Feedback in the organization facilitates the work of not only the manager, but also the employees themselves. Find out what experts have to say about this in the material of the article.

From the article you will learn:

Feedback in the organization: general information

Company feedback is information about an employee's behavior in the past, which is given to him in the present, hoping that it will influence the behavior in the future. It is a key component in the development of employees, and also helps not only to correct the identified mistakes of subordinates before they become a habit, but also reinforces the desired behavior pattern. According to experts, this stimulates professional development and helps employees achieve their goals.

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The feedback process allows you to improve your performance in the future, as people need to understand how effective they are now. They need specific information about strengths as well as those that need to be developed. Feedback in an organization is a tool that allows you to see yourself from the outside, plan development and track progress.

For a manager, feedback is considered a tool that allows you to:

• express recognition to the employee and support high motivation;
• change expectations, as well as assessment and self-assessment of a specialist;
• increase the efficiency and productivity of work;
• clarify goals, clarify the tasks facing a person;
• understand the causes of negative behavior in a timely manner and correct it;
• to focus specialists on development in a specific direction;
• develop mutual understanding and trust;
• maintain a positive atmosphere in the team and in the organization as a whole;
• develop harmony and cohesion, forming team approach to work;
• to identify which process or tool does not provide the desired result;

Feedback helps not only the employee to improve, but also the manager to identify areas that require modernization, change or development in order to ensure sustainable growth and progress. The principle of feedback directly depends on its type. The more competently the process is built, the easier it is for the manager to collect important information and correct any deficiencies in a timely manner.

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Positive feedback or negative: determine the type

How much negativity to give out during feedback in an organization to an employee depends on how he relates to work and how he behaves.

There are four types of attitudes and behaviors: active-positive, active-negative, passive-negative, and passive-positive. Each type has its own proportion of positive and negative feedback. Imagine these four types department heads, explain what the essence of each.

Then the managers will be able to determine what type the employee belongs to, how to give feedback. Based on this, they will understand what portion of the negative to give to the subordinate in the course of feedback. Agree, it is impossible to speak the same way with those who sincerely support the cause, and with those who are always trying to evade work under any pretext. The feedback sandwich in the organization will remain the same anyway. But only in structure: first positive, then negative, then positive again. But the sizes of the “sandwich” layers, their ratio should differ.

Active and positive attitude towards work. Negative minimum

Myth #1

After feedback, productivity will immediately increase

No, the efficiency of the staff will not increase immediately. Firstly, because it takes time for employees to implement the activities that they have outlined with the head of the department, to work on themselves. Secondly, according to statistics, 30% of employees, on the contrary, begin to work worse. This is due to the fact that managers give incorrect feedback in the organization.

• Mistake 1: Bosses do not consider what type of work attitude their subordinates demonstrate. Therefore, they do not observe the proportion of negative and positive described in the article.
• Error 2: the head of the department speaks in general, gives emotional judgments about the work of the employee, offends him, and does not indicate clear goals for him.

Due to the increased focus on feedback in modern companies, many employees quite clearly understand their strengths and weak sides, areas of professional and personal development.

In conversations with a career consultant, they quickly give examples of their successes and failures, rely on objective facts and authoritative opinions - sometimes they even bring with them the results of psychological tests, which reflect their qualities of character and motivation.

However, in the life of a career consultant, there are other examples when a client was not given high-quality feedback for a long time, there was no independent evaluation competencies, perhaps he never even got a job "from the street" - he did not pass interviews and did not receive advice from recruiters, or maybe he did not change jobs for a long time or he had a significant break in his career.

All this can lead to the fact that the client's self-image will be greatly distorted in comparison with the opinion of other people - those on whom the success of his career depends. And then the responsibility for giving feedback and "returning the client to reality" falls on the career consultant.

The task of a career consultant is to help the client achieve his stated goal. After the client has defined the goal, it is necessary to assess whether the client has enough resources to achieve it, find hidden reserves, assess what is missing and what risks may arise. The SWOT model can be used as a framework for such an analysis.

The subject of the analysis is the professional experience of the client, his competencies, values, interests and motivation are evaluated. Depending on qualifications, a career consultant may conduct the assessment himself, or may involve third-party experts or use psychometric tools.

