In organizations, feedback is the process of sharing observations, concerns, and suggestions to improve performance.
Using constructive feedback means that the person delivering the message has the goal of improving the outcome, not a goal of punishing the recipient.
Superiors are mostly the persons who provide constructive feedback to their subordinates. The feedback given by them should encourage good quality work and boost up the morale of subordinates.
Therefore, superiors should be trained so that they can give constructive feedback.
Guidelines for Making Effective Constructive Feedback Effective
Though regular and accurate feedback is required, there are many other aspects of feedback that can be worked upon by every individual in order to enhance their feedback skills. They are stated below:
1. Make it Supportive: Providing the information to the individuals, which can be utilized by them for changing their behavior, is the objective of feedback.
As providing feedback can at times become emotional both for the giver and the receiver, so it is essential that the objective and aim of the feedback is clear.
2. Be Specific: Feedback is helpful to a greater extent when specific positive or negative behaviors are identified by it.
3. Be Descriptive: It is better to carry on with the facts to the possible extent and being certain to differentiate the facts from conclusions or acknowledgments while providing feedback.
The reason behind making the feedback explanatory is to differentiate it from the assessment. The assessments regarding the good and bad behavior are also communicated by an individual when he provides feedback, mainly on the basis of inferences.
4. Be Timely: When the feedback is provided just after the occurrence of the behavior, then feedback is very effective.
The pertinent details and context of the latest behaviors or actions are available without any difficulty to all the concerned individuals, which enables beneficial and more explanatory feedback.
5. Be Flexible: Though timely feedback is very effective, at times, waiting is suitable to provide feedback as soon as possible.
On the whole, it should be remembered by everyone that being helpful is the basic objective of feedback. Keeping this objective in mind, the scheduling of the feedback sessions should be done.
6. Give Both Positive and Negative Feedback: In comparison to providing only negative or positive feedback, giving both negative and positive feedback is more beneficial.
Positive feedback communicates only the good actions or behavior of a group or an individual, and negative feedback is concerned with telling a person or a group regarding their bad actions and behaviors.
Thus, it is best to provide both types of feedback.
7. Avoid Embarrassment or Blame: While providing feedback talking in a humiliating manner or making the receiver feel bad does not prove beneficial in the process of development as the objective of feedback is to provide valuable information to the individual, which helps them in their development process.
8. Provide Productive Feedback: In order to encourage employees for enhancing their performance, the person giving the feedback should take benefit of informal appraisal opportunities for providing productive feedback.