Power of Continuous Feedback

I asked, “Don’t you love your work?”

She replied, “I do but this working environment is exasperating. I cannot enjoy it until I know how am I doing.”

When it comes to feedback we are not very comfortable, we try to exaggerate until the coworker seeks one. This leads to drastic changes in the perception because we tend to keep the feedback vague which eventually leads to poor communication of the same.

Consider this, if we are able to give constructive feedback then doesn’t the performance of my friend will drastically increase?

Then what is stopping us? Well a couple of things to be precise, first there is no way we can nudge the managers to give accurate feedback. Secondly, we tend to give “ Pleasing” feedback, something which people will like. This in a simple word is a disaster for the organization.

There are three ways to resolve this issue, consider adopting these three approaches:

1. Incentives linked feedback, However, the day you remove incentives the quality of feedback will downgrade.

2.Increase the feedback sessions with landmarks and motivate the managers to take into account the occasions where the feedback really matters.

3.Create a culture where subordinates seek feedback.

Here, Approach 1 comes with high risk but high return. Approach 2 and 3 will be more organic approach to meet the desired outcomes.

Giving feedback in the times of the virtual world can be tricky, but these four pillars will help.

1. Empathize with your coworker as she/he is not in the same environment as before. No one anticipated this and empathy can become your organisation’s edge.

2. Be flexible with your approach to giving feedback and make it a two-way system. Make your team resilient.

3. Show compassion and sense of warmth which recharges employees to give their best.

4. Don’t give objective feedback (in numerical terms ), try giving feedback in black and white so that the employee is able to quickly understand and act.