In any case, following the results of the evaluation, it is necessary to give the client feedback. It is she who will become a support for the client, from which he will push towards his goal. It should be taken into account that if, for some reason, the client does not accept the feedback, this can undermine the confidence in the consultant and the client will not move further. So the skill of developing feedback is one of the key skills for a consultant. It is the consultant who is responsible for the client's reaction after feedback. This does not mean that the client must agree with every word, the main thing is that trust is maintained between the client and the consultant and the client is ready to remain in dialogue.

General rules feedback:

Preparation - a clear understanding of the main ideas that you need to convey to the client;

Suitable place and time for the meeting;

- “Positive stuffing” at the beginning of the meeting (it can be anything: from a compliment to a joke; it is important to relax the client, energize and positive);

Maintaining eye contact throughout the entire period of communication;

Emphasis on what is important and significant for the client - his goal, needs, motivation, limitations;

Respect for the personality of the client;

Fewer value judgments ("Try yourself in sales"), instead more indications of specific behavior ("I noticed that in your story about working in sales there was a lot of energy. What is a job in sales for you?";

Use of metaphors and personal examples (“You know, this reminded me of a story… Let me tell it?….What is this story about for you?”)

Acceptance of the client's right to his own opinion.

Ideal feedback is when the consultant completely repels the client's words, as if returning his own words to him. This ensures the transfer of responsibility to the client for his own choice.

In order to include the client in the work as an expert of his own experience, you can apply the technique " scaling". It is done as follows:

1. The consultant asks the client to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how competent/successful they are in a particular area.

2. The client evaluates himself.

3. The consultant asks the client why he did not rate himself lower - then the client describes his strengths- what he is already doing, in which he is great.

5. Summarize and discuss what action the client needs to take to move up the scale

As a result of feedback, the client should understand what specific steps he needs to take in order to achieve the goal, or at least start moving in its direction. In addition to understanding, his inner readiness and desire to act in a given direction is important.

If a career consultant has managed to achieve this effect, he can praise himself for his excellent work. It is even better if the consultant asks for feedback for himself, asks his client directly: "How was the session? What valuable thing will the client take with him? What did he lack? What could be improved?" In long-term work with a client, mutual feedback builds trust, develops the client's skill of feedback in both directions (not only to receive, but also to give high-quality feedback, which is always useful for career development).

In order for employees to understand you and want to achieve results with you, it is important to competently discuss their strengths and weaknesses with them and set goals for them. In this manual you will find techniques, recommendations and examples for giving feedback to sales managers.

Feedback Goals

• help the employee recognize their strengths and weaknesses;
• support actions that improve performance;
• help to learn from the mistakes made.

What does good feedback mean?

• evaluation parameters are transparent, understandable and known to employees;
• the evaluation procedure is objective, not based on personal likes / dislikes - for this, an outside specialist is often invited;
• situations that have occurred recently, for example, within one reporting week, are subject to analysis;
• criticism should be justified by the results of the assessment;
• criticism should be constructive, that is, suggest ways to solve problems;
• there should be a system of rewards for distinguished employees;
• statistics should be kept by which progress can be tracked.

The service "Quality control of sales departments": who will need it, and how we do it

How to give feedback to managers

Model "Sandwich"

The error parsing block (developing feedback) is located between the positive feedback blocks. It is used in conversations on setting goals, adjusting results, developing employees:

Manager Sergey corrected the mistakes of the last week, but has not yet fulfilled the sales plan. We give Sergey feedback.

Let's start with the positive. “Sergei, this week you succeeded and corrected the mistakes that we met in your conversations for a month. Now, while talking on the phone, you address customers by name, engage in a dialogue with interest, and set the next sales step.”

We will discuss what needs to be adjusted, we will discuss the improvement plan. “At the same time, there is room to grow. Pay attention to the presentation of the product, company. Our clients apply to dozens of companies, we need to stand out among them, to interest the client with our offer. Let's discuss what you can do about it." There is no open criticism, we discuss with the employee a plan to improve his performance.

We end the conversation on a positive note. “Great, the action plan has been agreed, let's get to work. Try calling current clients using the plan we discussed. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch."

SOR model

Suitable in cases where an employee violated the company's work standards, committed a misdemeanor:

Manager Aleksey did not respond to the client's request within the set time, the client terminated the service contract.

We remind you of the standard (Standart). “Aleksey, our company has a rule - an application for a service must be processed as soon as possible, within a maximum of 30 minutes. The client must know within 30 minutes that we have accepted the application and started working.”

