Posts Tagged ‘giving feedback’

The power of coaching has been recognised in many areas for many years. Astute managers and leaders are starting to see coaching skills as a vital addition to their personal effectiveness toolbox.

So what are the key skills that managers need to develop?

Listening

When growing up we received formal education on reading and writing but not how to listen. Yet when it comes to business, listening is probably one of the most important skills to have.

If as a manager you take on the role of coach, you need to learn to listen with real focus, suspending all of your judgements and opinions. You also need to be listening not just to the words but also to the non verbal signals such as body language.

Questioning

Most of us can ask questions. When coaching, you need to be using powerful questions. These are questions that:

Are short, typically 7 words or less

Are open rather than closed

Deepen the learning of the person being coached

Move the person forward towards a goal

Examples include:

What do you want?, What’s important?, What’s the first step?

Constructively Challenging

Challenging constructively is about not holding back but at the same time not destroying the relationship. Many people associate coaching with helping, which clearly it is. At the same time if the coaching never rocks the boat it just becomes another nice chat. Playing back contradictions is a great way of constructively challenging. For example:

I hear that you want to get your MBA but at the same time you seem to be resisting making the time for assignments.

Holding to account

Accountability is one of the most powerful aspects of coaching. It has been suggested that people have a 95% chance of achieving an objective when they have accountability in place. When someone gives a commitment to doing something and they know that they will be held to account, it drives them forward.

How effective are you at holding people to account as a manager?

Seeing different perspectives

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where it feels like you are pinned into a corner and there is nowhere to go? If so, the chances are you were stuck in a perspective. When coaching, you need to be able to help your client to explore different perspectives, so that they can choose those that are most powerful.

Encouraging and supporting

Encouraging and supporting when coaching can be the difference between someone keeping going or giving up. Acknowledging another person is an incredibly powerful way of keeping them motivated.

Trusting and using intuition

We all have a hunch about something from time to time. The chances are that you have probably started to analyse it and make it logical or not. When coaching, your intuition is a powerful tool. Throw it out if it might be of benefit. The worst that can happen is that it is off the mark.

Keeping the focus on your client

When you are in the role of coach your focus needs to be 100% on your client and their agenda. What this means is putting all of the attention on the client and keeping your agenda out of the way.

These 8 key skills can not only help you when coaching but also make you an even better manager or leader. Take time to assess where you strengths lie and where you need to develop.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Trust is vital to achieving results as a leader. After all, if you don’t have trust, it is difficult to get the support for your vision, plans or ideas.

So if you are a leader, how can you build trust as a leader?

Don’t Fall Into The Seniority Trap
• There may have been a time in the distant past where people would tend to trust you just because you were the most senior person. The reality is that those days are long gone so it is pointless to rely on this. Being a leader and having followers is nothing to do with the job title that you have.

Set The Tone

• As a leader you set the tone for the whole department. By that I mean you set the expectations in terms of things like the way people behave, the way people interact with each other, resolve differences of opinions and solve problems to name just a few.

Find Out What Matters To Others

• Ever notice that in every job interview you go to you are asked what motivates and de-motivates you? The trouble is that interviews are often the only time this question gets asked. Think about it; if you know what matters to people you can start to do things and behave in ways that focus on the things that matter to people.

Give Regular Feedback

• Most people in the workplace crave feedback yet study after study shows that it is sadly lacking. Giving regular quality feedback to people gives a really powerful message that you care about them and their success.

Start Small

• It can be really tempting to try and be too ambitious at the start. It is much better to break the overall goal into smaller steps. As each step or stage is progressed, it builds confidence and trust.

Be Honest With People

• When leading a team or department there will be times when some difficult choices will need to be made. It can often be tempting to either avoid communicating or to make promises that cannot be kept. Broken promises will end up destroying trust.By contrast people may not always like the news that you are giving them but will respect your honesty.

Be Supportive

• Allowing people to move out of the comfort zone with the assurance that they will be supported is a huge step to giving them a message that you trust them.

Don’t Blame

• We have all if we are totally honest fallen into the trap of blaming others when things don’t go to plan. While it might offer in your own mind some sort of short term cover it will demolish trust, stifle creativity and dilute the results.

