Manager's Briefcase
Giving and Receiving Feedback - Chapter 4
Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
©2005 by Pamela Lizardi, M.Ed.
May be used as is or with alterations if proper credit is given to the author.

Editor’s note: This issue continues the fourth of eight installments of Pam’s materials. If you need the next installment sooner than the next issue, please feel free to email us with your request. If you need to catch up, please read previous chapters using the links above..

Chapter Four - Steps for Giving Effective Feedback

Chapter Objectives

• Follow the basic steps for reinforcing effective job performance and job-related behavior.
• Follow the basic steps for redirecting ineffective job performance and job-related behavior.
• Understand how the amount of information you give your feedback recipient can help that person achieve individual, group, and organizational goals.
  

Preparing to Give Your Feedback
If you’ve done everything you can to plan your feedback, giving that feedback should be relatively easy. You can begin the process by choosing the time and place to present your feedback.

Choosing an Appropriate Time and Place
Try to give your feedback in a situation where you won’t be distracted by other people or concerns. Plan ahead and make an appointment with your feedback recipient—try to choose a time when neither of you will be too tired or stressed.

Steps for Giving Effective Feedback
If you are giving redirection, you will want to choose a private place where your conversation won’t be overheard. If you are giving the same redirection to a group of people, such as instructing a group of telemarketers on a better way to ask callers to hold, you can present your comments to the entire group. However, under most circumstances, you should not redirect an individual in front of other teammates.

Reinforcement can sometimes be given more informally. If your comments will be brief, you might ask the person to step inside your office for a moment rather than scheduling a formal appointment. If your organizational culture supports public recognition of teammates, you can give reinforcement in front of others, such as during a monthly team meeting. This can be an effective way of recognizing an accomplishment as well as demonstrating to other teammates the type of actions you want to reinforce.

Beginning the Feedback Session
Whether you are redirecting or reinforcing an associate or coworker, try to help that person feel comfortable as you begin the feedback session. If the feedback session is taking place in your office, invite the other person to sit down. Offer him or her coffee or a soft drink if that is customary within your organization. If the other person seems especially nervous, you might try to break the ice with some casual conversation before getting to your topic.

As your feedback session progresses, keep your own emotions in check, especially if you are attempting to redirect a problem that has frustrated you in the past. Your demeanor sets the tone for the meeting—do not say or do anything that would cause the person receiving your feedback to become emotional. Remain calm and keep your voice even throughout the session—never shout at or berate a teammate.

Presenting Your Feedback
Once you have established a positive tone for the feedback session, the process should flow smoothly. Remember that your goal is to specify as much detailed, useful information as possible to help your associate or coworker be as productive as possible. You can do that easily by following some basic steps for reinforcement and redirection.

Basic Steps for Giving Reinforcement
You can give reinforcement that your associates and coworkers will remember if you follow these four easy steps:

1. Describe the behavior or performance you want to reinforce.
2. Explain the positive impact that act has had on the organization.
3. Help your feedback recipient take credit for his or her success.
4. Thank your feedback recipient for his or her contribution toward meeting group or organizational goals and encourage similar future actions.

The steps for giving reinforcement are summarized in the following flowchart.

Step 1—Describe the Behavior or Performance You Want to Reinforce
You should begin any reinforcement session with a description of the behavior or performance you would like to reinforce. Remember, the purpose of giving reinforcement isn’t just to make the other person feel good, it’s to describe the act you want to reinforce in such a way that the person receiving the feedback will be able to repeat it. The more detail you are able to give a teammate in the course of reinforcement, the better they will be able to repeat and build on their work. Consider these two sets of examples: Which responses do you think give the receivers of the feedback enough information to repeat their performance?

1. “Thanks for reorganizing the files, Cindy. They look great!”
   “I’m very impressed with the way you’ve reorganized the files Cindy. Organizing the files by dates makes them much easier to find, and I especially like the way you put the frequently used files on the bottom where we can all reach them.”
2. “Thanks for working overtime last night to proofread the report, June. Hope it didn’t keep you up too late.”
   “Thanks for the extra effort you put into proofreading the report this month, June. I especially appreciate the time you took to check all of the profit and loss figures—I notice you caught several significant errors.”

In each example, the receivers of the second response will know exactly what they should do the next time they perform these tasks..

