How to Provide Feedback, What to Avoid, and Why It’s Important

Most people have received feedback at work that, far from improving things, wound up making situations worse. For some, misguided observations or veiled personal attacks become baggage they carry throughout their careers.

Managers and leaders unwilling to replicate their bad experiences often avoid giving feedback to their team members. Despite having good intentions, withholding their observations can damage individuals and organizations in other ways. Leaders can avoid adverse outcomes for all parties by structuring company culture to ensure feedback is conducted and received productively.

The Pitfalls of Poor (or No) Feedback

Many managers and leaders consider giving feedback one of the hardest parts of their jobs. A Harvard Business Review study revealed that 44 percent of people in leadership positions thought providing feedback was stressful for all concerned. Consequently, 21 percent opted not to do it, depriving their team members of growth opportunities. In addition, employees who don’t receive any feedback often feel ignored and that their contributions don’t matter.

Other leaders bluster their way through the feedback process as quickly as possible to get their point across. Their lack of finesse can leave recipients feeling wounded with no clear path to improvement.

For example, micromanagers often continuously correct employees without helping them improve. And “seagull” supervisors swoop in with reprimands and take off without offering constructive suggestions.

Poorly delivered feedback and a feedback vacuum can both lead to workplace conflict. Bungled feedback can cause resentment and mistrust, damaging relationships and diminishing employee engagement. Holding back input can allow problems to fester, increasing the probability of rising tensions. Ironically, leaders trying to avoid conflict by not providing feedback often inadvertently trigger it.

The Benefits of Proper Feedback

When given correctly, feedback is a powerful tool that helps recipients grow and succeed, fortifying their organization. Staff members benefit from hearing how their strengths are helping the team meet its goals and where improvement or course correction is needed. Ideally, feedback should challenge people to be their best and provide perspective about their decisions and actions.

Additional merits of valid feedback include:

• Developing employees.
  Most workers want to learn more and become better at what they do, including how to function more effectively as a team member. Constructive feedback helps people assess and improve their performance and behaviors so they can grow in their careers.
  
  
• Inspiring purpose.
  Leaders who give their employees input and connect their work with organizational goals help boost their sense of purpose on the job. Hearing what they are doing right and how they can do even better makes them feel useful and valued.
  
  
• Building employee engagement.
  Feedback is most effective when provided regularly instead of relegating it to periodic performance reviews. Gallup found that weekly feedback inspires and motivates employees and makes them feel more pertinent and connected to their organizations.

• Boosting Cohesion.
  Teams are strengthened in a culture where leaders and peers regularly provide feedback. People thrive and collaborate more effectively when helpful and encouraging input is part of the everyday experience.

As Denise McLain and Bailey Nelson wrote in an article for Gallup,

“Employees today are looking for purpose-driven work and a manager who acknowledges and accelerates their progress.”

Creating a channel of frequent, valuable feedback enables organizational agility and improves work performance. And empowering employees helps boost retention.

The Formula for Winning Feedback

The benefits of feedback hinge on people’s ability to provide and receive it effectively. Many thought leaders in this area have advice to help leaders and managers maximize their input.

For example, Lauren Landry, Director of Marketing and Communications for Harvard Business School Online, offers five suggestions for providing meaningful feedback.

1. Exercise empathy.
   Landry tells those providing feedback to put themselves in the recipient’s shoes to determine how to be most effective. For the message to resonate, it’s also important for the listener to believe it was delivered with good intentions. “Make it known that you’re providing feedback because you want to see them succeed. That will put them in a better position to internalize what you’re saying and turn your advice into action.”
   
   
2. Take time to prepare.
   Thinking about feedback before delivering it helps eliminate emotions and knee-jerk responses. Landry tells people to strategize what they want to say and how they give the advice and then prepare for how it will be received. To be most effective, “Consider how the feedback recipient might react and formulate a response.”
   
   
3. Speak in specifics.
   Landry outlines a process devised by Harvard Business School Professors Joshua Margolis and Anthony Mayo to give input that helps get to the root cause of issues.
   • Be direct and speak to the issue you want to coach them on.
   • Identify a specific behavior, rather than speak in generalities.
   • State the impact of the behavior and connect it to outcomes.
   • Share specifics about who was affected and the impact on the organization.

Clarity and specificity leave less room for misinterpretation of the message and a better understanding of how to proceed.

4. Save time for inquiry.
   Landry advises feedback providers to start and end the encounters with time for the recipient to give their perspective. Asking how things are going at the beginning of the process allows employees to identify issues. It can also give leaders insight into whether they have blind spots or feel defensive.

Checking in with them at the end of the feedback session helps ensure that they heard and internalized the message as intended. “If it’s clear they recognize what the problem is, you can start brainstorming solutions and leaving the meeting with a greater sense of resolution.”

5. Focus on the future.
   After delivering the feedback, it’s more effective and positive to shift the focus to the next steps rather than dwelling on the past. Landry tells leaders and managers to help employees envision how they can use what they’ve learned to take strides in their careers.

Management consultant Kate Wieczorek adds another dimension of giving meaningful feedback in an article for Forbes. She writes:

“Structuring your feedback to align with the company’s culture and mission works well for employees with high integrity and a connection to the company’s goals. Being in congruence with an organization’s values is highly motivating for its workforce.”

Authors of an article for Vistage advise avoiding common mistakes that can make feedback backfire, including:

• Focusing on the person, not behaviors
• Being ambiguous
• Ignoring how people want to receive it
• Sandwiching negative feedback between unrelated positive messages
• Making the observation too detailed and drawn out
• Delivering it with humor

To successfully provide feedback, Denise McLain and Baily Nelson note that people must operate in a development-focused, performance-oriented culture. They recommend that leaders take three actions to generate consistent, meaningful feedback.

• Transform managers into coaches.
  Helping employees develop and grow is one of a manager’s most important responsibilities. This nurturing helps elevate organizational performance and deepens staff engagement. However, many people in supervisory positions aren’t equipped with this skill. Leaders need to provide managers with the proper training to help them become effective coaches who provide great feedback.
  
  
• Adjust management practices and performance metrics.
  Almost everyone dreads annual reviews, which are an ineffective means of providing actionable, relevant feedback. Instead, leaders should structure a culture where everyone expects and values regular check-ins to make progress. Managers should use these frequent touchpoints to establish expectations, continually coach and mentor, and provide an accountability framework.
  
  
• Become feedback evangelists.
  McLain and Nelson note that for feedback to be most impactful, it shouldn’t be “a one-way, top-down event.” Everyone in the organization should give and appreciatively receive other people’s input through “honest, open, ongoing dialogue.” They point out that peer-to-peer feedback strengthens relationships and cross-departmental collaboration.

All this advice can help leaders with old feedback scars reframe the practice through a positive lens. By teaching their staff how to use this tool for everyone’s benefit, they can make feedback a vital part of their company’s ecosystem.