Overcoming The 3 Obstacles To Effective Feedback (And 10 Questions To Ask In Your Next Review)
In case you missed Jennifer Owen-O’Quill’s latest Forbes article, check it out below. Let us know if the 10 questions are able to help your next round of reviews!
Why do people continue to behave in ways that obstruct their success or the success of their teams? Why do people perform in ways that undermine their peak performance?
When I probe that question with a leader or team, I find one of three answers: They do not know; they know but don’t understand either why changing is important or how to make the change; or they don’t care. That is it: Three possible answers.
Three Obstacles To Effective Feedback: Unawareness, Lack Of Understanding And Apathy
Overcoming the unawareness, lack of understanding or apathy is key to ensuring feedback is effective. Here is what each of those obstacles looks like:
1. Unawareness: Often, the leader or individual contributor is unaware of their poor or less-than-ideal performance. They don’t know they aren’t coming across well. They can’t see how their words and actions are being interpreted. Typically, this means people are not offering feedback, or the feedback is vague. Without it, the leader continues operating blind.
2. Lack of understanding: They are aware, but they either do not understand the impact of what they are doing or do not understand how or what to change. Not understanding the impact of our actions and performance requires other-awareness, which means other people need to speak up and share the impact of our behavior. But, we don’t have to wait for them to come to us. We can craft questions that will help us learn the impact of our actions.
3. Aware but don’t care: People who are aware but don’t care are pushing back on the expectations. If the expectations are important and correct, then the person needs to be managed out. If the expectations need to be changed or modified, this is something to discuss with your leader. It's important to move out of the “aware but don’t care” paradigm and begin to build a common understanding of expectations.
Giving Great Feedback
When we are the leaders, it is our job to ensure there is both awareness and understanding. We need to give effective feedback. This means being clear and candid about the actual impact of someone’s performance and behavior, and offering guidance about what changes would increase performance and improve the impact of someone’s behavior.
How do you give great feedback? Effective feedback requires four things:
