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Tag Archives: Effective communication

How to effectively provide negative feedback to your employees? Part 1

First of all, I would like to thank my readers for really liking my last blog series about ‘honest feedbacks’. I really appreciate your feedback, so please keep it coming. Secondly, many of you have asked me how to provide honest, but negative feedback, to your employees, and hence, I am writing this two-part series blog for answering some of your questions.

Refrain from personal attacks: While giving feedback to others, try to direct your feedback towards their behavior rather than towards that particular person. A common mistake lot of managers make is to criticize the person rather than their negative behavior. If you tell your assistant that she is a poor excuse for a secretary, then it is a personal attack rather than a constructive criticism. These kind of feedback can only make your employees more defensive towards you and your feedback. So, try to identify the problematic behavior and focus on what can be done to correct it in the future, instead of launching personal attacks towards your employees. For example: This is what you tell your secretary when she makes an accounting mistake … “Jackie, an accounting mistake like this one can cost way more than our weekly office budget. From now on, please check with me before finalizing any orders costing more than $100”.

Be descriptive: While providing feedback to your employees, don’t be evaluative or judgmental, instead be descriptive. Descriptive feedback is tactfully honest and objective, whereas evaluative feedback seems to be more judgmental and accusatory to the feedback receiver. Here is an example of an evaluative feedback: “Where is your sales report? You know it is due on my desk no later than 9:00 each morning. You’re obviously not reliable anymore.” Here is an example of a descriptive feedback for the same situation: “When you don’t turn your sales reports in on time, I’m unable to complete the departmental report on time. This makes both of us look bad. You’ve been late twice this month. Is there something I can do to help you get those reports in on time?” Like in this example, descriptive words are more likely to result in cooperation.

Keep it short: If you are providing constructive criticism to your employee, don’t have a marathon about it. Try to include only as much information as the person can handle at one time. Suppose during a performance appraisal, you give an employee a list of 20 items that need improvement. Even though you might feel better after fully expressing your feelings, your employee will only remember 2-3 major bullet items from that meeting and forget everything else. How can anyone improve on 20 things at the same time? Think about it, can you do that? What would have happened if your manager gave you similar feedback? Wouldn’t you require more time to analyze this much information at once? Thus, you should restrict yourself while giving negative feedback to your employees. Give only two or three suggestions that your employee can reasonably handle at a time.

These are some ideas through which you can effectively provide negative feedback to your employees. If you have any other ideas through which we can make this process easier, then please share your ideas with me through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

5 ways to become the best manager for your employees

29 Apr

In my last blog post, I have talked about few earlier signs of your management failures. And hence, in this blog post, I will provide you with a formula to handle each issue separately, and how you can turn around these situations in your favor.

Learn from the exit interview: As I have mentioned in my last blog, if you are having a higher turnover rate in your team as compared to your organization/department, then you might want to analyze your leadership style. Try to get as much information as you can through the exit interview. If these exit interviews are taken by the HR Department, then work with your HR personnel to include your questions in the mix. Try to include questions, which can give you some inside scoop on your leadership style. For example: Few problematic communication practices, managerial feedback, etc. Depending on their inputs you should try to change your leadership style.

Learn from your 360 review: Often 360 degree multi-rater assessments or employee’s feedback surveys will provide you with the valuable input about your management style in general. So, make sure that you take those survey results seriously, and take out some time to act on the improvement opportunities mentioned in the survey. Look for things like, your engagement rating with your employees, your general relationships with others, etc. At worst, it will provide you few pointers on where you are going wrong, and how to improve your management style.

Communicate effectively: As I have mentioned in my last blog, if you are having multiple employee’s disputes as compared to other teams, then you might not be a good manager. In order to improve your situation, you might want to increase your communication with your team members. Make sure that you clearly communicate your decisions to your team. Often times miscommunication can generate a sense of inequity or unfairness about these decisions, leading to disputes that tend to end up in the lap of Human Resources departments because they relate to the application of written company policies or procedures. Thus, you should try to communicate with each team member at least once a day. Make it a practice. Also, you should schedule at least one-on-one during a month, where you just talk about your employee’s personal growth and any concerns that he/she might have. This approach will help you to communicate with your team effectively.

Frequent performance reviews: Good manager will always schedule frequent one-on-one with their employees. As a manager, you should always provide your feedback to your employees on an ongoing basis, throughout the year or throughout the period for which the review is being conducted. So, when it’s the time of doing the performance review, its mere a documentation of what you have been talking about during the entire year. If you follow this approach, then you can at least reduce the amount of conflicts between you and your employees during the performance review period.

Lead by example: Let’s assume that you might be one of those bad managers and you might have developed a bad reputation for territoriality, or being “difficult to work with”. Even then, it is never too late to change. Though it might take some time to change other’s perception of you, you can do that. Just try to hold yourself to higher standards. When someone is completely bypassing you in the decision making process, try to talk with that person and identify their issues. It might take some communication and extra efforts in resolving these issues, but you can lead by example. You can show your team members and others in the organization on how you follow your company’s processes, and why your inputs are valuable in the decision making process. If you keep on following this practice, I am sure that you can regain their trust, and improve the work throughput.

I hope, my blog has helped you in seeing some of the general shortcomings of a manager, and helped you become the best manager for your employees. Please share your comments here, if you agree/disagree with my point of view.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi