Too many leaders have associated feedback with saving up stuff to talk about in the annual appraisal where they tell people in their team reporting directly to them how to “fix themselves” if they want to progress in the company. Such leaders miss the essence of feedback and completely disable the benefits of feedback conversations.
Feedback is necessary because it is a conversation that allows leaders to invest time and energy with each individual in their team to:
• Recognise their significance to the team, the results and overall company performance
• Engage in a real conversation to share what they are seeing, thinking and feeling
• Demonstrate how they have been observing the efforts and outputs of each individual in the team
• Prepare them for future performance and encourage learning agility.
Feedback provides constructive/developmental as well as positive evidence to individuals about their performance giving them every opportunity to perform and “be” at their best.
We don’t want “squirrels” who save up this “secret squirrel data” until the annual appraisal/ special time when they plan to unload it on the individuals in their teams.
We want leaders who have these feedback conversations “real time” because they want to continuously enhance, support and encourage high performance from each individual in their team. This is why feedback is really necessary – it develops the learning agility of each person working in the company and ultimately makes the leaders’ job so much more rewarding and fulfilling.
