I have long been an advocate of providing and receiving feedback. Feedback is such a powerful tool that helps all of us to either keep doing what we are doing or looking at ways to improve. Without feedback, which is a basic fundamental of life, we would get nowhere. Think of how young children learn, they try things out and soon learn through feedback whether to continue or change their behaviour. The same process needs to applied to adults so we can learn and improve.
Having trained 1000’s of frontline managers in how to provide effective feedback, I love it when the power of feedback is reinforced by research. Gallup recently shared some very interesting statistics, based on their extensive world-wide research that clearly shows the massive benefits for managers to provide regular feedback to their teams.
Gallup found that when managers provided weekly feedback their team members are 3.2 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to do outstanding work and 2.7 times more likely to be engaged at work. This is powerful stuff, all through managers focussing on providing regular feedback to their team.
Furthermore, by focussing on what their team members did best, it boosted enthusiasm and commitment to the organisation. This matches our coaching philosophy beautifully as we are huge advocates of catching your team doing something right and telling them as opposed to waiting until they do something wrong. Positive feedback is so powerful when it is delivered in a genuine and timely way.
However, sometimes we need to get a person back on track and that requires the other type of feedback. When delivered from a place of helping the team member to improve, this type of feedback (called improvement feedback) works. Even our improvement feedback model is seen as positive and motivating.
So, what’s stopping you from upping your delivery of feedback to your team, as the benefits are enormous.
Roger Simpson – CEO, The Retail Solution and Author of “The Ultimate Retail Sales Experience” With over 35 years’ industry experience, Roger Simpson is recognized as Australia’s #1 Authority on customer ROI in the retail industry and as a global expert on staff coaching, customer service, and selling skills.
