Feedback in Communications Essay

When you make a conscious choice to give and receive feedback on a regular basis you demonstrate that feedback is a powerful means of personal development. Done properly, feedback need not be agonizing, demoralizing, or daunting and the more practice you get the better you will become at it. It may never be your favorite means of communicating with employees, co-workers, or bosses but it does have the potential to make your workplace a much more productive and harmonious place to be. No doubt the process of giving feedback is seen as unnerving and fear provoking. And the workplace can sometimes be the wrong emotional environment in which to discuss performance, introduce suggestions for improvement, and talk about goals for the future. This is a shame, because giving and receiving feedback is some of the most important communication you can engage in with members of your organization. When done in the right way and with the right intentions, feedback communication is the avenue to achieve good performance. Employees have to know what they are doing well and not so well. For them to really hear your thoughts and suggestions on ways to improve, though, that feedback has to be delivered carefully and frequently. Giving feedback effectively is a skill. And like all skills, it takes practice to build your confidence and improve. The following is a collection of â€Å"feedback giving† tips that organizations can try and use. Try to make is positive. Before giving feedback managers or employees should remind themselves why they are doing it. The purpose for giving feedback is to improve the situation. Being confrontational will not accomplish anything.. That’s not to say you must always be positive. There is a role for negativity and even anger if someone isn’t paying attention to what you’re saying. However, this should be used only if necessary. You’ll most often get much more from people when your approach is positive and focused on improvement. Be Timely The closer to the event you address the issue, the better. Feedback isn’t about surprising someone so the sooner you do it, the more the person will be expecting it. IT is much easier to give feedback about an issue that was just completed/not completed than is it to give feedback about a whole years performance. The exception to this is if the situation involved is highly emotional. Waiting until everyone has calmed down before you engage in feedback may help you avoid further confrontation on both sides. You can’t risk letting yourself get worked up and risk saying something you will regret later. Make it Regular When something needs to be said, say it. People then know where they stand all the time and there are few surprises. Also, problems don’t get out of hand. This is not a once-a-year or a once-every-three-months. While this may be the timing of formal feedback, informal, simple feedback should be given much more often depending on the situation. Be Specific Tell the person exactly what they need to improve on. This ensures that you stick to facts and there is less room for vagueness. Remember to stick to what you know first hand: You’ll quickly find yourself on shaky ground if you start giving feedback based on other people’s views. Criticize in Private and Use â€Å"I† Statements While public recognition is appreciated, public scrutiny is not. Establish a safe place to talk where you won’t be interrupted or overheard.. Give the feedback from your perspective. This way you avoid labeling the person. Say, â€Å"I was angry and hurt when you criticized my report in front of my boss† rather than â€Å"You were insensitive yesterday.† Limit Your Focus and Talk Positive A feedback session should discuss no more than two issues. Any more than that and you risk the person feeling attacked and demoralized. You should also stick to behaviors the person can actually change or influence. A good rule is start off with something positive. This helps put the person at ease. It also lets them â€Å"see† what success looks like and this helps them to take the right steps next time. As long as it’s not forced, it can also help to give positive feedback at the end of a feedback session too. Otherwise, people can finish feeling despondent and worthless. Provide Specific Suggestions and Follow Up Make sure you both know what needs to be done to improve the situation. The main message should be that you care and want to help the person grow and develop. Set goals and make plans to monitor and evaluate progress. The whole purpose of feedback is to improve performance. You need to measure whether or not that is happening and then make adjustments as you go. Be sure to document your conversations and discuss what is working and what needs to be modified. The Benefits of Receiving Constructive Feedback Constructive Feedback is important to the achievement of any professional business connection. Providing feedback is something individuals do to offer suggestions or assessments of someone else’s job performance. As stated in the article, â€Å"Giving Constructive Feedback,† giving constructive feedback is an essential and effective tool in boosting much-needed morale, supporting career progression and encouraging good teamwork. Constructive Feedback should not make people feel discouraged, but make them feel like their work and contributions are appreciated. Constructive Feedback can also better a person by the improvement of work performance. Here are some benefits of receiving constructive feedback listed on helium.com: 1. â€Å"It gives individuals the ability to correct any mistakes you make before you either make the same mistake again, or make your current error worse†. 2. â€Å"It Help individuals learn a new skill as quickly as possible.† An examp le of this is learning a skill such as self defense. If the teacher does not give constructive feedback on how the student is shaping their method, progress will come much slower. 3. â€Å"It helps individuals improve on their current skill set.