A Look at a Few Feedback Strategies

Try Feedforward instead of Feedback

Everyone likes to hear feedback, that way we know how we are doing and meeting someone's (leaders at work, life, etc.) standards. The problem with feedback though as it states in the article (link in title of this section) is that feedback is in the past. If we praise someone with Feedforward they are making themselves better for the future. Marshall Goldsmith explains an exercise about providing feedforward to someone and receiving it as well, the most common response about the exercise it that it was "fun".  This exercise is seen as fun and helpful instead of embarrassing or uncomfortable from the participants. Based on: 

1. we can change the future but not the past.
2. it can be more productive to help people to be "right" than prove they were "wrong"
3. feedforward is geared towards successful people, they like getting ideas that are aimed at helping them achieve their goal.
4. it can come from anyone that knows the task
5. you don't have to take it personally as feedback
6. feedforward can reinforce the possibility of change
7. most of us hate negative feedback, and don't like giving it
8. feedforward can cover almost all of the same material as feedback
9. tends to be much faster and efficient than feedback
10. it does not imply superiority of judgement, more focused on being helpful
11. we tend to listen more attentively to feedforward than feedback

I would seriously like to try this in a retail setting. I know that it will not happen though, because we cant just close the store to work on a company wide training exercise. We barely have time to cover the computer training that we do have, or we don't have people to cover our store. I found this interesting in that, its true no one likes feedback. It always seems like it comes back negative because it is in the past. We can "look forward to what we want to change" but when, I at least, we are talking to our managers we are still thinking of a reply or focused in on what we did "wrong" not fully listening.

Why Do So Many Manager Avoid Giving Praise?

In the article by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman (link above again in title) they surveyed over 14,000 managers and I was surprised by the numbers of how many have anxiety about giving feedback. It included comments such as: “I did not sleep the night before,” “I just wanted to get it over quickly,” “My hands were sweating and I was nervous,” and “They don’t pay me enough to do this job.” or they would just avoid giving praise all together. And even more managers avoided giving positive feedback. From their research they have found that many managers feel like it is their job to tell the bad news and correct it and making positive feedback optional. This article also mentions that managers can feel like it is a sign of weakness on their part, or they are imitating their previous bosses who gave little praise, and even that praise will cause a team member to let up or start to coast by at work. The last paragraph (my mind was screaming YAS!) says that to be a good feedback-giver you should proactively develop the skill. It shows your team members that you are in their corner, after this it will make giving criticism less stressful and more effective.

https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/111635/d5bc8af06cebf45ae580c724cd459206/gates.jpg

Personally I do not remember the last time my current manager gave me positive feedback, but I can tell you exactly what the negative ones were. But I can remember when a 'floater' (my store is not her home store, she was just picking up a shift)  gave me praise for handling a difficult customer well. But still, not any of my normal people at my store. I think that is sad, and shouldn't it be the other way around? We all need feed back to improve (from the image above) if not, I think that is when we start to coast. Because we don't see ourselves getting better.