Motivating employees is about more than charisma and vision. To help employees perform their best, a great leader will provide feedback — the right kind, at the right time. Feedback is an essential tool for any manager, whether in a small business or a large corporation.
Our ultimate guide, developed and trusted by top managers, will help you learn what are the best tips on how to give employee feedback.
Motivating employees is about more than charisma and vision. To help employees perform their best, a great leader will provide feedback — the right kind, at the right time. Feedback is an essential tool for any manager, whether in a small business or a large corporation.
Just as it needs blood, oxygen, and nutrients, the brain needs to receive comments about how it’s doing. Feedback works on the emotional system in the brain. And it activates more than the raw emotional center; it enables the brain to use higher-level thinking skills to decide how to continue doing good work, make the good work better, or make changes to garner more positive responses and work harder toward company goals. Your leadership skills rely heavily on your ability to give and receive feedback.
Employee feedback is the core of personal and professional growth. Feedback can help an employee get better at what they do, and surprisingly employees crave feedback. Employees don’t get enough feedback, and that when they do, the feedback is too vague. There is also a sense that managers aren’t authentic enough. The feeling among many employees is that managers don’t care enough about employees to genuinely want to make them better.
Employees will be able to tell very easily if you’re being genuine when giving feedback. Do you genuinely want to help them get better? Are you genuinely trying to make them improve? Or are you just venting your frustrations at them.
Feedback is such an important part of employee engagement, but so many managers don’t do it enough. It turns out, according to research, that the frequency of feedback is probably the most important element of all. It goes in the opposite direction than the old-fashioned methods like Annual Performance Reviews. But waiting a year to receive feedback is way too long. Employee needs frequent and sincere feedback.
Why we need to adapt to give frequent feedback? Because nowadays there are 3 fundamentals truths:
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Helping employees grow will not only make them happier and more engaged, but it will make them provide better service to customers, leading to more profits. Because at the end of the day, they way you work defines your company culture.
It’s in the company’s best interests to take the feedback process very seriously.
There is a proper way of providing feedback consistently that will produce fruitful results. We have identified eight ways you can offer employee feedback –it’s painless, immediate and will get you the outcome you need.
Focus on employees’ behaviors (what they do) rather than on their personality traits (what they’re like).
Graphics have impact, and hard data has weight. In an instant, employees can see their progress — or lack thereof. Along with the graphic, include specific suggestions for improvement and acknowledgment of jobs well done.
Specific feedback more effectively corrects or reinforces certain behaviors, enabling the brain to focus on something concrete. If you decide to congratulate employees as a group, be sure to talk to each one personally as well.
Looking for a employee feedback solution? Steer is a team management tool that helps you maintain a team without issues. Request a demo to experience it by yourself.
Most people have probably worked with a manager who puts negative feedback front and centre. It’s an unpleasant and generally unhelpful method. However, the boss who’ll bend over backwards to avoid confrontation by only offering positive words even when they’re totally unwarranted.
Goals help the brain focus. Make your employee feel that her contributions are valued and create a positive emotion with the feedback.
Even praise for some people is better delivered in a private meeting, rather than being pointed out in a public arena: some people simply don’t like being the center of attention. And allow the opportunity of feedback without a face-to-face meeting as it can make it easier for a person to say what they really think.
Ask for feedback from your employees on your own performance and on company policies.
One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make when they receive written feedback from employees, is they don’t reply. An employee took the time out of their busy day to not only make your job easier, but give you valuable feedback that will improve the company.
Think about all the advantages that come from replying to employee feedback:
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These are some examples of questions that you can ask employees and honest conversation about how they’re feeling at work:
Looking for a employee feedback solution? Steer is a team management tool that helps you maintain a team without issues. Request a demo to experience it by yourself.
Ramsankar , CEO of Steer
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Ram is on a mission to build, maintain engaged, aligned and productive teams. Connect with him on
LinkedIn.