Have you ever thought of giving feedback to someone?

Have you ever thought of giving feedback to someone? What do you think are the characteristics of qualitative feedback? 

To my knowledge, feedbacks are the advice for improvement. While there is room to improve, a wise man always gives feedback to improve and does not care how a receiver perceives it. Feedbacks are always welcomed by the person who always tries to learn something. However, to some people, it is not an easy task. 

My personal picture, for my well-wishers 😁 

 

I have worked for 8 different organizations so far, and some of them had a 360-degree feedback mechanism, which I found very interesting. During the time of performance evaluation, feedbacks are collected anonymously from the bottom to the top level. Meaning, feedbacks are asked from your very junior level staff to very senior level staff if it is applicable. What I am trying to reveal here is, giving 360-degree feedback, you don’t have to think about receiver perception so that you can give constructive, and specific suggestions. I used to give feedback based on their strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat so that receiver can align it with their goal. 

            One of the best ways to give feedback to others, in my perception, is to focus on the goal.  The goal approach provides a bird’s eye view of whether something needs to change to get the desired goal. Meaning, if a goal is specific, feedback will be constructive and focused. However, if the goal is not clear, feedback will be the same. If a person sets a measurable goal, I, as a leader would like to give feedback if the chosen way can land it to the desired place within a time frame, and what is the required effort. Ask the person if he/she can bear the storm in between and how much he/she can resilient? 

            Furthermore, another and important aspect of giving feedback is to be specific as possible. Vague feedback, such as “great” and “need more effort” does not create any value in the feedback. This topic is somehow linked with the point stated above, but specific tasks fuel to get the desired goal. That means, if a person sets a goal, and makes a clear action plan, and implements it, a small task is also aligned to the goal. For instance, if a goal is set for 5 years, and make an action plan with a specific task and time frame, a person would look at this plan and asks for the adjustment in the plan what are the things to be considered if it is not aligned with the target. Think of a scenario, if you are submitting an assignment with your full effort, but you are receiving “need more effort” feedback every time. Will it improve your performance? I, therefore, believe that feedback should be constructive and specific. 

            At last, the future-oriented. It is that simple. A leader always gives feedback based on past and present work and seeks improvement in the future. No one can go in the past to improve the work one did but can recover it in the future. Let us think of a scenario, where an employee is late to start his/her shift, as a result, few online meetings with the clients are already rescheduled. A leader might give the feedback to start the computer 10 minutes before starting a shift and make it ready so that everything is done beforehand and clients are not upset.