We state the facts and observation (Observation). “Yesterday at 10:15 a request was received from our client, but you only called back at 15:00. The customer waited a long time and tried to fix the problem himself.”

We discuss the impact on the business, the result of the employee's action (Result). “As a result, the customer decided to terminate the service contract because he did not receive assistance at the specified time.”

The next step is the employee's awareness of his act and the acceptance of obligations for the consequences of his behavior.

Boff model

The new manager, Irina, regularly violates the standards of quality service: she communicates impolitely with clients, processes applications late, forgets to call back on time, and stays late during lunch breaks.

Behavior. Tell Irina your observations about her work. Specifically, in the language of facts, preferably with details, dates of observations. Discuss the reasons. Sometimes it happens that the employee is not fully aware of what is expected of him.

Result (Outcome). Discuss with Irina how her behavior (irritability and rudeness in communicating with clients, ignoring applications, a long absence from the workplace after a break) affects business results, the number of clients served, and the number of complaints received from clients.

Feelings. Talk about how you feel knowing Irina works this way. You are upset, upset, not very happy, it is unpleasant for you to realize. Discuss how other managers feel when Irina is away from work for a long time and they have to handle additional calls. By doing so, you will help Irina realize the unacceptability of her behavior.

Future (Future). Discuss with Irina how she can change her behavior. It is best to ask questions and get answers from a co-worker. This will allow her to take responsibility for future decisions and actions. At the end of the conversation, agree on specific actions and deadlines, outline a plan of action for the future. It is advisable to schedule a date for the next meeting to monitor and discuss Irina's progress.

• listen to the call together;
• ask the operator what he generally thinks of this call;
• ask the operator what he thinks he did best;
• ask the operator what he thinks about the customer's experience and whether the customer will use the company's service or products again;
• ask the operator what he would like to improve in this call;
• now express your opinion about this call, using, for example, the “sandwich” model;
• choose one narrow area to focus on using the SMART technique. Do not take the topic "customer service" - it is too extensive for one session;
• play the situation again: you are the client, and the manager will try to take into account his mistakes and build communication based on the comments.

Feedback(feedback) - information that the employee receives about how the manager perceives and evaluates his actions.

Why feedback is needed:

1. With its help, the leader manages the activities of his subordinates, that is, he encourages the desired behavior and limits the undesirable. Praising the employee, thereby he confirms the correctness of his actions, compliance with the plan, the ideas of the head. If it is necessary to change the actions of the subordinate, the leader gives corrective feedback. Thus, the main thing is achieved - the effectiveness of the actions of the subordinate is ensured.
2. Feedback performs a learning function. It allows the employee to find out what is expected of him, what are the criteria for evaluating his work, to what extent his actions correspond to the correct technology for performing work.
3. It performs a motivating function. The manager praises, encourages the employee and recognizes his achievements, thereby forming motivation for further work. With the help of corrective feedback, the leader forms the desire to correct the situation.
4. Providing detailed feedback is a manifestation of attention to the employee on the part of the manager, which has a beneficial effect on the relationship between people working together.

Thus, feedback is the most important component of such management processes as control, mentoring, motivation, has a powerful potential as a tool of managerial influence. For this potential to be realized, the following conditions must be met. Feedback should be:

1. specific. The leader should not generalize and draw global conclusions such as: "You're always late for work", it's better to say . In feedback, it is necessary to operate with specific facts, and not general judgments.
2. About actions, not personality. Permissible statement "You're 15 minutes late today", but not "you are an undisciplined person". The act can be corrected, but the character is almost impossible to correct. Therefore, a person is ready to accept information about an act, but is not ready to accept that he is not such a person, and will defend himself, argue.
3. Timely. Feedback should be given immediately after an act that you want to encourage or change. This is also called the “hot stove rule” (if you touch it, it burns immediately, not later).
4. Developing. One of the tasks of feedback is to develop the employee's ability to introspection, to independently highlight their successes and shortcomings, and to correctly search for their causes. To do this, the manager uses open ones, helping the subordinate to formulate the correct conclusions about his work himself. Independently drawn conclusions are accepted and remembered much better than those said by another person.
5. Adapted. All people are different in terms of sensitivity to criticism, readiness for self-development. The manager needs to adapt his feedback to the level of understanding of his subordinates: do not immediately give a lot of corrective information if a person is able to understand and implement only a part.

