“The staff is saying you are always insulting them,” said Hendry to Shaun. This is not the first time Shaun has heard such remarks from his CEO and he knows it won’t be the last as well. “Don’t get me wrong,” Hendry explained. “I’m just telling you what your team is saying about you.”
“Thanks for the feedback Hendry, but could you be more specific as to a situation that I was said to have insulted them or what were the words I used that made them feel insulted,” asked Shaun. Hendry pondered for a while. “I don’t have the specifics. They didn’t say and I didn’t ask”.
“Look Shaun,” continued Hendry. “This is what your team has told me and this is what I am telling you right now”. In fact, they say you take donkey years to review and sign off any document they submit. They also say you create problems than solutions.” Shaun felt offended. He had always valued feedback but he felt that Hendry wasn’t giving him the opportunity to clarify as Shaun believed that the feedback he received was rather vague.
Feedback is an integral tool for communication and facilitates productivity of a team. Giving feedback to your colleagues and employees provides them with an observer’s insight into how their performance is progressing. But when giving feedbacks, more often than not we find that we don’t get the results that we are hoping for. The first thing to realise is that people generally respond more strongly to negative events than positive ones.
In this situation Hendry was right in giving his feedback to Shaun, but the problem was that it was not specific enough to allow Shaun to work on improvements. In fact it was too ambiguous and had left the door wide open for his feedbacks to be interpreted in a lot of personal ways. Hendry’s case is not unique. Most of us don’t know how to give effective feedback. Truth to be told, we are just as bad at accepting feedback as giving them.
Bad feedback is not only ineffective but can be destructive. However, giving good feedback depends upon our ability to effectively and constructively present our opinions to others. Feedback is more than a routine part of working life; it’s a form of art.
When giving feedback, especially a negative one, it should be reminded that people generally respond better to specific feedback. Don’t beat around the bush. Specific feedback is important to avoid any misinterpretation. In this case, Hendry told Shaun that he insulted his team members. But what does that exactly mean? Was Shaun abusive, rude or made some offensive remarks? Opinions or remarks are not always positive, but that does not mean they are insults. Many times, negative comments have constructive criticism behind them yet the person receiving them feels like they have been personally attacked and insulted.
When providing feedback to Shaun, Hendry should avoid any general comments that may be of limited use to Shaun. Instead Hendry should be more specific in his comments by giving real and recent examples of a situation(s) when Shaun was being insulting. By doing this, Hendry is giving Shaun a much better chance of improving the way he communicates with his team. Also citing a specific behaviour that was observed allows the receiver to place your feedback in context, making it more understandable and therefore more likely to be acted upon. If you are passing feedback from one person to another (as in the case of Hendry) make sure that you have enough information to make it meaningful and accurate.
When providing feedback, get the wording and delivery right. The right words can have a positive effect on the receiver. But the wrong choice ofwords can make feedback come across as more negative and less supportive than intended. In the earlier conversation Hendry had with Shaun, he used the expression “donkey years” to describe the length of time it took Shaun to review documents submitted by his team members. Again this was a general comment with no specific details shared.
Prior to delivering feedback, we rarely plan exactly what we want to say and how we want to say. The words we choose to use are important. Not only that, but your tone and delivery of the feedback can also have a huge impact on how feedback is received.
Without good, quality feedback, team members and organisations are not in sync and are not performing at their best. Honest, constructive, specific, actionable, and timely feedback is the only way to go if you want to drive outstanding results.
