Giving Feedback That Resonates
How to be heard and inspire action
Early in my career, I used to work as a receptionist for a downtown business hotel. Every morning, there was an intense, busy period when guests would come to check-out before they either flew home or went off to their business meetings.
I remember there was one day when we were particularly swamped and, as there were mostly new team members on shift, the line just grew and grew in size.
Frowning guests in the line kept looking at their watches, huffing and puffing. Like you’d expect, a few demanded to see the supervisor when they finally reached the front.
Once we survived the shift, while we were wrapping up some loose ends and counting our cash boxes in the back office, the rooms director appeared and in front of everyone told our supervisor:
“There were too many complaints today. This is not acceptable and you need your team to move faster.”
There was no discussion, she just came in, dropped these bombs, and left.
When the door closed, we looked at our supervisor apprehensively. It’s never nice to be in the same room when someone receives negative comments like this. He just shrugged and said,
“I didn’t make the rotation schedule.”
The result? We were swamped for the next few days as our new colleagues obviously didn’t improve so rapidly. The main issue was that the schedule grouped so many new people on one shift.
That supervisor wasn’t bothered, as he was only on duty that day and off for the next few.
(I wasn’t, and it was painful.)
Now, there are many reasons why feedback given in this way isn’t going to be properly heard and acted upon.
But, I’m sure you can think of an example in your own life where you’ve given someone feedback and they didn’t really internalize what you said (or what you meant). And, ultimately, they took no action on your feedback.
To improve the likelihood that your feedback will be received (and most importantly: that your feedback will influence future actions and/or behaviors of the feedback recipient), simply:
- Explain what you saw, what you heard, or what behaviors you observed
- Describe the impact or outcome of the observed behavior
- Discuss what you would like the person to do differently next time
How could our rooms director have applied this?
Well, apart from the fact that she could have spoken to the supervisor in a more private setting and used a calmer tone, she could have:
- Explained: that she observed a long line of guests, noticed that the check-out process seemed to be taking longer than normal, and overheard some guest complaints.
- Described: that it impacted our guest satisfaction when check-out cannot be done in a timely manner (though this bullet you could leave out in cases like this when it’s really obvious)
- Discussed: what it would take so that this doesn’t happen again the next day, what support is needed from her to help, whether the other person agrees to the actions needed and commits to take action
Although I remember this story and how I felt overhearing these comments, feedback isn’t just one particular moment in the workday. It’s everywhere, all the time.
Feedback is omnipresent
Whenever we speak to someone, we communicate feedback. This is true both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
This feedback can be verbal,
“I thought that presentation had a really good flow and you presented it with confidence.”
Or non-verbal, like when we smile and nod along to someone who is talking, giving them positive feedback that they should continue to talk.
That’s just what feedback is: information for an individual or a group about their past actions or behaviors, helping to adjust, improve, and enhance current and future actions and behaviors.
When I give verbal comments as a manager on the presentation, I am helping to ensure that the past action — the presentation — is adjusted (or in this case maintained) in a future action.
When I smile and nod along to a colleague speaking at the coffee machine, I am giving them signals that I am listening and they will likely remember how I received their story. Maybe they’ll retell the story again to another colleague later in a different way because I didn’t laugh at the end as they expected me to.
Feedback can be tainted with bias
Personal preferences, values, attitudes, origins, and life experiences create perceptual filters through which we view other people.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin
Humans are constantly looking for a cause or an explanation of why a person behaves in a certain way in a specific situation.
We can only see the person’s behavior, not their characteristics. Yet, we tend to infer the person from the behaviors we observe and attribute characteristics to them.
What this means is that when giving feedback you need to be aware that you do not have all the context of the person doing the behavior. You have only things you have observed, and your unique lens on top of this. Try to be aware of your biases and what characteristics you yourself might have attributed to the other person.
You must give feedback not as a one-way street, but as a discussion. If you demonstrate a willingness to learn about the person’s context and openness to adjust your feedback based on the new information you receive, then it is far more likely that you can find a better outcome together.
Improving your ability to give feedback that will actually resonate will help increase the person’s and team’s performance and effectiveness. It’s not just about the negative behaviors and performance, but also the positive.
Crucially, feedback is not just one moment of the day — it’s any time we are providing information about someone’s past actions and behaviors to help adjust these in the future.
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