There are several models for structuring feedback, of which the following are the most commonly used:

1. "The Sandwich Rule". Feedback is provided according to the structure "Positive - Corrective - Positive". Such a structure is necessary for those employees who may not be emotionally ready to accept the need to adjust their actions. So that the employee does not take a defensive position in communication with the manager, feedback begins and ends with good points in his activities (achievements, successes, strengths).

…In one company, a supervisor had a tough, hard-hitting conversation with a sales rep about unconvincing performance planned assignments. At the end of the conversation, suddenly remembering the “sandwich rule”, the supervisor lowered his voice and said: “well, in general, you are great, in outlets clients speak well of you. Go to work". To which the sales representative, leaving, plaintively remarked: “Uncle Fyodor, your sandwich is somehow wrong ...”

1. Model BOFF (Behavior - Outcome - Feelings - Future), in the Russian version of PRCHB (Behavior - Result - Feelings - Future). First, the manager describes the behavior of the employee and the result to which this behavior led. Further enhances the emotional impact, mentioning the feelings that he (or the employee’s colleagues, the employee himself, other persons) experience about this. The feedback ends with a description of the desired behavior that the employee must demonstrate in the future. The model is used if the manager has doubts that the usual feedback will be effective for this employee.
2. SOR model (Standard - Observation - Result, Standard - Observation - Result). Designed to orient the employee to the correct technology of action. First, the manager reminds the employee of the existing actions in the company, then discusses with the employee his observations about his behavior, achieves an understanding by the employee of the results that his behavior can lead to and achieves the employee’s readiness to continue to comply.

In addition to the ability to provide feedback, you also need to learn yourself and teach your subordinates to receive it correctly. To do this, it is important to follow a few rules:

1. When receiving feedback, do not make excuses, avoid being defensive.
2. Ask questions for clarity, ask for examples of behavior, summarize the information received and get confirmation that you understood it correctly.
3. Thanks for the feedback.
4. Make an action plan on what can be improved and how.

In the field of FMCG, much attention has traditionally been paid to the observance by managers of the rules for providing and receiving feedback, which can be enshrined in, and a number of other processes. For example, one of the functions of the meeting is summing up, i.e. providing feedback to the team, which should also be carried out taking into account the rules described above. This means that during the meeting, he must operate with specific, relevant figures and facts (the rules of "specificity", "timeliness"), start with the positive and achievements of the team (the "sandwich" rule), focus on what needs to be improved today (the "adaptability" rule). At the same time, he should never "arrange a dressing down" for individual subordinates in the presence of others, that is, it is necessary to praise in public, but to criticize one by one.

Principles of Effective Feedback

Why this conversation is important and useful is its versatility. The principles that will be discussed work perfectly in all areas of our lives. And everywhere they bring great results - when used correctly. We usually do not recommend practicing speaking skills in front of relatives and friends at trainings. But in this matter, on the contrary, we strongly recommend that the principles of effective feedback be introduced and used in personal life as soon as possible.

The quality of feedback is perhaps the key issue of any training, and, in general, the development process. Good feedback (for short, OS) signals in time how correctly we are moving towards our goal, whether we need to correct course or change speed (and perhaps even urgently turn around in reverse side and change modes of transport. The OS also affects the goals themselves - they have to be adjusted, or even changed. In a word, the importance of a quality OS in our life can hardly be overestimated - unfortunately, many people could not achieve what they are capable of, due to the wrong OS from their mentors.

Take a look around - we constantly receive a powerful stream of assessments, criticism, advice, discussions and condemnations of ourselves and each of our actions. What is splashing in this stream?

Empathy?

The desire of a critic to show off his mind?

Seeking to hurt us?

Intention to put in place?

Indifferent execution of the protocol?

Alas, sometimes even a sincere desire to help resembles the strong friendly embrace of a porcupine - it will gouge and splinter. After all, the contexts of the process of transferring knowledge and experience can be very different. Compare: “I teach you - you are still young and stupid - you are clumsy and generally worthless” and “you are learning - you are striving to become a master - you are doing great!”. In which of the "wraps" did you receive your training more often?

Of course, useful lessons can be learned from any touch of life - if you have the strength to stand on your feet after this touch. And yet, from the point of view of efficiency and speed of learning, it is much better when the OS is given in compliance with certain principles.

So - competent advice, or principles of an effective OS.

1. FRIENDLY.

The most important condition for a person to accept your advice is the creation of a friendly, trusting atmosphere. This is perhaps the fundamental difference between constructive advice and malicious criticism.

