Giving Feedback That People Can Hear

The goal of feedback is to improve performance by increasing people’s self-awareness and understanding about how their actions affect others and how others perceive them. So feedback can provide a much-needed reality check.

But if the feedback you give seems to have little impact on behavior, maybe it’s because it’s not being given in the most effective way. Writing in The Harvard Business Review Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London, offers ideas about what might be going wrong. Among them:

• You may not be giving enough negative feedback – A focus on strengths alone won’t illuminate gaps between how employees think of their performance versus actual measures of that performance.

• You don’t give people enough of a narrative – People need concrete examples of how their behavior is affecting others. As we have also long said, be specific.

• You are not speaking in a way that can be heard – Use your personal knowledge of the employee to craft a message that can be taken in. In other words, know your audience.

Finally, feedback shouldn’t begin and end with a performance review. As Chamorro-Premuzic says, “That’s just the beginning of the actual coaching, which requires follow through…”

We want to hear:  How do you offer feedback and how do you like to receive it? Do you feel the feedback you have received has altered your behavior? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

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