12 of the Biggest Lessons About Giving and Receiving Feedback

I've trained and coached leaders on how to give and receive effective feedback for the past twenty-five years.  And there is a ton of good content about how to provide effective feedback. However, I find that many leaders still struggle with consistently providing quality feedback that helps their people, team and organization learn and grow.

Providing feedback is so much more than sharing some helpful information with another person regarding his or her work. It's a gift -- a chance to help someone improve themselves and their work.

Here are 12 of the biggest lessons I've learned about feedback:

1. Feedback doesn't happen unless you make it happen.
2. Managers tend to stop giving feedback over time, even if they once did it frequently.
3. It is easier to give appreciative feedback than it is to give constructive-corrective feedback.
4. People often do not act on feedback without some kind of follow-up.
5. It is easier to filter feedback than to accept it.
6. People more fully appreciate the feedback they receive after they have applied it and seen its impact on their results.
7. Feedback declines after people improve because managers assume it’s no longer necessary.
8. Employees struggle to know how to respond to the feedback they receive.
9. Employees typically fear receiving constructive feedback because they see it as criticism rather than helpful input.
10. Companies always underestimate the difficulty of getting people to give and receive feedback.
11. Lack of effective feedback and coaching is the cause of most employee issues. 
12. All behavior is a feedback loop. 

You want something, you try for it. If you fail, you can try the same thing again; or you can figure out what the first try taught you (feedback), redesign your strategy, and then try again. Get more feedback from your second try, and keep changing and refining until you get what you want. Try and refine, try and refine. There is not failure, only feedback.

I'd recommend using these deep lessons as a spring board to discover where you and your team of leaders can improve. Why? Because giving and receiving effective feedback and feedfoward is one of the most important tools that a leader can leverage to unleash the potential in themselves, their people and ultimately their organization.

Here are three related posts:

9 Tips for Building A Feedback Culture

Learn and Grow From Feedback, Especially If It's Constructive

Grow with Feedfoward

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

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