4.3 Feedback
Giving feedback
Good performance management processes include meeting with your team members regularly to:
- monitor how they are progressing in relation to their objectives
- address issues that are blocking progress
- revise priorities and timeframes if needed.
This is an opportunity to step back from day-to-day issues and for you to give feedback on the individual's work. Your acknowledgement of good work and effective contributions, especially to the work of other people, can encourage them to continue these behaviours.
Explicit descriptions of outputs or behaviour expectations that are not being met give you and your team member the opportunity to discuss any differences in understanding and revise priorities and timeframes if needed. These descriptions could be based on the Key Performance Indicators mentioned in Topic 4.2. At times those situations can feel uncomfortable, either because people tend to defend their perceptions of themselves or because their performance, which may meet the satisfactory standard for the project, does not meet their aspired or 'stretch' target. Yet without feedback the person cannot adjust their behaviour and priorities to meet the goal or better manage their time and expectations.
Giving positive feedback can help to reenergise and sustain a person. Yet Australians tend to have a cultural characteristic of dismissing or minimising praise when it is offered. So how do you provide this feedback? The main principles are to:
- Develop expectations that can be described explicitly early in the project
- Collect information so that you can describe the achievements
- Listen to the person's self-assessment of the situation
- Describe the situation against the goal and standards
- Adopt a positive collaborative problem-solving stance to address any shortfalls.
When giving feedback, you should explicitly describe the behaviour or contribution that you appreciated and its impact. This makes it easier for the recipient to believe and replicate it, if the action was appreciated, or to avoid repeating the behaviour if it was not.
An example of positive feedback is the following:
"Developing the humidity controls for the incubators gave us much better control on the experiment. I really appreciated you taking over that task. It is nice to know someone else is looking out for potential problems and guarding against them."
This has more impact (and can be validated), rather than: "Oh, thanks for that. It was good."
The following list gives eight principles for giving reinforcing feedback.
1. Be generous – try to catch people doing something right
2. Be sincere
3. Give the feedback as soon as possible after the desired behaviour occurred
4. Speak privately to avoid embarrassment
5. Speak publicly to send the message to others or amplify the effect by getting the message to "filter back" to the individual
6. Describe their positive impact on the project, the team, you, etc.
7. Avoid sandwiching a piece of feedback aimed at redirecting an aspect of the behaviour in between two slices of reinforcing feedback
8. Remember everyone needs positive reinforcement – including your supervisors.
Constructive feedback
Underperformance can have a number of reasons, such as:
- Inadequate skills to do the job
- Insufficient amount of work or poor work organisation skills
- Personal problems
- Relationship skills.
Constructive conversations can usually identify the main elements that are affecting performance and together you can put plans in place to address them.
The following scenario illustrates the importance of guiding an employee's work focus through constructive feedback.
Supervisor: Mark, you will remember at the beginning of the project we agreed you would prepare a paper on (research topic) for publication in the Journal of xxxx by September 20xx. It’s June now. Where is this up to?
Mark: Oh, yeah. I haven't got round to it yet. I can't get access to the net when I’m out bush on field trips.
Supervisor: But the last field trip was in April, wasn’t it?
Mark: And then there was the group from Perth that we had to drive out in May.
Supervisor: It seems like there might be some difficulties in setting aside the time to get the information into a fit state to report on. This project has a target of 4 publications and so it’s important that this commitment is met.
Mark: Well, the data has been entered and checked. I have a couple of analyses to do and then it can be written up.
Supervisor: So you are about halfway through the process. Remember that editing always takes more time than you think.
Mark: Yeah, well I can see it needs to be done.
Supervisor: Let's look at your commitments and how I can help. Perhaps you could block out some time next week and the week after to start writing. If you talk with Lee now she may be able to put time aside to edit the first cut of your work in 3 weeks. How long will it take to finish the analyses?
Mark: About a week.
Supervisor: How about we set aside half an hour on Thursday week to talk about your first impressions and the direction the paper will take?
Mark: OK, that sounds manageable, but it’ll still be a bit fine for the September deadline. Would it be a problem if I aim for the next edition?
Supervisor: Let's keep that as a fall-back position.
Mark: I'll give it a go.
Principles that make this kind of conversation effective include:
- Describe the situation that is of concern and involve the person in solving the problem rather that challenging them or seeking to impose your solution
- Establish the boundary of the issue or conversation. Be specific about the instance or the issue that you want to discuss and don't expand it to other instances in the past
- indicate your interest or commitment to helping the other person achieve the outcome
- Put the issue in context by identifying the research or team needs and explain the impact or consequences of their behaviour on both of you
- Focus on behaviours or skills that can change
- Be timely – don't store up issues and concerns and then dump them on the person. It is difficult to change when the situation was 6 months ago. In addition, if you bottle up concerns you are likely to build up feelings of resentment that will make it difficult to give the feedback in a helpful nonthreatening way
- Minimise defensiveness by focusing on what can be done to improve the outcomes in the future
- Avoid absolutes such as 'never', 'always', and 'must' (Topic 4.7). The section below, ‘Providing difficult feedback’, gives more specific suggestions for supplying feedback where the situation has a strong emotional component.
