Feedback Unscripted 2 of 9
In honor of our Learning Cycle Topic of Giving Effective Feedback, my friend and colleague, Angela Fucci, agreed to spend some time on zoom with me role-playing “good” and “bad” attempts at handling a variety of common feedback situations. We laughed, stumbling through some of the awkward conversations, and then discussed our key take-aways.
Giving Performance Feedback
When someone you manage or mentor is not performing, getting them to change can be easier said than done. It may be clear what behaviors need to change to get better results, but after several conversations about those behaviors, things don’t change, or they only change incrementally and temporarily. What most managers miss is the opportunity to discover what is getting in the way and coach around these obstacles.
Here are some of the keys to giving effective performance feedback:
DOS AND DON’TS
1. DO make sure that both you and your employee clearly understand and agree upon the objectives and the behaviors it will take to achieve results.
2. DON’T assume that just because it’s clear to you that your employees actually believe the steps you’ve outlined are possible for them to take, or that they will achieve the desired results. Instead, observe their actual behavior and ask a lot of questions without judgment to understand how they are thinking and what they believe they are capable of.
3. REMEMBER that if someone agrees to change but doesn’t, it’s likely that there is an inner conflict they are struggling with; they may not even be fully aware of it. If you can uncover that conflict and bring it to the surface, it will be much easier to resolve.
In the video below, Angela and I role play a situation where she wants to grow her business but is procrastinating on her sales calls. We contrast what it might look like to get stuck in an ineffective surface level conversation versus a more effective dive into what’s really getting in the way. Our role play and debrief runs a little over 10 minutes. Enjoy!
