The Art of the Possible

Some do it every day, some do it weekly, some do it weakly, yet others weakly try to do it. Some do a lousy job of it and there are those who use it to leave their colleagues breathless but satiated. You guessed right. The skill in question is about giving your colleague feedback about areas of improvement. Most managers try to avoid giving feedback unless thrown with their back to the wall or while reviewing performance.

Chances are that if you told a colleague that needed to give them feedback, they would walk into your office with a feeling of dread. Expecting you to lambast them about stuff they had not done. About deadlines they have missed or about colleagues who they have miffed in the course of their existence. When you hear someone say, "Can you come to my office for five minutes? I need to give you some feedback..." the greater probability is that your first reaction is not to expect anything positive being told to you. Leaders and visionaries often set themselves apart by getting their teams used to the idea that feedback is also about telling someone that they just did a good job.

Giving someone feedback to drive improvement in performance is a tougher act. Most people dread it. Performance improvement is driven when people understand exactly how their actions, behaviors or choices had led to an undesireable result. So the more accurately the link between action and results is established, the clearer it is to an individual on how to improve. Some managers go a step further and suggest what alternative action would have led to success. People learn if the person giving the feedback also shares the manner in which he or she evaluated the alternative choices that led to the final outcome.

I have often heard people say, "I don't like to sugar coat my feedback. I like to tell it like it is." One must be truthful and accurate, but without being hurtful or abrasive. Feedback that hurts the self esteem of the receiver will never produce behavior change. So before you sandpaper your colleague's self-esteem with your version of the truth missile, just ask yourself if the intent behind the feedback, is to help the person improve or lie their bruised and bleeding. Most people are sharp enough to figure out if the intent was to hurt or was it to help the person do better. You can identify it so clearly when someone is not being truthful or biased or is merely saying stuff to hurt. Right? So can the rest of the world. If your feedback is just making the recipient defensive, chances are that your feedback is coming across as an attack. No matter how valuable your suggestion is, no change will happen.

The term feedback is neutral. There is no such thing as giving someone "positive feedback" or "negative feedback". The recipient classifies it as helpful or unhelpful. Hence this can be a very strong tool to drive change in behavior. Feedback provides guardrails that can nudge a person's behavior in a desired direction if handles patiently. Every manager owes it to his or her team member to invest time to coach and give feedback that reinforces good behavior and builds awareness of "derailers". David Dotlich and Peter Cairo identify eleven such derailers in their must read book called "Why CEO's Fail: The 11 Behaviors That Can Derail Your Climb to the Top and How to Manage Them." This book is based on the Hogan Personality Assessment.

One last piece of learning I wish to share. Formalize the meeting where feedback will be shared. I have often seen colleagues get taken aback when their team members state that they were not given regular feedback on their performance throughout the year. "That's not true. I have been giving feedback on an ongoing basis.", the manager moans. The manager should set up a formal "Performance Feedback Session" with his or her team member and ensure that the person receiving feedback also marks it as a structured feedback session. That prevents disappointments at a later point of time because it sets expectations of the role. Informal feedback sessions do not count. This is an important opportunity to shape behavior and the manager would do well to invest the time perfecting the art.