Giving feedback is a challenging task, especially if the message you want to communicate is not a positive one. On the other hand, staying quite may be even worse option in the long run. What to do, when you feel that someone behaved inappropriately and you think this may reoccur? My advice would be to go ahead after challenging task and give the feedback.
The biggest difficulty with giving feedback is a fact that you cannot control how it’s being received. All you can do is to make sure you send your message in the most effective way possible. If you managed to cover that piece though, there are good chances that conversation will bring expected results.
Let’s have a look on how to effectively give a feedback:
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Build your message – there are a few things to consider in this area, but first of all prepare a message that you will be communicating. Make sure you know exactly what you want to cover when providing your feedback. Some key points:
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Always reference only to person’s behavior – regardless how tempting it may be, never discuss other aspects like experience, expertise, believes, personality, skills etc. That will help you to have focus discussions on something that both of you experienced and can reference to quite easily.
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Focus on how person’s behavior make you feel – most probably you cannot be certain how other people would feel in similar situation. Thus focusing on your emotions makes feedback more credible. Overall it will be quite difficult to argue about the way you have felt. Moreover, in this way you are not referencing to person’s intentions, which always might be misinterpreted. Finally, such feedback may be easier to accept as it does not include blaming.
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Make it focused – make sure you focus on maximum two or three issues. Otherwise feedback recipient may not understand or even remember what you were covering. Pick the most important things to discuss, to ensure those areas are communicated.
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Be specific – it’s very important to be as specific as possible. Avoid speaking about ‘some’ situation, that happens ‘so often’ or ‘all the time’. Instead describe two or three specific instances where you believe discussed behavior occurred. That will help to focus your conversation on feedback points, instead of questioning what you are saying.
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Be timely – it is quite connected to above point. Imagine that someone would like to discuss with you situation that occurred six months ago. There is a risk you don’t remember these events at all. Or even if you do, you do not recall specifics that discussion should focus on. Moreover you could question why somebody is waiting that long, if topic is worth discussing. To avoid such problems make sure you provide your feedback maximum a week or two after something inappropriate happened. Also if you have already build some relation with the person, do provide feedback on regular basis, both positive and constructive one. Creating informal feedback loop helps you to avoid problems like above described timing.
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Logistics – finally make sure that feedback conversation can be made in comfortable environment. It will be probably one to one conversation, so find quite place to ensure privacy. Also use relatively relaxed time to have such chat. It’s not good to have such discussions, when there is key deadline chasing either of you etc. Additionally make sure that all you are discussing is treated as confidential and stays between you and feedback recipient.
Hope you will find above tips useful. Moreover remember that giving feedback is only one part of that story. Receiving feedback properly is even more important and you can read about it in my article titled: ”Receiving Feedback – Top 5 Tips’’
Let me know if you like this article in comments section.
Below summary in graphic form.
