Lets be better than "Just be better..."

Ahoy,

To put it bluntly, I’m going to talk you through how to actually give feedback that people will act on.

You’ve been there before, I’ve been there before, we’ve all been there!

The boss sits us down and gives tells us all the things we’ve not been doing so well, and gives us some simple instruction like: “Just be better…”

Yeah… Thanks…

We know that way of delivering feedback doesn’t work, yet for some reason we never actually do anything different about it. Why is that?

I’ll bet it’s because we simply don’t know any other way to do it.

It’s the way we were treated so we just do the same thing.

I find there tend to be two types of feedback when people don’t really know how they should be delivering feedback:

1. The brutal “I’m just be honest” feedback

2. The nice “dance around the topic because I don’t want to hurt your feelings” feedback

During the next couple of minutes I want to introduce you to option 3. The coaching “how can we help you be the best you can be” feedback.

So option 1 will very rarely work with most people. It’s true, there are some people that do respond well to that kind of feedback. If I’m in the right mood to hear feedback, I can actually take it on relatively well.

But I think that’s just something you get used to after being in the military environment for over a decade!

So for the the average person, lets avoid option 1 as a rule of thumb.

Option 2 has a lot more positive intent behind it however, it is absolutely not helpful at all!

This is a perfect example of someone being nice not kind. (Read more about that here)

Sure, you’re not being mean about it, but you’re also not making it clear what you expect from them or what you need from them.

What do we do about this then?

How do we get to option 3?

How do we make people understand the feedback we have in a way that will make them act on it?

The trick to this process really lies with having a coaching mindset.

This means step 1 is this: Ask questions

Before listing of all of you’re wise words, lets ask them about how they feel they’re doing.

We know that teams are far more engaged in plans they come up with, well this works with individuals as well!

If we can ask questions that have them recognise and solve the problems you were going to raise, they’ll be much more engaged in the solution.

So we can avoid our old option 1 and option 2 completely, and we approach it in a way that is clearly from a place of us trying to help them improve.

You can always dive deeper into specific points, but as a general rule of thumb, when coaching we want the other person talking more than us.

This brings us onto step 2: Be specific and actionable

We want to make sure that the feedback we’re giving (or they’re uncovering) is actually actionable and it’s clear where they should be making these actions or changes.

This means we need to get specific.

“Just be better” is probably the least helpful bit of feedback ever.

Lets dial down what better means, what actions do we expect from them in what specific scenario?

The clearer we can be about what we expect and when, the easier it will be for that person to implement it.

And finally lets hit step 3: Use an example

They’ve uncovered the feedback themselves, we’ve got specific and actionable, now lets make sure they understand.

How many times have you listened to something only to forget in 10 minutes later?

If you’re like me, more often than we’d like to admit!

Talking through an example, answer questions based on information you’ve just received is one of the best ways to check understanding, and cement that information into memory.

So lets take what we’ve just talked about with them and apply it to a theoretical situation to see how they react.

We can then use this to go back and recover any potential issues there and then.

So there you have it.

A third option to delivering feedback. Ensuring that people actually understand and will take action on it!

Try this out in your next 1-to-1 and let me know how it goes.

As always, have a great day.

Reece