MANAGEMENT
mary kelly
How to Lead for Helpful Feedback
A
re poor performance evaluations killing your teams? Are your people giving and accepting feedback effectively? Is your productivity suffering
because of it?
Here is a crazy idea that actually works: Stop
using performance evaluations as a report card
and instead treat them as an opportunity to motivate and encourage people who are doing their
job with energy, enthusiasm, and effectiveness.
Performance evaluations should be the paperwork that sums up the series (yes, series) of
discussions between the leader and the team
members. If the ONLY time the leader tells the
employee they are making mistakes is at the performance evaluation, then there is a huge communication problem.
Leaders need to be constantly providing feedback, or, as Marshall Goldsmith terms it, feed
forward, to their people. Think about it. Are you
really going to let someone go for 364 days before
you let them know if what they are doing is correct? Doesn’t that seem to be a mammoth waste
of their time for those 363 days when they have
no idea if they are heading in the right direction?
There are several reasons why managers and
leaders don’t provide effective and frequent feedback?
• They think it has to be a formal process every
time they talk with employees..
• They are afraid of saying something wrong
and possibly being sued. HR and a team
of lawyers have them so scared that if they
correct someone, they feel they need a team
of witnesses.
• They don’t know how to provide feedback
in a helpful, not confrontational, manner,
so they expect the employee to respond
defensively and angrily.
• They have never been taught how to use
feedback to coalesce a team.
• They don’t take feedback well themselves so
they expect others not to accept it either.
• Some (insecure and poor) leaders use
feedback as a means of blaming others for
team failures.
• Managers need to be more involved in what
is going on at work.
A few years ago managers dismissed the
MBWA – Management By Walking Around idea.
However, with the surge on online capabilities, I
www.aamdhq.org
find more managers holed up in their offices. It
is easier than ever for leaders to sequester themselves, only emerging to lead the mandatory meetings where no one participates. So what can a
manager do?
Walk around
Get out from behind the desk and assess the
mood of the team. There is no substitute for “boots
on the ground” and talking with people face to
face. Yes, I love technology for communication,
but that should augment in-person conversations,
not completely replace them.
Ask questions and wait for
the answers
Questions like, “ How are you?” and “How are
things going?” elicit one word answers. “Fine.”
“Good.”
Ask open ended questions such as, “What are
you doing that is wasting your time?” “Is there
anything we are doing that we don’t need to do?”
“How can we improve this project or production?”
“What would help you do your job better?”
The premise is that the employee wants to
do a good job, knows their job, and wants to be
even better.
Be accessible
Yes, you have a lot of meetings. One of my
Marine friends was enlisted and then got commissioned. He was increasingly frustrated in his
new role because, “The troops are all out there
doing what I love doing – training, conducting
military exercises, and doing what we do to be
effective Marines. I’m stuck inside at meetings
and in the office for 10 hours a day doing all of
the budgets, personnel processing, and reports
that make it all happen. So