imapMyTeam Blog

Keeping People Safe in Feedback Mode

Feedback. Many people dread giving or receiving feedback because they have had so many bad experiences over the course of their careers. When feedback goes badly, people draw the wrong lessons from the experience. We can’t be open to things that we anticipate will cause some level of pain.

Yet, I recall the famous quote by Ken Blanchard “feedback is the breakfast of champions”.

How then do we reconcile the need to give and receive constant feedback and keep it safe? And to turn that feedback into our breakfast so we can succeed and become ‘champions’?

The bottom line is feedback is going to hurt when you do not frame it in a way that matches the receivers’ internal motivational expectations. So the predictor of the misery is not in the message itself, but how you deliver the message and how that message is filtered by the receivers’ unique expectations.

For example some people just need you to be as candid and direct as possible. Any attempts by you at subtlety or nibbling at the edges of the matter rather than getting to the heart of the issue are going to miss the mark and the message will fail to register.

Conversely, another person may need you to patiently listen and understand why they did what they did and needs to know that in this whole process that you continue to respect them despite these differences. They often need criticism balanced with praise, and subtlety works with them. They can read between the lines and get your message.

Can you give feedback both ways? Do you know who needs the first example and who needs the second? Do you know who needs a balance of the two perhaps? When you do it makes it safe for the other person – they can better accept the content of the feedback.

It is important for you to get this right – if you get it wrong, people will focus on the intent of your feedback rather than the content of the feedback.

Reading others ‘How to Talk To’ and ‘What to Avoid’ reports in imapMyTeam® is a failsafe way for you to prepare to give any sort of feedback to others. It will help you frame these important discussions in a way to make them succeed, makes the other person capable of receiving the message and keeping them safe in the process.

Coming Soon:
A new report to imapMyTeam® currently titled ‘Performance Conversations’ will be released soon. That report will give you even more comprehensive insight to the process of giving performance related feedback.