† For example, many professions benefit from others giving them feedback on their current projects. Feedback is like guidance that will allow employees to learn as well improve their quality of work. 4. â€Å"Trust is established between management and staff when constructive feedback is rendered.† When the staff sees that management care, they will begin to care as well. There will be a change in how feedback improves the interpersonal relationships with higher authority and employees. 5. â€Å"Managers providing constructive feedback practice a process of mentoring and developing their staff to stardom within the organization.† 6. â€Å"Providing feedback can improve employee morale and reduce confusion regarding expectations and current performance†. Some individuals do not have the ability to give others constructive feedback. Feedback should be significant and beneficial. If an individual is put in a position to give another person feedback, that individual must make sure the criticism is helpful, not cruel. â€Å"Constructive feedback presents you with the perfect opportunity to grow and learn from your mistakes. But, one of the biggest things that can harm your chances of getting constructive feedback is to become defensive or not listen to the person when they are giving you the feedback† (helium.com). As stated in the article, â€Å"The Importance, Benefits and Fundamentals of Providing Feedback in Sales,† it is suggested that an individual giving constructive feedback should identify the problem, explain how the behavior is wrong or detrimental, help the individual acknowledge the problem, develop goals with the individual, and then monitor the individual’s performance.The main benefit of constructive feedback is to help individual’s advance, acquire information faster, or to better themselves. Examples of effective and ineffective feedback Throughout this paper, giving and receiving feedback has been defined. Also, the different ways to give and receive feedback has been established. This section will elaborate on examples of giving and receiving feedback. Many people experience ineffective feedback on a daily basis. Most often the cause is a supervisor or manager who does not want to release control, however, ineffective feedback is not limited to this particular situation. In the book, Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore, he states there are â€Å"five levels of feedback that are in common use† (Whitmore, 2010, p. 123). Below is a scenario that will be used to show the different types of criticism most commonly experienced by most people. Scenario A project has been assigned to Jane who is a new member of the Cost-Cutters Team. The goal of the team is to brainstorm, propose, and implement a new way of cutting the company’s cost in the most effective manner. Jane is to write the proposal which will be submitted to board for approval. Once the brainstorming has been completed, the team leaves everything in Jane’s hand with a warning. They tell her, â€Å"Do not mess this up.† Jane feels confident she can write the proposal and does not take the warning personal. Once the proposal is finished, Jane comes back to the team to receive feedback from them. The proposal is handed around to each member of the team with many comments being made on everything from the design of the proposal to the steps of implementation. Ineffective feedback Team member #1 stated, â€Å"You really missed the mark with this assignment.† Making this type of statement does not help anyone. The feedback is extremely critical and offers no direction or opportunities for the receiver to learn or make improvements. Personal criticism is a very ineffective way to critique (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). Team member #2 told Jane, â€Å"This will not do. We will have to scrap this and begin again.† According to Whitmore, the feedback displayed by this statement is judgmental and by directing the comments at the proposal instead of the person, â€Å"damages self-esteem† (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). Team member #3 made this statement to Jane. â€Å"You have a clear plan; however, the design and packaging of the proposal will not be well received by the board.† Team member #3’s statement is mildly better than the two before. The beginning of the statement gives some direction for Jane. The plan outlined in the proposal is a good one. When it comes to a design for the proposal, however, Team member #3 did not give any clear instruction or insight to assist Jane, leaving her on the outside (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). Team member #4 asked Jane this question, â€Å"Do you like your proposal?† Although the statement allows Jane the opportunity to actually acknowledge she is the â€Å"owner† of the proposal, without more in-depth questions, Jane is still left without clear direction. Effective feedback Team member #5 took a different approach to the situation by asking a series of question to get Jane to thinking about the proposal and how it could be improved (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). Team member #5 also thanked Jane for taking on the assignment in the first place because it freed the other members to focus on other issues assigned to the team. According to Don and Sheryl Grimme, authors of The New Manager’s Tool Kit, use of this type of positive feedback increases the chances that Jane will â€Å"repeat the desired behavior† in the future and not shrink away from an assignment (Grimme & Grimme, 2009, p. 82). The questions not only got Jane to thinking about what she was trying to express with the proposal, the questions reminded Jane that she wrote this proposal. It was â€Å"her† proposal and she regained her confidence in her ability to produce an acceptable proposal for the board. Whitmore says that by asking a series of questions void of criticisms and judgmental comments leaves room for â€Å"accelerated learning and improved performance (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). How Feedback Can Effect Development Feedback plays a critical part on a person’s cognitive development because it is a method to how individuals associate with others and the world around them. It is