Step 2—Explain the Behavior’s Positive Impact
Most of us like to know how our efforts fit into the big picture. Learning how our work supports the work of others helps us to see our importance to the group.

Explaining the positive impact a teammate’s actions have had on the team or organization can help that person see the value of his or her contribution and create extra incentive to repeat and develop that act. Again, the more information you can give the teammate about the effect of his or her contribution, the more valuable your feedback will be. Consider the following example:

“I know that with so many teammates out sick this month it took extra effort for you to get the quarterly report out on time. Thanks to your efforts, management had the information they needed to make some important decisions about hiring and compensation; in fact, they approved the new assistant we’ve been hoping for in this division.”

The teammate receiving this reinforcement will know exactly how her hard work impacted her organization and her team.

Step 3—Help Your Feedback Recipient Take Credit for Success

“Oh, it was no big deal. I had a lot of help.”

Although just about everyone craves positive reinforcement, it’s amazing how many people have trouble accepting it when it’s given to them. Many of us were raised with the attitude that accepting a compliment was similar to bragging, or perhaps we just have a hard time believing that we could actually do something right!

Help those you reinforce accept full responsibility for their success. While you can acknowledge the contributions of others if your feedback recipient mentions them, emphasize the full importance of your recipient’s role:

“I realize that the entire team was involved in making the conference a success, but I want especially to thank you for all of your work arranging transportation. Thanks to you, all of the participants arrived in plenty of time to make their presentations.”

As the above example illustrates, providing strong examples of the positive effects someone’s actions have had within the organization is a good way to help a modest person realize the significance of his or her efforts.

Step 4—Thank and Encourage Your Feedback Recipient
“Thank you” is still one of those magic expressions we love to hear, so be sure to say “thanks” whenever you present reinforcement. Including your thanks toward the end of your reinforcement, after you have described the act and its effect, can be particularly effective because it will be the last thing the teammate takes away from the interaction.

As you thank your feedback recipient, encourage his or her to keep up the good work. Make sure your feedback recipient knows that you hope to see the positive behavior or performance repeated in similar situations.

Basic Steps for Giving Redirection

Redirection consists of six basic steps that will help your feedback recipient see the impact of his or her acts and plan for the future:

1. Describe the behavior or performance you want to redirect.
2. Listen to the reaction of your feedback recipient. Your feedback recipient may immediately admit there is a problem and take responsibility for it (Step 4), or you may need to…
3. Clarify your expectations for your feedback recipient’s behavior or performance. Or explain the negative effect those actions are having on the organization.
4. Help your feedback recipient to acknowledge that a problem exists and take responsibility for it.
5. Develop a plan that will help your feedback recipient adjust his or her actions.
6. Thank your feedback recipient for his or her efforts.

The steps for giving redirection are summarized in the following flowchart.

Step 1—Describe the Behavior or Performance You Want to Redirect
Once again, you should begin the feedback session with a description of the behavior or performance you want to redirect. If the act you are describing is ongoing, try to cite more than one instance of it so that your feedback recipient can get an idea of the extent of the problem, as in these examples:

• Behavior in need of redirection:
  “Bob, you were late to work three times this week and twice last week. You were also late five times last month.”
• Performance in need of redirection:
  “Martha, I found five typing errors in this letter you just finished, and you misspelled the client’s name. I also found typing errors in the last two letters you typed for me.”

Notice that in both examples, the person giving the feedback simply describes the behavior or performance in question without making a value judgment or expressing anger or disappointment. Beginning your feedback in this way will keep your redirection focused on acts rather than attitudes.

Step 2—Listen to the Reaction of Your Feedback Recipient
Once you have given a detailed description of the behavior or performance you hope to change, give your feedback recipient a chance to respond. Three responses feedback recipients often give include acknowledging the problem, expressing confusion over expectations, or refusing to accept responsibility..

• Acknowledging the problem
Often, employees are aware of a problem and have been waiting for an opportunity to discuss it:

“I know the formatting on the reports has been difficult to read. I’ve been trying to use the new software, but I just can’t figure out how to do it. Can someone show me how?”

If you receive a response like this, it shows that your feedback recipient has taken responsibility for the problem and is ready to correct it. Congratulations—you have completed Step 4! No further discussion of your associate or coworker’s actions is necessary: the two of you can immediately begin to develop an action plan to correct the problem as described in Step 5.

