GIVING FEEDBACK

 Giving feedback to an employee regarding their progress toward achieving

their goals is a key component of the coaching process.
 Feedback includes information about both positive and negative aspects of
performance and lets employees know how well they are doing with respect to
meeting the established standards.
 Feed back serves several important purposes:
o Helps build confidence
 Praising good performance builds employee confidence
regarding future performance.
o Develops competence
 Communicating clearly about what has been done right and hoe
to do the work correctly is valuable information that helps
employees become more competent and improve their
performance.
o Enhances involvement
 Receiving feedback and discussing performance issues allow
employees to understand their roles In the unit and organization
as a whole.
 Suggestion to enhance feedback:
o Timeliness
 Should be delivered as close to the performance event as
possible.
o Frequency
 Should be provided on an ongoing basis, daily as possible.
o Specificity
 Should be specific work behaviours, results and the situation in
which these behaviours and result was observed.
o Verifiability
 Should include information that is verifiable and accurate
o Consistency
 Should be consistent. Information about specific aspect of
performance should not vary unpredictably between over
whelming praise and harsh criticism
o Privacy
 Should be given in a place and at a time that prevent any
potential embarrassment.
o Consequences
 Should include contextual information that allows the employee
to understand the importance and consequences of the
behaviours and results in question
o Description first, evaluation second
 Should focus on describing behaviours and results rather than
evaluating and judging behaviours and results.
 o Performance Continuum
 Should describe performance as continuum, going from less to
more in the case of good performance and from more to less in
the case of poor performance.
o Pattern identification
 Feedback most useful if it is about a pattern of poor
performance rather than isolated events or mistakes.
o Confidence in employee
 Good feedback includes a statement that the manager has
confidence that the employee will be able to improve their
performance.
o Advice and idea generation
 Feedback can include advice given by the supervisor about how
to improve performance.
Negative Feedback
 Includes information that performance has fallen short of accepted standards
 The goal of providing negative feedback is to help employee improve their
performance in the future, it is not to punish, embarrass or chastise them.
 But managers are usually not very comfortable providing negative feedback
because:
o Negative reactions and consequences
o Negative experiences in the past
o Playing “god”
o Negative for irrefutable and conclusive evidence
 When managers avoid giving negative feedback and employees avoid
seeking it?
o it will result a feedback gap in which managers and employees
mutually instigate and reinforce lack communication which creates a
vacuum of meaningful exchanges about poor performance.
o When performance problems exist, they are likely to become more
intense over time.
 Alternatively, negative feedback is most useful when early coaching has been
instrumental in identifying warning signs and the performance problem is
manageable.
 Also useful when it clarifies unwanted behaviours and consequences and
focuses on behaviours that can be changed.