Hold People To Account

• When it comes to managing or leading people, it is important to have accountability in place. This is not some sort of heavy handed approach but simply involves agreeing with people what they are going to deliver and then asking them to keep you informed (or to account) for what they have done and what they still have to do.Doing this consistently with the team and individually creates trust.

Listen A Lot

• All of the best people that I worked with were brilliant listeners. When you focus your attention as a leader or manager on listening to others you get some real insights. People want to contribute and have the opportunity to do so. Listening does not mean that you have to act on every idea, concern or suggestion. At the same time people will respect you more. If you encourage and teach your people to listen effectively to others’ points of view you will build great team work and trust.

Do What You Promise

• If you say that you are going to do or deliver something then make sure that you do it. People will use this as an indicator as to whether you can be trusted or whether it is all just talk.

Empower and Delegate

• Delegating work to others not only provides opportunities for growth, development and challenge, it also sends a strong signal that you really trust your people.Empowering, where you give experienced people an outline of the result that you want, step back and let them get on with it is another great way of creating trust.

Stand Up For Your Team

• There will be times when privately you are disappointed with your team. Maybe they have done a poor job on a project or in dealing with a disgruntled client. In these situations it is vital to make sure that you deal with the issues privately but still stand up for your team publicly.

Take Responsibility For Results

• If you are running a department you will be well rewarded for taking on that role. At the same time, responsibility for the results ultimately is down to you. Maybe this might not seem fair but that’s the way it is. If you want to build trust, take responsibility for the results, whatever they are.

Give Recognition To Others

• Good leaders and managers look to give recognition for the successes that are achieved. See yourself more as a facilitator of delivering great results and give recognition to others when things go well.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to  sign up for his free team leadership audio masterclass here

Survey after survey identifies that, more than anything else, people want feedback. More specifically, they want regular feedback.

In my experience, one of the big challenges facing managers and leaders is a shortage of time. As a result, some things get pushed down the list. Unsurprisingly, more often than not it is the people side of things that gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.

So why is this a big mistake?

1. Feedback lets people know how they are doing.
2. Feedback lets people know that, as a leader or manager, you care about others and their success.
3. Feedback provides the basis for people to get better at doing something.
4. Feedback acts as a strong motivator for people.
5. Feedback is the fuel of action and it is action that leads to results.

So how can you get better at providing feedback?

1. Make the time to do it.
2. Do it at the time.
3. Make it specific.
4. Make it useable. Vague feedback is not useable.
5. Do it regularly.

The truth is feedback is the greatest source of motivation. So what can you do more of to create feedback?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

It’s interesting just how often, when a group of managers are asked what motivates people, they put money close to the top of the list.

Of course we all need to earn to live but in itself money is not a long term motivator. Once people feel that they are fairly rewarded for their efforts, they cease to see money as a motivator.

On the other hand, what people are craving far more of is feedback.

Feedback lets employees know:

• How they are performing.
• What they are doing well.
• They are appreciated and their success matters to you.

So the question is, are you making the time to give feedback? If not, you are probably missing out on the lowest cost form of motivation that there is.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Let’s face it; we all have times when we say things in a way that we later regret.

While we are all human, if you are finding that your normal default is towards destructive comments, it’s time to take action.

If your default style is to use destructive comments, you will:

• Make yourself unpopular.
• De-motivate others.
• Alienate yourself.
• Stop any creativity or risk taking.

So if you want more success through others when leading, focus on tackling and addressing the way you provide comments.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

1. Make it specific rather than general and vague.
2. Focus on giving balanced feedback which highlights both the positives and opportunities for improvement.
3. Don’t make it personal.
4. Make it useable by giving some specific things the person can do to improve.

I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Today’s letter is G.

G in terms of leadership success is about:

• Goal setting
• Giving effective feedback
• Gaining the support of others
• Gauging the impact of key decisions
• Getting honest feedback

What else would you add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

One of the areas where managers and leaders are criticised is for not giving employees regular and useful feedback.  There might be a whole host of reasons why feedback does not happen on a regular basis, including:

• The manager or leader is focused too much on task

• The manager or leader has never had much feedback themselves so does not recognise the value

• The manager or leader quite simply does not set aside enough time for managing

Given the value of feedback, what are the top tips for giving feedback?