Try right now in front of the mirror to make a disgruntled grimace, stand in a defiantly combative pose and depict an aggressive gesture with your hands. Well, how? I think that I really want to respond to the reflection seen in the mirror with the same aggression (and if you did a good job with a grimace, then just run away) - what kind of feedback is there!

The atmosphere of trust and friendliness creates a positive working attitude, encourages the full disclosure of creative potential, helps to accept the OS "essentially", without "bothering" over the possible "secret motives" of its author. Moreover, this is true both for working with other people and for evaluating your own performance.

Creating such an atmosphere is sometimes difficult, but almost always necessary!

2. SINCERE.

Sometimes - imbued with the desire to achieve maximum friendliness - we begin to issue an OS that does not quite correspond to reality. Whether the desire to please it, the fear of upsetting - the result is sad. The speaker, who received such an OS "in roses", stops in development.

To be effective and help you grow in skill, your OS must be honest and sincere. There is no need to be silent about the shortcomings - otherwise a person will not know about them. There is no need to invent non-existent virtues - otherwise a person will not understand what he should work on next. An insincere OS is meaningless, since it does not fulfill its main task.

Speaking about this principle at trainings, we always emphasize that it is also important not to be afraid to give your sincere feedback if you work in a group and the opinions of other participants (and even trainers!) do not coincide with your opinion. This is normal, the general objective picture always consists of many personal SINCERE opinions that do not fit one under the other.

3. PRAISE FIRST! We say what we like.

In trainings, this is the most ardently supported in discussion and the most difficult principle to implement)))

It would seem that it is so easy to tell a person first of all that he is doing well, to praise him, to rejoice with him! But in real life, for some reason, everything turns out the other way around - is this our mentality, or what?

Why is it so important to start with praise?

The person made great efforts, tried - it is important to note this in order to consolidate positive motivation, to give a positive assessment of the achieved result;

This will strengthen the atmosphere of friendliness and trust to each other, will help to perceive information about shortcomings more constructively;

A person will know about his strengths, about what he can rely on in his future work, this will strengthen his confidence in his abilities.

You yourself, paying attention, first of all, to the speaker’s strengths, will have an excellent opportunity to “take” them for yourself, learn to do the same and enrich your “arsenal” of strong techniques, good habits and witty solutions - an excellent material for your Self-Developing System!

Add some of your own...

Sometimes at trainings the question arises - what to do if there is nothing to praise for? Invent something, violating the principle of sincerity? Or immediately criticize, violating the principle of friendliness?

The answer here is simple. Both I and my colleagues, having conducted a considerable number of trainings and having seen a very large number of listeners at them, agreed that there is always something to praise a person for. No matter how unsuccessful it may seem speech, his performance on the job, his response at the seminar, his attempt to cook dinner... the list goes on.

If you can't find reasons to praise, then something is wrong with you as an expert, as a coach, as a parent, as a leader ... continue the list. So, you need to urgently work on yourself in this direction.

Regarding praise, as the basis of feedback, I will share an interesting parable:

“One young, wealthy man bought a beautiful house with a beautiful garden. And his neighbor was an envious man. To such an extent envious that every time he did some kind of disgusting thing. And then one fine morning, a young, wealthy man opened the doors of his house, and on the porch he saw a bucket full of slops. He took this bucket, poured out the slop, polished the bucket to a shine, went to his garden and filled this bucket with the ripest, most beautiful apples and went to his neighbor. The envious man, seeing that a neighbor was approaching his house, was delighted: “Finally, I got him!” and ran to open the doors of his house, hoping for a scandal. But, opening the door, he saw a neighbor who, holding out a bucket full of beautiful apples, said: “He who is rich with what, he shares with it ...”
Friends, I ask you to share apples with each other in feedback!

By the way, in the feedback, the participants of our trainings said that this principle - first of all, to notice positive things and phenomena around them - gradually turning into a habit, radically changed their system of views on the world around them as a whole. And life has become much happier, kinder and richer. Try it too!

The rest of the principles will be discussed in the next issue. We will discuss

How can you criticize anyway?

How to light up your eyes

Why brevity is really the sister of talent

Who to give the first word

And other interesting things...

Faithful to you Words and Right Decisions!

Vyacheslav Salomasov
Psychologist, coach, business coach.
Head and leading coach of the school of public speaking "True Word"
https://vernoeslovo.com/