Hey, everyone, this is Chris with Hacking your Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement. I want to talk about feedback because I think a feedback rhythm and a feedback cycle is one of the key things that will lead to better employee engagement. Employees who don't receive feedback regularly are typically far less engaged because of feedback is what we use to kind of level set where we are in our work. Feedback has had a kind of negative connotation. It's like
you get feedback when you've done something wrong. But feedback is much more than that. And where in places where feedback is a natural part of the culture and done well, not just said that it's a natural part of the culture, but it actually is a natural part of the culture, you will have
higher employee engagement. And I think it is it's one of the key things that will let employees understand where they sit with their teams and with their leaders, and it will allow them to be more confident in the decisions they're making going forward. It's like it's like the occasional speed limit signed on the side of the road. If they just went away. People have a harder time
figuring out how fast to drive. These the feedback that employees get daily and weekly and monthly, those are the road signs that will help them kind of navigate the waters and kind of figure out where they can do the best work. Yeah, exactly. I think that people say feedback is a gift, and it's in the context of when somebody is giving you something to help you
be more successful, to help you learn, to help you grow. It's coming from a place of genuine like help, Like these are things that can help to shape us and make us better people, make us better leaders. But to your point, I think that sometimes you hear the word feedback and instead of like thinking about it as a as a positive means of learning to moving forward, you think of like the feedback you get when you put a microphone next to a speaker, and it's just negative and it hurts and you
don't want to hear it. But it's also always about how it's also delivered and the consistency of it being delivered and how it's being delivered, Like these things matter so much to be able to get people to appreciate it and to value it. Then I think that that's something that from a leadership standpoint, you really have to think about how is feedback delivered? Is what is the context, when is it delivered, how is delivered, who delivers it?
Like, those things really really matter, especially when you lead a team of leaders, when you have multiple leaders that may approach it differently, have different ways of talking about it, have different ways of delivering it. If you've not spent the time to observe that, to listen, to be involved in it, then you can just assume that they all do it the same and what you'll find out is there's a very different experience of feedback when it comes
to your larger teams. When I think about where this is done right or how it's done right, there are two things that I think are the most important. One is that it has to be scheduled regularly, like on a
rhythm on an interval. It's not feedback is given when it's needed. It's feedback is given at this interval and whatever is needed at the time gets discussed at that time along with if nothing specific is needed, then it's feedback on what is being done correctly, what can be done to tweak things that you
wouldn't necessarily you know, schedule time to go over with an employee. But because you have the time already scheduled, it's a great time to go over these little things, the things that that wouldn't rise to the occasion of needing a one on one or a sit down, but you have it anyway, so absolutely go over it. These are these are the places where you can remove the negative connotation from feedback because it's unlikely that they're all going to be
negative. If they are, then that that employe probably needs to go. But if you have things scheduled regularly, weekly, bi weekly and you're actually following through with them, you're not going to have, you know, feedback on what they can be doing better. You know, from a critical standpoint, every single one of those meetings you're gonna it's going to be mostly positive feedback or level setting or or things they can take on that they want to.
That's the whole point is that you get the employee to a rhythm where they feel good about this process, and then when it has to be critical, then it is absorbed better than if the only time you have feedback with them is when it is critical, and then you try to sandwich that criticism with the positive things they're doing well with the you know, the the bad sandwich between the good, in the hopes that you will kind of dilute it
a little bit. That doesn't work anymore. The only way to dilute it is to make sure that the rhythm of feedback is so natural and so a part of their their their daily work life, that the critiques are absorbed in the exact same way. The other thing that I think is really important to do, and it's just as important as having a rhythm, is the feedback has to not just be void of a personal motive, but void of the perception of a personal motive, and so on a very you know, basic
level. I think back to when I was in college and you get the end of semester thing where you can give the professor feedback on the class, and the questions were all very good questions like you know, what, what could this? What could you do better? What did I not like about it? What did I like about it? And the professors that wanted those things done before the grades were issued, I, you know, they definitely did not get honest feedback from me because they were still they still had my
grade in their hands. Now would they have ever done anything with that? I don't know, but it was enough of a of a of a of a detractor for me to not want to give them on his feedback. Then they're the professors who said, I'm giving you the link to do this, Please don't do it until after the grade is in the system. You can do it up until you know, two weeks after the course ends. Wait till you get the grade, then do it. And it's like, oh,