• Expressing confusion
Of course, not all feedback sessions will resolve so quickly. Your feedback recipient may respond with confusion regarding your expectations. Perhaps your associate or coworker never understood (or was not given) a clear description of his or her job duties; perhaps expectations for the job have changed over time:

“I didn’t realize that I was supposed to provide the figures by the beginning of the month—I thought that any time during the first week would be fine.”

When you receive a response like this, your next step should be to clarify your expectations with your feedback recipient, which we describe in Step 3a.

• Refusing to accept responsibility
Occasionally your feedback recipient may admit that a problem exists but refuse to take responsibility for it. We’ve all heard (and possibly given) responses like:

“It’s not my fault! It’s the people in accounting.”
“I’ll try to do better, but you know, there just isn’t enough time.”

In situations like these, your challenge is to determine whether some outside factor is affecting your feedback recipient’s ability to do the job or if he or she is just making excuses. This is especially difficult if your associate or coworker is behaving defensively.

Try to get past your feedback recipient’s defensiveness and focus on the content of what he or she is saying. If there are factors within the organization or work team that are keeping him or her from meeting your expectations, use this time to address them. As your associates and coworkers see that you take their viewpoints seriously, their responses will become less defensive and more cooperative.

Of course, there will also be times when you listen to an associate’s or coworker’s explanation and determine that you must hold that person responsible for the problem. If your feedback recipient remains defensive, try to focus the conversation on the effects of his or her actions as we discuss in Step 3b—this is your best evidence that a problem exists.

Step 3a—Clarify Your Expectations
If your feedback recipient is surprised or confused by the expectations you and other team members have for his or her performance, take the time to clarify them. This might involve referring back to the original job description or reviewing the directions your recipient has received for performing certain tasks.

As you review your expectations, be sure to give your associate or coworker plenty of opportunity to respond. Be sure that your feedback recipient agrees that the expectations are reasonable; if he or she doesn’t, you may need to point out that other people in the organization are working just as hard, or you may need to readjust your expectations in some way. Whatever you negotiate, by the end of this step, you and your feedback recipient should agree on a set of reasonable expectations, and your feedback recipient should be ready to acknowledge his or her responsibility for meeting them. You can develop this further in Step 4.

Step 3b—Explain the Action’s Negative Effect
The best way you can help a defensive feedback recipient recognize the need to redirect his or her actions is by giving a thorough description of the effect those actions are having on other members of your team or organization. Again, you should simply state the facts without expressing anger or making a value judgment. Here are examples that illustrate two descriptions we used earlier:

“When you’re late, other teammates have to fill in for you until you arrive. Joe had to work overtime twice this week until you arrived, and Sara had to cover for you last week. It isn’t fair to the others to expect them to cover for you, and it hurts the quality of our work to keep tired teammates on duty after their shift is over.”

“When we send out letters with typing errors, it looks as though we don’t care about our clients, especially when we misspell the clients’ names. We could lose business if our clients think we don’t value them.”

Descriptions like these should help your feedback recipient see the impact of his or her behavior or performance and take responsibility for adjusting that action. If your recipient is especially defensive, keep returning to your examples until he or she is ready to accept responsibility and work out a plan to promote change.

Step 4—Help Your Recipient Acknowledge That a Problem Exists and Take Responsibility for It
You and the person to whom you are giving feedback cannot collaborate in redirecting behavior or performance until he or she acknowledges that a problem exists and takes responsibility for correcting it. You will know that you have this agreement when you hear your feedback recipient say something like, "Yes, I agree, there is a problem here. What can I do about it?”

If your feedback recipient is slow to acknowledge the problem and accept responsibility, you should continue to present evidence about the extent of the problem until you have agreement. What kind of evidence can you use to convince your recipient that a problem exists and that his or her behavior or performance needs to change?

• Stress the negative impact that the individual’s current performance or behavior is having on coworkers and the organization as a whole.
• Convince the individual that he or she will face significant consequences if the behavior or performance continues.

If you can get people to recognize the negative consequences or adverse impact of something they are doing, they will usually agree that it is a problem.

Step 5—Develop an Action Plan
The goal of any redirection is improving future performance and behavior. It isn’t enough just to point out the need for change to your feedback recipient—you also need to develop a specific plan to help him or her set and meet objectives.

