Getting the Most from Your Team: How to Implement Constructive Feedback
Constructive feedback is a powerful tool for motivating and improving employee performance, but only when delivered effectively. This blog explores best practices for giving feedback that inspires action, builds trust, and drives results within your finance team. Contact our staff at PrideStaff Financial to help support your team’s needs.
Be specific and timely:
Give specific, actionable insight. Employees want to learn how to perform their jobs better. Be sure to give them the tools to accomplish that. Try to identify definitive, positive changes that provide a clear path toward success. Clarity eases anxiety and offers direction. It also reduces the risk of being misunderstood.
Focus on actions:
This is important—especially if you want to build trust among your teams and focus on actions, not people. Oftentimes, people are uncomfortable providing feedback because they feel it’s personal. You don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. But, by not providing constructive feedback, you are creating conflict avoidance, which can cause more conflict. It also underestimates your team. Constructive feedback centers on the work product, not the individual. Criticism should never be personal. Your employee might have missed a deadline, but that doesn’t mean they’re lazy. Their work might be incorrect, but they aren’t incompetent. Focus on actions, not perception.
Be part of the solution:
Constructive feedback should drive change, but feedback without direction is just a complaint. Leaders who focus on solutions and growth opportunities can get to the heart of productivity. Provide specific problem-solving examples or recommendations for improving a product or process. Demonstrate how you have used the solutions effectively.
Be open to criticism:
Respected leaders should be able to welcome constructive criticism. By receiving feedback, leaders learn more about themselves and their leadership skills. Of course, accepting criticism is an art, as well. It requires the ability to listen, put ego aside, ask questions, and develop trust.
Make it a conversation:
Empathy plays a vital role in delivering constructive criticism. Leaders often struggle with providing feedback because they either fear offending team members or consider feedback a one-way road. The middle ground involves having a conversation, which helps foster a feedback culture. Leaders should empower employees to be shareholders in their own career stories. Millennials, in particular, value a sense of shared ownership in the business. Engage team members in the feedback process rather than target them with it.
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