Untangle and grow

A blog by Alison Maxwell

Monday 15 August 2011

Will it lead to action/ change? Feedback that is...



I get really worried when managers I meet confuse evaluation with feedback. While it is very nice to hear 'Your are brilliant, keep it up' or worrying to hear 'You are rubbish, stop it'  these are evaluations and NOT feedback .. at least not in my book because they are not useful. The point of giving feedback is to influence someone to change or improve their performance and while nice/nasty evaluations are pleasant/unpleasant they don't necessarily create change. Evaluations in my experience create resistance (or embarrassment) rather than improved performance. 


Far more helpful is to tell people what you want them to do differently/ do more of and then have the coaching  conversation that helps them to figure out how. Perhaps then one day we would look forward to receiving feedback instead of running a mile from it .. happy day indeed. 

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