When your boss ask you for feedback
How to give feedback like a boss to your boss. We spend a lot of time thinking about the feedback we get from our boss. But what happens when our boss wants to get feedback from us? It’s a positive sign when managers actively seek feedback about themselves from their team, but it also raises the stakes: How much should we share? How can we strike the right balance between candor and caution? And does our boss really want to hear those hard truths?If your boss asks you for feedback, here are… Read More
The Silver Rule of Giving Feedback
Stop giving feedback that you wouldn’t want yourself. You’ve heard of the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated. But when it comes to giving feedback, we need to follow the Silver Rule: Don’t treat others the way you would not want them to treat you. Or, to put it more bluntly: If you don’t like the way people give you feedback, don’t give them feedback that way. There’s lots of ways feedback can go wrong: Poor intentions. Bad delivery. Insufficient data. No matter the cause, the result… Read More
Thankful for feedback
How to become more thankful for the feedback in our lives. With feedback, there seems to be an expectation of thanks. We’re told over and over that feedback is a gift – how could we not be thankful? But feedback doesn’t always feel like a gift. And depending on how feedback is shared, we might not be feeling very thankful after receiving it. When others approach us with feedback, we may even shake our heads and think to ourselves, “Thanks, but no thanks.” I’ve been thinking about thanks this week for all… Read More
Tell yourself a new feedback story
Feedback tells a story, but it’s the story we tell ourselves that matters more. Getting negative feedback, especially from those we respect and trust, can quickly become an emotional train wreck that leaves us feeling hurt, helpless, and even a little bit hopeless. And when critical feedback is repeated over time, researchers have found that it can diminish our productivity, motivation and even our prospects for employment. The good news? We can flip the frame on negative feedback by changing the story. While we can’t control the plot, we can always write the ending. The stories… Read More
Recognition requires “just because” feedback
Recognition doesn’t have to cost something to mean something. Employee recognition is always a hot topic, especially in this age of high attrition and mobility. But the surest, simplest way to show appreciation to people is through positive feedback. For individuals, positive feedback boosts motivation, enhances productivity, and improves overall job satisfaction. For teams, it lifts overall effectiveness: High-performers share nearly six times more positive feedback than average teams, while low-performers experience nearly twice as much negative feedback than average teams. It also makes a difference in how we feel. Positive feedback broadens and builds our confidence, determination… Read More
Don’t inflate your feedback
Don’t inflate your message. Set the feedback record straight with these actions. It’s no surprise that people inflate their feedback, especially when the message is critical. To spare others (and ourselves) from blame, discord or even retaliation, we sugarcoat feedback with more innocuous-sounding words and phrases that soften its blow. Telling people their work is “good” or that there’s a “real possibility” for promotion in the future seems harmless enough. But is it? Not only does sugarcoating create confusion, but it holds others back from identifying and correcting performance flaws. Worse, managers… Read More
5 ways to heal the hurt of feedback
Turn the hurt into hope with a different outlook and attitude. Getting negative feedback, especially from those we respect and trust, can quickly become an emotional train wreck that leaves us feeling hurt, helpless, and even a little bit hopeless. And when critical feedback is repeated over time, researchers have found that it can diminish our productivity, motivation and even our prospects for employment. Ouch. How can we turn a hurtful comment into a helpful construct? Try practicing the following five techniques, and you’ll start receiving feedback without fear — and maybe even with joy! Receive, don’t respond Instead… Read More
For better feedback, be a mirror holder
Try to enlarge someone else’s view, rather than your own. Getting others to accept our feedback can be challenging, especially when we have tough news to share. Deep inside the human mind, negative feedback can cause others to become defensive, angry, and self-conscious. It can weaken their overall effectiveness at work. And it can even drive them to seek out others who affirm, rather than challenge, their positive self-view. Throw in a host of delivery problems – lack of frequency, rater bias, and high-stakes settings – and it’s no wonder why managers either dodge feedback altogether… Read More
Use feedforward to find your big idea
By looking at future possibilities instead of past failures, we move people and ideas forward. Feedforward is the new fuel of feedback. It’s more than just a play on words. It’s an entirely new playbook for how we think about people, performance and potential. It activates our most human desire for agency and achievement. And it focuses on a future people can still change, not a past they can’t. Shifting our perspective can make all the difference. When we start to focus on future possibilities instead of past failures, there is no… Read More
Ten Commandments of Feedback
Feedback can be divine when we follow these rules. We have such a hard time giving and receiving feedback, you’d think it was a divine decree. Some prefer to dodge and disguise it. Others choose to defy and deny it. Depending on where you work, the feedback culture can range from cautiously polite to positively caustic — and that’s assuming people bother to share any sort of feedback at all. After years of helping organizations apply a feedback fix, I’ve found these ten rules to be particularly instructive. The list isn’t sacred… Read More