What is feedback
What is feedback?
Feedback is a dialogue between people which reflects back how another person sees someone elses behaviour or performance. As people we get feedback from the way people react to us. As managers, coaches, trainers and peers we may have more formal conversations about performance, or how someone could carry out an aspect of their job role more effectively.
The key for us to consider is the purpose of the feedback. Is it as part of an assessment, or is it part of someone’s learning and development?
If you look at a programme like Britain’s / America’s got talent, do not mistake the judges comments for the kind of feedback that we should be giving for learning and development purposes. Simon Cowell et al are assessing people, they are giving their opinion, often to make good television. Their intent is not usually to shape people and develop their performance. Don’t let them be your role models if you are giving feedback for learning and development purposes.
Feedback is critical for our learning and development. For us to learn how to improve our performance we have to break the “doing” by considering what is working and what isn’t.
Not many of us are equipped with the ability to have good useful objective self talk and so we turn to others for feedback. As managers, coaches, and trainers we have to give feedback to improve performance often whether people want it or not.
Approaching this isn’t always easy, but remembering the purpose of what you will say, and structuring the conversation accordingly will help you make sure feedback is positive in key to helping someone learn, grow confident and improve their performance as a result.
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