This is How You Can Give Productive Feedback

Providing feedback is giving a person an observer’s insight or point of view of their performance. However, many people wrongly perceive that the feedback provider is a superior person to the receiver. Receiving feedback and giving it is a very delicate process as it contains opinions, suggestions and critics too. Here are the ways in which your feedback can prove to be productive to the receiver as well as to you.

1- Create safety.

If the person receiving the feedback doesn’t feel comfortable, he/she will overlook it and thus it proves to be unproductive. Only 30% of your feedback is applied by people, according to Columbia University neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner, who cited that research at the NeuroLeadership Summit in Boston. Your feedback will be productive only if you make that person feel secure and safe instead of making him feel bad in front of everyone.

2- Be positive.

Always be positive while giving feedbacks to the other person. You don’t have to avoid negative, furious or corrective feedbacks either. Just keep a proper balance between them and it will prove to be beneficial. Give a suggested solution or outcome along with those negative feedbacks.

3- Be specific.

Stay specific while addressing people. Avoid sentences like ” I want you to be more talkative in meeting”. By being specific you can put it as “You are smart, I want to know your opinions and atleast 2 suggestions in further meetings”. People  tend to respond better if you be specific and this increases the productivity of their work. 

4- Be immediate.

It’s obvious if you give feedback after three months on the person’s performance, they are less likely to fill the gaps. Human brain learns best by being caught in action. Give them immediate feedback so that they can inculcate it faster and as a result improve their productivity.

5- Do not sound mean.

If at all, a person feels that the feedbacks you give are only for your own benefit, he/she is going to turn around. Be tough but not mean. Ask them whether they clearly understand what is being expected. You can start conversing by asking his or her perspective on a situation.

Resist saying how stupid their work or actions were, even if they really were. Do not make them feel foolish to do the job. Instant and motivational feedback is always productive for both. Guide them and tell them you are here for them to succeed. As the saying goes “People have a habit of becoming what you encourage them to be, not what you nag them to be.”

-Vatsal Doshi