it is!). Be sure to separate these characteristics from your objective feedback session. This doesn’t mean that you can’t extent a special invitation to spend time together outside of the work environment or take on an elevated mentor role for the person as I’m sure this will be greatly appreciated. The relationships we develop at work or in any organization most certainly give it meaning. In fact, sometimes they even give us a greater sense of accountability, and that is always good news.

If you’re on the feedback receiving end…

• Prior to the feedback session from your employer/director/etc. do your own self evaluation- even if it’s not required. Often this helps you to predict what the other party will say even before you start. This means you are better prepared to respond and have already had a chance to think about how you might make changes in the future or figure out any questions you might have.
• Accept praise elegantly. Nothing annoys me more than people that reject compliments, and I end up not complimenting them anymore. Confidence in your abilities is appealing and puts the feedback giver at ease. This doesn’t mean you should be arrogant of course.
• Accept criticism as a learning opportunity and be aggressive in understanding exactly what the problem was. Sometimes we brush past these things and avoid details because we don’t want to think about it. That makes it difficult to fix in the future.
• Be as thorough and thoughtful in your feedback of your supervisor as you’d expect them to be in yours. This encourages open communication and reminds managers that their actions and behaviors really do matter! Don’t be afraid to give compliments because you feel like you are sucking up. As long as you are genuine, it will be appreciated. They are, after all, only human- and we all enjoy some encouraging praise every once in a while. You’d be surprised at how nervous feedback sessions make managers/directors too.

This is by no means an exhaustive list (although my earlier post on lists might lead you to believe it is). Several stem from my recent experience at Brilliont (I can assure you they do everything right!) and I hope it is somewhat insightful.

If you have feedback for me about this list, please feel free to post a comment. That’s about as formal an invitation as I can arrange for on here

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 11:41 am and is filed under Management Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.