this person actually wants wants on his feedback. They want to be able to get better at the things they're not doing. If you're if you were giving feedback from a standpoint of this is what this person can do to make my life easier, you've already failed. If you're giving feedback from the standpoint of I really want to see this person succeed and these are the roadblocks that are getting in the way, then you are at least approaching it from the
right standpoint. But if you're already in the mindset of this person has done something that is that is annoying to you, or that is hurting your productivity or your work, that can be when it is most natural to want to give somebody feedback and you need to take a step back and figure out how best to approach this, because if it's truly rooted in something they've done to you, you may be the wrong person to give that feedback, or it
may be the wrong time to give that feedback until you kind of think through what the you know, kind of the right way to approach it is. I want to go over some advice to leaders here and what to do to best do this if you're not used to this, But first I want to give it toward to one of our sponsors. All right, if you're a leader and you're trying to figure out how to get a good feedback rhythm in place, the best thing to do is to start with scheduling it, meet
with each person individually and find a rhythm that works best for them. There are some employees who would look at weekly feedback meetings as micromanaging and they don't want that. There are some employees who would look at bi weekly meetings as
not often enough because they really want that constant feedback. If you schedule it on an interval that works for the relationship you have with that individual person, you can't go wrong as long as you also give them, you know, kind of open the door to let them say, Hey, if after a month or two, this rhythm isn't working for you, let me know and we'll change it up because I want to make sure that it works best for
you. This is very important to do because the regularly scheduled feedback is where you again, you can kind of get this person comfortable with the bi directional feedback so that when the critiquing comes it is much easier to handle. Yeah. I also think too, you know, it's asking people, you know what I mean, like like specifically saying like how do you want to get feedback? Like they're going to be there going to be times when looking at
the work that you're doing. There will be times when I'm going to see that the things could maybe be different or more efficient, or maybe there was a mistake that was made, Like we all make mistakes, Like what is the best way for me to deliver that feedback? And how do you want
that to deliver that? I think sometimes the answer is there. Some people are just like you know, I could just tell me like, hey, I need to give you some feedback on that last project, right like I need to give you some feed Hey, there's some things that I've observed I need to give you some feedback on when is a good time sitting and to
give you that. Like I think sometimes if we ask people and we find out what their preference is, it does make it easier to have those conversations where a lot of times we never ask and we just say like, well, this is this is the way that you give feedback and here's how you have a conversation with someone, and we we kind of allow those, you know, those assumptions to be the driving force on how we deliver something without really asking, or we do it and then we say, okay, well,
how how was that or what you know, what feedback do you have for me, versus starting the conversation with like, we know we're going to have those we know we're gonna have these moments, so so how do you want maybe approach these moments when they happen. What's the best way for me to do that so that you know, we know that this is something that's being done to help you and not something that's being done to attack. Right.
So this whole idea of prescriptive feedback, I think is kind of what you're touching on here, and that in the lack of a feedback environment. Having prescriptive feedback is better than no feedback, right, Like, you have to start somewhere when the relationship is good between two people. The feedback doesn't have to be prescriptive. It can be just a conversation, but it's important
to have it be prescriptive. If there's nothing and the leader isn't really sure how to move forward with this, it's just important to call out that it is. So if a leader, if you're sitting down with somebody and you don't have a regular feedback rhythm with them and you don't have a relationship with them, you can say, as the leader, now this is what the organization is telling me how I should go about having this feedback conversation with you.
And that's fine. We can go through the motions and do these. If it doesn't feel right or natural, we can discuss how to change it up to make this better for us, because at the end of the day, what I want is a positive relationship where we can give bi directional feedback. If this is a starting point, so be it. But I don't want you to think that this is what we have to do every time.
We can go through this in a way that is best for you if you, as a leader go through a prescriptive feedback process and don't call that out as prescriptive. It can look like you have no desire to have a relationship with that person. It can look like what you want to do is go
through the prescriptive process. Again, it's a starting point and it should only be used when either you're starting out a relationship with somebody or when it is progressed to the point where the feedback has to be you really have to dot your eyes and cross your t's because you want to make sure that employee understands the gravity of the situation and what must be done in order to you know,
potentially affect you know, job altering changes. And so those are the really only two situations where you really have to you know, follow a prescriptive guide. Usually this should be a conversation amongst between a leader and an individual where it's bi directional and it feels natural and it feels like you accomplish something as a team of two people. I appreciate you listening to this conversation on employee engagement. Join us again next Thursday for another one. Have a great day,