Constructive Employee Feedback: Why And How To Deliver

Best practices to consider

While it may feel natural to have a fearful and uncertain response to feedback, feedback can actually be the most important element of success. For both leaders and employees, clear communication and dialogue around misaligned expectations or missed opportunities can be transformational - if done correctly. Without caution, feedback can slip into the realm of micromanaging or criticism, and even good leaders may understandably avoid giving feedback in an effort to boost or maintain employee morale. However, this takes away the opportunity for the employee to learn, grow, and succeed.
 

Constructive feedback is commonly confused with criticism, but there is an important distinction between the two. Constructive feedback stems from a manager wanting to help his/her/their employee improve and learn from mistakes, while criticism can turn into belittling a worker for their performance. Good leaders focus on the former, and never use constructive feedback for a ‘gotcha’ moment with employees.

Constructive feedback should feel more like a conversation than a lecture, with the end goal being a plan for best practices moving forward between managers and their employees. To do so, effective leaders should be open and inquisitive about how they can best support their employees following the conversation. Your employee’s mistake may be an indicator that they need more guidance in a certain area of their role, and good leaders will also take these moments to reflect on their executive presence.

Managers should also think about their employee’s intention behind a decision that warrants feedback. If that employee was trying to be helpful or resourceful, leaders should still acknowledge their employee for that effort. As a leader, it is imperative to understand your employee’s perspectives, values, and motivations. In order to make constructive feedback work, a manager needs to call out their team members for moments of success even amidst mistakes to ensure their employees also receive positive reinforcement. 

Employees want to impress their bosses, and receiving praise as an employee is an integral part in avoiding employee burnout, maintaining morale, and counterbalancing moments of constructive feedback. Callouts during all hands meetings, highlighting wins in performance reviews, or even just shooting your teammate a quick direct message with praise are easy, yet effective, ways to do so.

For those who are still anxious about how to deliver feedback, there are helpful tools for getting a corporate team comfortable with feedback. The first, and most important, is to give initial feedback in person when possible. Unspoken cues, like the inflection of your voice and your body language, help communicate to your employees that feedback does not mean they are in trouble. While it may be helpful to follow up feedback with an email outlining expectations moving forward, face-to-face feedback (or over video chat, if necessary) helps mitigate miscommunication.

Second, if you find yourself constantly giving feedback to the point of micro-management, think about trends in your employee’s performance that you can address as a whole, with a few selected examples instead. And finally, while it is important to give feedback following an incident, you should also set aside specific times designated to performance reviews. Whether that is a weekly touch base or a semi-annual review, those moments will allow team members to feel more ready and receptive to feedback. While implementing these best practices may feel awkward at first, they will become second nature to you and your team in the long run.

All employees will make a mistake at one point or another, and encouraging a culture of feedback is the only way to help employees limit those mistakes and develop a growth mindset. As a leader, you always want your employees to feel comfortable coming to you for thoughts on their performance and for guidance when they slip up, and a company culture that thrives on feedback is the way to do just that. The best leaders are able to find a balance between constructive and positive feedback, and in turn, foster a workplace environment, where growth is encouraged and rewarded.  

As the CEO of Meseekna, I consider it a privilege to not only work with an exceptionally capable team, but also help foster each team member’s work ethic and ability to communicate professionally long term through feedback. I take pride in knowing that the feedback we have shared throughout their time at my company will help them thrive in roles down the road. For me, the importance of employee feedback goes beyond my individual company. If a company leader can help employees embrace feedback as an essential stepping stone in their individual career development, then they have done their job as role models, regardless of where that person may end up in long-term.

Akhila Satish is the CEO of Meseekna. At Meseekna, she leads a team of diverse backgrounds and skill sets on a mission to assess, train and educate individuals on the power of their metacognition (their “how” of thinking). Visit www.meseekna.com Connect Akhila Satish Follow @akhilasatish