How to Get Employees to Improve? Issues with Feedback

How to Get Employees to Improve? Issues with Feedback

As a manager, you are trying to improve the performance of your team members. And so you should. It's quite common to think that giving your employees critical yet constructive feedback on their weaknesses is valuable to them and to their employer. And indeed for a simple, factual task this actually works.

But science is teaching us that such thinking is actually wrong if we are talking about complex stuff like strategic thinking, managing, decision-making, leading, conducting job interviews, planning, marketing, selling, purchasing, negotiating, coaching, assertiveness, etc.

In an article worth reading, Buckingham and Goodall explain there are 3 reasons why telling people what we think of their performance and how they should do it better does not work for complex jobs, tasks or skills:

1. Telling people what we think of their performance and how they should improve it does not enable, but actually hinders them to learn and grow. Because we are poor at objectively observing and rating others. So we are unlikely to provide the right information.
2. You can not teach other persons abilities they are missing. Simply telling what we think is missing and should be improved is not conducive to learning:
   
   • Neurologically, people learn easier in areas in which they already have good ability.
   • Also, a person learns easier towards what he believes he is already doing well.
   • And if we receive attention to our strengths from others this catalyzes learning, but if we receive such attention from others to our weaknesses it smothers it. We resists information from other people that tell us we are doing something wrong.
3. Great performance (in complex tasks) is not universal, but personal. The way excellence is achieved is different for different people. Each person achieves it in a unique, individual way.

💡How CAN you get your employees to improve? Take 4 steps:

1. Look for excellent outcomes (results) and highlight/signal it. Say something like: "That! Yes, that!" or simply "That! Wow!" In this way, you focus the attention of the employee on what she is already doing well.
2. Share what you saw from him and how it made you feel (do not judge, rate). Say something like: "This is what you made me realize", or even better: "Did you see what you just did?" Again, you focus the attention of the employee on what he is already doing well. This also works the other way around when you are receiving feedback: If your boss says: "Well done!" then ask: "What precisely?" This allows you to distinguish and focus on what was so excellent.
3. Consider spotting excellent behavior/results from team members your top priority. Unless you want to run your department all by yourself...
4. Use the present, past and future (in that order). Ask: "What did you just do that worked so fantastic?" And: "In the past, what did you do that worked well?" And: "What do you already know that will probably work?"

Giving feedback in the right way is an essential skill for any manager and leader. Focusing the attention of the receiver on what he/she is already doing well is much more effective than trying to teach skills he/she is perhaps missing.
Source: Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, "The Feedback Fallacy", HBR Mar-Apr 2019, pp.92-101.

		Comments Sort by date Sort by rating Rating
		3 Dr. Sapna Dadwal Professor, India
	Recognition & Motivation of Employees A manager or a leader can improve his employees' performance by giving them recognition, even for th... Sign up

		7 Jeff Washburn Strategy Consultant, United States
	Coué's Law: Imagination Wins over Willpower Forty years ago, I learned about Coué's Law - perhaps the only law in the field of psychology. The ... Sign up

		3 Tom Wilson HR Consultant, United States
	Catch Them Doing Something Right The more authentic your spontaneous recognition of an individual's efficacy congruent to the task as... Sign up

		9 Charles P. Keith Management Consultant, United States
	Time for Applied Behavioral Science: DCOM Understanding the motivators of an individual is key in developing others. With a "problem" employee... Sign up

		2 Johan Billow Student (Other), Sweden
	Difference Between Improve and Correct Thank you for interesting reading! I really need to start work more with this in my job as coach at ... Sign up

		2 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Correcting a la Buckingham and Goodall @Johan Billow: Good question, thanks. Sometimes clear instructions or corrections to perform a simpl... Sign up

		2 Riphagen Financial Consultant, Netherlands
	Recommendations in Relation to Performance Management System The majority of large companies have a performance management system in place, that connects perform... Sign up

		1 Jeff Washburn Strategy Consultant, United States
	How do you let a person find out what s/he can do best? You can turn the question around (Editor: “How can you get your employees to improve?”) into: - How... Sign up

		0 Charles P. Keith Management Consultant, United States
	Be Careful of Mis-alignment in the Search @Jeff Washburn: The questions are quite interesting but I would be cautious in trying to simplify pe... Sign up

		1 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Inner Being ⇨ Focus ⇨ Performance You would agree that performance depends on the focus level of a person's mind. Focus levels in turn... Sign up

		1 Jeff Washburn Strategy Consultant, United States
	Complex and Ambiguous Circumstances @Charles P. Keith: You describe some of the variables involved which demonstrate that the employee a... Sign up

		0 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Itemised Response for Self Feedback @Charles P. Keith: Charles an excellent example of coaching i.e. based in questions enabling the per... Sign up

		0 DC Blosser Analyst, United States
	My Favorite Question I have found questioning to be a powerful management tool. My favorite is "Why is that?" It helps ge... Sign up