Providing difficult feedback
When dealing with people, conflicts and problems inevitably arise. One temptation is to rush into a solution, assuming that you understand all aspects of the problem from the initial brief description that was given. But what is reported is usually only a small segment of the whole – the tip of the iceberg. So it’s important to respectfully explore the context and details of the issue before jumping in to suggest and implement solutions. There are a wide range of communication techniques available to assist in working through people-related and task-related problems. Some of the basic techniques are described below. Ground rules for effective communication, which should be established early in the team's formation, constitute the foundation for what is basically a problem-solving conversation. However to fully resolve people problems both the issue and the person's feelings about the issue have to be addressed. Make sure you have put aside sufficient time to get to the bottom of the issue.
Paraphrasing the problem and any related emotions as described by the other person
This basic technique is an invaluable tool for managing interpersonal situations. The intention should be to check you understand the issue from the other person's point of view and to indicate that their point of view is understood. Doing this will often elicit additional information about the situation, or about the individual's feelings, and this will help to deepen your (and their) understanding of the problem; you can then target the key factors underlying it. More specific, accurate information will help both of you to choose the best solution. This establishes empathy, a key aspect of emotional intelligence. A model script might read something like the following.
"When ... happened you felt... YOU feel... because..."
It is important to articulate the feeling state as well as the content if you want the person to engage with you and make changes. By the time the other person confirms that you have understood the situation from their point of view, you will probably be able to identify the preferred outcomes.
The script would change to:
"So, you feel ... because ... and you want ..."
This explicit information then makes it possible to begin to treat the situation as a problem to be resolved rather than a conflict to be won. At this point you could then offer a solution or suggestion. Often, however, the individual themselves will identify the action that needs to be taken.
Example
You: Professor Stupendous, when the community representatives said they wanted to determine which of their youth were employed as guides in the research project you seemed to feel uncomfortable?
Prof. Stupendous: Well yes. I want to get the best and brightest not just an Indigenous Elder's favourite son. I'm not sure if the daughters would stand a chance.
You: So you are concerned that favouritism rather than merit will affect the Indigenous community's decision about who joins your team?
Prof. Stupendous: Too right. It could mean that slight changes in terrain might not be picked up.
You: So you are worried that the quality of the research outcome could be jeopardised?
Prof. Stupendous: You’ve hit the nail right on the head. On the other hand, the Elders were saying something about having the right initiation for the terrain we would be covering. I guess they didn't want the uninitiated wandering into forbidden areas. And the training for initiation may give their selection a more sensitive knowledge of the area.
You: And they have strongly supported the educational possibilities of MDMT's investment.
Prof. Stupendous: True.
You: When you take all of that into consideration you feel more hopeful that their request may not just be about keeping the opportunities for their families, or to be obstructionist.
Prof. Stupendous: Yes. But I still need the sharpest minds available for this phase.
You: So, you feel more tolerant of their request because there may be some mutual benefit, and they have been proactive in seeking learning opportunities for their young people, and you want them to understand the importance of a sharp eye and sharp mind in the candidate.
Prof. Stupendous: Hmm, perhaps they can pick out possible candidates and I can check out their ability to learn the processes we need.
Negotiating differences between people
This is a complex area that cannot be adequately covered here. However, some guidelines can be offered. A common response to conflict is to treat the person as the problem and blame them. This in turn forces the other person onto the defensive, closing off open communication.
One solution is to describe the problem as clearly as possible without blaming either person and get agreement that all the elements of the issue have been described. The paraphrasing techniques described above can be used to draw out relevant information from each party. Next, you should focus on the points of agreement between the two people to reduce the point of conflict to an explicit, concrete description. It may be helpful to write it down. The next step is to apply problem-solving techniques to resolve the issue. By being 'hard' on the problem but 'soft' on the person you are more likely to motivate them to address the problem and if necessary to change their behaviour.
Unsatisfactory performance
Although rare, persistent unsatisfactory performance needs to be addressed in a formal manner. The same principles of clear communication about the problem apply, but if the informal methods have not led to improvements you need to contact your human resources section for advice on how to manage the exit of such a staff member. It seems like such a drastic step that you may want to avoid it, but leaving situations like this to fester will increase the workload for everyone else, deplete your research budget, and possibly result in expensive ongoing problems (if this is a tenured staff member). Because they have legal standing it’s important to keep dated records of conversations and actions and to follow university procedures.
Modules 