To
improve your performance you need to know when you are performing well and when
your work is substandard. Besides self-assessment of your performance, how can
you know if you are meeting the grade?
Through
feedback…from your manager and from your co-workers. But not all feedback is
helpful. It takes skill to deliver feedback in a way that promotes, not
discourages, extra effort in the right direction.
For
feedback to serve the purpose of motivating employees to improve their behavior
on the job, transfer of training experts maintain that it should be:
- Frequent: Delivered on a regular basis, in small bits, not just at the end of an annual performance review.
- Timely: Offered in timely fashion…on the heels of the observed behavior.
- Balanced: Both positive and negative…but not delivered at the same time or the positive feedback will be diminished.
- Relevant: Used as a tool both to maintain current performance and to improve it.
- Productive: Suggestive rather than directive so the receiver has some options going forward.