Tip 1: Do it as a matter of routine

One of the easiest ways of ensuring that you give effective feedback is to make it something you do routinely.  Build it into your schedule and make a point of looking out for things on which to provide feedback.

Tip 2:  Be specific

Whenever you give feedback, aim to be as specific as possible with your feedback.  Often, people say things like something was good.  While this might be nice to hear it is not very useful.  On the other hand if you can point to the specific action or behaviour that was good, the recipient of the feedback can use this strength in the future.

Tip 3:  Know the preferences of the feedback recipient

People in the team have different preferences and part of your job as a manager is to know them and respond to them appropriately.  For example, some will appreciate an e-mail; others will appreciate being praised verbally in front of the whole team, while others will want to get praise one to one.

Tip 4: Be yourself

It is important to be yourself rather than putting on an act.  People will see through the latter and will value the feedback less.

Tip 5: Deal with all aspects of feedback

The chances are that you will be providing positive feedback to most people, most of the time.  There will on the other hand situations where you will have to deal with feedback that is negative.  It is important that you are as ready and willing to deal with the difficult stuff as you are the good stuff.

Bottom Line- Giving feedback can be a huge source of motivation and personal development for team members.  So what do you need to be doing differently to give more effective feedback?

As a manager or leader, part of your role is to give feedback to your team.  Feedback is incredibly important to individuals and teams.  They want to know what they are doing well and where they need to develop.  Sadly, managers and leaders are often poor at giving feedback or worse still, don’t give it at all.  So what are my 10 top tips for giving feedback?

Tip 1: Catch people doing things right

It is so easy to fall into the trap of only giving feedback when things have gone wrong.  In reality people get more right than they do wrong in the work place.  Make a point of noticing when people do things right like hitting sales targets, dealing with an angry customer or hitting deadlines.

Tip 2: Look for the signals that the employee wants feedback

People are sometimes a little hesitant to ask directly for feedback.  They may ask in a much more subtle way by asking:

• How they are doing in the job

• Whether they are living up to expectations

Be alert to these signals.

Tip 3:  Feedback as early as possible

You don’t have to wait for an appraisal or meeting to feedback.  Whether the feedback is positive or negative, give it at the earliest opportunity.

Tip 4: Focus on behaviours

It is important to focus on the behaviours that are helping or getting in the way of achievement when giving feedback.  For example:

• I notice you were behaving aggressively in your dealing with x

• I saw you take decisive action when it was clear we might slip on the timetable

In the first scenario you are referring to aggression as the behaviour in your feedback.  In the second scenario the behaviour you are drawing attention to is decisiveness.

Tip 5: Avoid feedback that cannot be acted upon

The purpose of giving the feedback is to facilitate action.  Make sure is can be acted upon.  For example, there is no point is telling someone who has a stammer or stutter to get their message across quicker.

Tip 6: Check the feedback is understood

The quickest and often most effective way of doing this is to ask the other person to tell you to play back to them what they understand they heard.  This lets you deal with ambiguity there and then.

Tip 7: Give the opportunity to the other party to discuss how the feedback might be improved

If you ask people how you could improve the way you give feedback and allow them to respond authentically, truthfully and openly, you will learn and improve.

Tip 8: Use non threatening language

When giving negative feedback, choose your words carefully.  While you have to make clear the consequences if improvement is not achieved you don’t need to do it in a threatening way.

Tip 9:  Be a role model

One of the most effective ways of demonstrating that you are open to feedback is to actively seek it.  Many organisations have formal 360 degree feedback processes.  One organisation I worked for did not have a formal 360 degree process so I simply sent out an e-mail to a mixture of subordinates, peers and superiors asking them:

• What I did well

• What I did not do so well

• Where I needed to develop

If you are worried that people will be reluctant to respond, ask them to send their responses to your boss and ask your boss to feedback key themes anonymously.

Tip 10: Set up a date for follow up

The final thing to do after giving feedback is to set up a follow up appointment.  This lets the other party know that you are committed to supporting them and to making the necessary change.

Giving feedback will always be a challenge but you can greatly enhance your performance by following these simple but effective tips.