Although you should have some short- and long-term goals in mind before you begin your feedback session, you will want to involve your feedback recipient in the planning process. One way you can do this is by stating an overall goal and then asking for the other person’s input on how to meet that goal. Here is an example in which an administrative assistant redirects her manager’s difficulty with deadlines:

Admin. Asst.: Ms. Wagner, I really want to get your correspondence typed on time, but I have difficulty when you give me your tapes to transcribe a half hour before the mail has to go out. Is there some way you can give me more time?

Manager: It’s difficult. Those are open cases, and I often don’t have the information I need until the last minute.

Admin. Asst.: Well, could you let me know at the beginning of the day if you think you’ll need me to transcribe something? That way I could organize my work so that my last hour is free for your projects.

Manager: I think I can do that.

Though the administrative assistant might not have gotten as much time for her transcription as she would have liked, she was able to involve her manager in a solution that would help her organize her time effectively, which was her primary objective. When the manager remembers to tell her associate about upcoming transcription, the associate can reinforce that action by saying something like “Thanks for telling me so early. I can get much more done when I have the opportunity to organize my day in advance.”

Step 6—Thank Your Feedback Recipient for His or Her Efforts
It can be hard to accept redirection. Show your feedback recipient that you appreciate his or her efforts by closing your redirection with a “thank you.” This can also be a good time to summarize your conversation and make plans for future meetings:

• “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about the sales figures. I really appreciate your willingness to spend an extra day on the road to do follow up, and I want to help you any way I can. Let’s get together when you’re in the office next week and see how things are going for you.”

Staying on Track
These steps for giving reinforcement and redirection will allow you to give useful, supportive feedback that focuses n acts rather than attitudes. Following these steps should get you through even a potentially difficult feedback situation with a minimum of stress. But the steps can help you only if you follow them. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted in the course of a feedback session. Even if your feedback recipient tries to steer the conversation onto other topics or becomes argumentative, focus on the steps. They will give your feedback session direction and ensure that you provide your recipient with as much useful information as possible.

Documenting Your Feedback
Too often we’re so busy handling day-to-day worries that we forget to make note of the positive things we encounter. If you have given an associate or coworker reinforcement on a significant achievement or project, don’t forget to document your feedback for that individual’s personnel file. Making a record of your positive assessment will help that teammate receive the rewards and recognition he or she deserves when performance is reviewed.

You should also make note of any redirection that you give. Even if you do not think that the problem is serious enough to include in the teammate’s personnel file, keep a record of the redirection for yourself. Include the types of details we discussed in Chapter 3—these are the key elements of good documentation:

• What happened?
• Where and when did it occur?
• Who was involved?
• How did it affect others?

If the receiver of your feedback successfully redirects his or her performance, you will have a record of the feedback process that will help you track the teammate’s success. And, in the unfortunate event that the teammate does not respond to redirection and the problem becomes worse, you will have documentation that you attempted to deal with it. This could be significant if the problem becomes so serious that the teammate must be disciplined or terminated

Chapter Four Review
True	False
		1. There is no need to worry about scheduling an appropriate time for giving feedback. You can provide redirection and reinforcement anytime, anywhere.
		2. It is perfectly all right to redirect an individual teammate in the presence of other teammates.
		3. List the four basic steps for providing reinforcement.
		4. List the six basic steps for providing redirection
		5. It is important to document both reinforcement and redirection..
Get the answers.

Pamela Lizardi was appointed as the Training & Staff Development Administrator for the Trial Courts of Maricopa County in July 2003 after serving as the Training Coordinator for Maricopa County Limited Jurisdiction Courts since March 2002. Pam has spent over 22 years in the United States Army in various positions both in the active service and the National Guard. Pam has written numerous training programs, most significantly is Improving One-on-One Training. Pam has a successful 19 year training background. Recently she completed her Masters in Education with Ottawa University, graduating Suma Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA. She received a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from the University of Phoenix. Pam is also adjunct faculty with Mesa Community College in the Judicial Studies program. She holds certificates from Arizona Dept. of Education in teaching Career & Technical Education, Business & Marketing, Adult Education, and Secondary Education in History & Business. Pam continues her to learn with two organizations, National Association of State Judicial Educators and the American Society of Training and Development, along with additional college classes.

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