how people learn to make decisions. However, there is more to giving or receiving feedback when it is a matter of cognitive development concerns. Instead it becomes a question of how much feedback is necessary and what other functions can help to receive beneficial results. Therefore other functions are introduced such as physical activity, practice or repetition. The idea is to combine both feedback and practice, where as the two components become interdependent. The research of Motor Learning in Children: Feedback Effects on Skill Acquisition may help to understand why considering how much feedback for an individual is really necessary. There are various methods of feedback and examples that will further exemplify how cognitive development and feedback play a major role in today’s experiences. According to recent case studies by Katherine J Sullivan, Shailesh S Kantak, and Patricia A Burtner, cognitive theory is one of the factors among effective feedback-processing capability from the receiver. In their study, processing capability determines the affect of feedback among motor skills training. Half of the participants, both children and young adults receive either %100 feedback with motor skill practice or reduced feedback with motor skill practice. The result of the study is all participants who receive %100 feedback show more signs of accuracy and consistency. On the other hand young adults with reduced feedback still show signs of accuracy and consistency with additional practice; which means equal results can come from reduced feedback. Another interesting fact in the research is how children processed information differently than that of adults. It’s obvious that children would need more practice in order to process the information, but does that mean adults do not need as much feedback as children? Although the example above surrounds skill development among children and young adults, it is still informative for all professionals in various settings to determine the frequency of effective feedback along with helpful components. This may be relevant in situations where professionals such as managers, teachers, or doctors- who preside over various groups or individuals have to determine the level of feedback that is necessary to gain the intended result. Furthermore, there are similar ways of feedback that are used for adults as it is for children, such as corrective feedback, by immediately responding to an error. However, adults do not require continuous or %100 feedback to gain a skill, or retain new information as children do. For example: a manager is presenting a new system for meeting daily quotas. This new system requires employees to rearrange his/her method for recording data. After training, employees are judged by production and/or quality for the next three weeks to determine whether employees are using the system correctly. If not, the employees are given feedback, either by verbal correction or additional training. Then, after that period, employees are not as often monitored or corrected by superior staff. This is because adults do not require %100, feedback. Reduced feedback along with practice or other active components can produce the same results. For children, the frequency of feedback is much more intense due to children’s cognitive processing capabilities. The children involved in the research previously mentioned are between the ages of 8 to 14. According to Piaget’s Stages of Development, a child within these ages is within the concrete operational stage, which explains why feedback is important for children this age. It’s because children are at a stage where they are capable of thinking logically- associating action with a reaction. Hence, feedback is frequently used in many ways for their benefit. For example, children receive report cards and progressive reports from school; rewards for good behavior and grades. Children also receive feedback from their peers and adults (good or bad). For instance, if a child is a disruptive student in class and other students laugh or encourage the behavior, then the behavior will more likely continue. However, if the teacher provides corrective feedback to redirect the behavior and maintain appropriate behavior in the classroom, then the child can associate the teacher’s feedback with his/her actions. Feedback also may spark motivation for academic achievement, which teachers or parents may use to encourage children with rewards, such as money or privileges. Summary Feedback is a very important factor in any situation. The way feedback is given will directly impact the outcome of the situation. Ineffective feedback can leave the receiver feeling inadequate and diminish the receiver’s self-esteem. Surprisingly, the least effective methods are the ones most commonly used (Whitmore, 2010, p. 125). On the contrary, effective feedback will empower the receiver and allow learning and critical thinking to take place (Whitmore, 2010, p. 124). Not only will the receiver benefit; the person giving the feedback will benefit also. When someone learns to give effective feedback, that person becomes an effective leader and is able to guide others into their full potential. Giving and receiving feedback is a very strong; necessary tool in any situation. Reference Grimme, D., & Grimme, S. (2009). The New Manager’s Tool Kit. New York:American Management Association. Huether, Katherine. â€Å"The Benefits of Constructive Feedback.† Helium. Helium, 02 Sept. 2007. Web. 01 Feb. 2013 Moore, Krista. The Importance, Benefits and Fundamentals of Providing Feedback in Sales.† The Importance, Benefits and Fundamentals of Providing Feedback in Sales. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2013. Sullivan, K., Kantak, S., & Burtner, P. (2008). Motor learning in children: feedback effects on skill acquisition. Physical Therapy, 88(6), 720-732. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2522/ptj.20070196 Wardy, Joseph. â€Å"The Benefits of Constructive Feedback.† Helium. Helium, 27 Jan. 2010. Web. 01 Feb. 2013 Whitmore, J. (2010). Coaching for Performance 4th Edition. Boston: Nicholas Brealey.