Last week’s article outlined new research into how to motivate your team. One of the best strategies is giving consistent, quality feedback. Here are nine ways to provide feedback that motivates your team.
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Agree on job expectations: The starting point for effective feedback is clear expectations on both sides. A written job description is a good point of departure, but that’s all it is. You also need to have a well-defined frame of reference against which to provide feedback. You can define this frame of reference in regular, open and frank conversations about what is expected of your team.
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Make feedback frequent: The days of employees nervously entering one-hour annual performance reviews are behind us. People want frequent feedback. That’s especially true of the younger generation just entering the workforce. Plan on having informal conversations at least quarterly and in some cases more often. These don’t have to be lengthy — sometimes a short 10- or 15-minute conversation will do. And you don’t need to complete a time-consuming evaluation form. A one-page summary of performance against key measures will do the trick. And while verbal feedback matters most, for clarity it still makes sense to follow up with a short email summarizing your conversation.
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Make feedback immediate: Feedback is most effective when it’s immediate – both positive to praise a job well done and less positive when there’s an issue. So between those regularly scheduled sit-downs to discuss overall performance, some of the most effective feedback can be shorter sessions to talk about specific situations.
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Make feedback specific: When providing feedback, both positive and negative, the more specific the better. This is especially the case when you’re looking for a change. Rather than generalities, such as “You need to be more responsive to client s” or “You have to be more careful”, be specific about instances of the behavior you’re either looking to after with comments like I’d like you to return calls more quickly” and “You need to be more careful about entering orders,”
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Temper your emotions: In the perfect world all feedback would be immediate, but you also need to restrain your frustration when you see behavior you’re unhappy about. One rule of thumb is to practice the 24-hour rule. Unless a problem has to be dealt with immediately, wait 24 hours to sit down and discuss the issue.
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Get team members engaged: When talking about performance, begin by asking team members how they think they’re doing – both the things they’re doing well as well as areas that need improvement. Just as you would when talking to a client or prospect, ask them to elaborate on their initial comments until they’ve run out of things to say. The same thing applies when you’re sitting down to talk about a problem. Start by asking for your team member’s point of view on what went wrong and how to avoid a recurrence in future. Advisors who start by asking team members about how they see their own performance are sometimes surprised that their staff is more critical than the advisors would be.
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Actively listen to the other side: Once you’ve got your team member talking, give them 100% of your attention, just as you would with a key client or important prospect. If they say something that you want to respond to, jot the point down so you don’t have to worry about remembering it and you can give your team member your full attention.
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Provide balanced feedback: A key principle of effective feedback is to balance areas that need to be improved with positives. Start and finish with positive feedback. By starting with positives, you make team members receptive to talking about things that need work. And by ending on a positive note, team members walk away more motivated from the conversation. This article describes research on the motivating power of positive feedback.
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Separate performance feedback from compensation: At one time, all performance reviews ended with a conversation about compensation. Many companies now have the compensation conversation at a separate time – simply because some employees are so focused on hearing what will happen to their compensation that they don’t fully concentrate on the performance evaluation.
For more on effective feedback, read these articles from Fast Company and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Dan Richards conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written commentaries, go to www.danrichards.com or here for his videos.
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