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Tag Archives: Team leadership

How should you provide personalized feedback to your employees?

Customized feedback

Everyone needs feedback in order to do their job effectively. What kind of feedback, and how often, that varies from person to person. Some managers think, if they keep on piling more feedback on their employees, then they would be successful at some point in time. But that is the wrong assumption. By following that approach, you might be unknowingly suffocating your folks, or giving them the impression that you are micro managing them.

As a manager, we need to tune in to the unique frequencies of each of the employee. Be observant, listen and remain alert for opportunities to give feedback, when they want/need it. One size doesn’t fit all. Base the frequency of your feedback on their tasks and responsibilities, their efficiency, their curiosity, and their working style.

Obviously, nothing will work out well in the first try. So, make sure to refine your approach regularly. Ask them for their feedback on your new process, and how it is working out for them. Make sure to ask very specific questions such as ….. Do you like to meet every week for our one-on-one session? Do we need to make this meeting shorter or longer? What kind of things would you like to discuss during this session? etc.

You should also make a note that every employee is different on how he/she consumes information. Thus, it would be a good idea to ask them about their preferred way of communication. Obviously, if your work is not getting done, then you can go to them directly to find your answers, after all you are their Boss. But if the work is getting done according your expectations, then you might want to give them some leeway on how you can provide them feedback. Some of the preferred methods would be …. e-mail, face-to-face conversation, a memo, or a telephone call.

No matter what kind of feedback mechanism you use, always make sure to note down your positive/negative feedback in a separate diary (or in OneNote/EverNote for you tech geeks out there). This approach will ensure that you can judge everyone fairly during your year-end review, and you don’t need to depend on only 2-3 month’s performance of your employees.

Do you have any other ideas through which you can provide personalized feedback to your employees?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

Can you win your team’s trust by blaming the upper management?

05 Jun

As a line-manager, it becomes really tempting to distance yourself from your own superiors. It seems an easy option to win the hearts of your employees by blaming aggressive deadlines, overtime, and new process changes to the upper management’s initiative. Isn’t it? Does this mean that you have discovered a gold mine to develop a trust relationship between you and your team?

It’s not quite that easy. If you want to create bonding with your employees then there are other avenues to do so instead of creating this bonding over being a victim of the upper management together. By blaming all the unfavoring decisions to your upper management, you are eventually damaging the confidence of your team. Some of the side effects may be…..

1. High turnover: Your team will feel that they can’t trust the organization anymore, and hence, they will start looking for their next career move.

2. Team stagnation: Due to the negative perception of the upper management, your team will think that their inputs are not valuable in the organization. Thus, they will stop providing their valuable inputs to you, and hence, they won’t be able to provide any value to the organization.

3. Loss of respect: Even though you started blaming the upper management for all the negative decisions to build the trust between you and your team, you won’t be able to help yourself from losing the respect of your team. Due to your negative publicity of the upper management, your own team members will think that you are weak and powerless in the organization. And hence, their respect for you will decrease over time.

Thus, when you think that the easiest escape from your team’s negativity is to blame the upper management, then think twice. Don’t ever use phrases like…..“I don’t know why we’re doing this”, “no one ever consults with me on these new initiatives”, “I disagree with this upper management’s decision as well” etc.

A true leader should have the courage to represent the upper management and their views. If you disagree with their decisions, then instead of blaming them in front of your team members, confront them, try to understand the reasons behind those decisions. And remember……by blaming your superiors, you are not going to build any relationships, you will only lose respect of your team.