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Why Feedback Does Not Work

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People often tell me that when they give feedback it just does not work the way they hope. Either the feedback is ignored, or it causes a while load of justifications, excuses and rationales leading to a heated debate and a deterioration in the relationship.

There are several reasons why feedback might not have the desired affect and cause more problems than it cures. By far the most common reason for feedback failure is that the relationship is not right. We only accept and act on feedback when it comes from someone we trust and respect.  Giving feedback to someone who does not trust and respect you is not only a waste of breathe – it is likely to make the situation, certainly your relationship, worse.

Before you can give effective feedback, you have to earn the right (and this is not about just being the boss).  As well as trust and respect it is important that the receiver of the feedback knows that your motivation for offering feedback is that you want them to suceed in doing a great job.  They have to know that you are not putting them down or playing power games – you are sincerely trying to help them do things well.

So the next time you have an opportunity to give feedback – ask yourself – does this person trust and respect me enough to value my feedback?

Secondly ask yourself whether your motivation to give feedback is to help them to get better at their job?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you are better off keeping the feedback to yourself.  Instead find a way to work on your relationship so that in future your  feedback will be welcomed and acted upon.

Management, Dragons and Apprentices – RealityTV

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It is no surprise that management and entrepreneurship ‘Reality’ TV (think ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘Dragon’s Den’) is so dark. Good people being fired on the strength of their performance on one task; entrepreneurs being humiliated by ‘Dragons’ because they are not experts in their product or service AND in how it should be marketed AND in the financial history and planned future of their cherished business.

The truth is that programme makers are simply not able to make good management and entrepreneurship ‘dramatic’ enough to get win viewing figures. So instead they focus on the dark dramas that so many of us love to watch unfold.

What impact do these programmes have on our perception of what entrepreneurship and management are as professions? If viewers believe that ‘Reality TV’ portrays reality then it is little wonder that neither are seen as ‘‘careers’ of choice for many and that that levels of entrepreneurship remain stubbornly low.

Exhortations such as ‘we will work until we bleed and batter the hell out of everyone else’ are hardly a clarion call for effective recruitment.

In my day to day work I regularly meet managers who are at their happiest when they are dealing with a crisis, damping down a fire, or sacking underperforming staff – because they really believe that this is what good managers do to make things better – a belief that may be fuelled, at least in part, by ‘Reality TV’. The impact that they have on organisational culture and climate is disproportionate.

The truth is that good management, progressive management, is about the day to day development of professional working relationships.

    • It is about coaching and developing people so that they contribute more fully at work.

    • It is about giving and receiving feedback (NOT ‘You’re a shambles! You’re fired!’).

    • It is about developing and sharing values that can lead to sustainable success.

    • It is about managing underperformance in a way that is rigorous and caring, but not ruthless.

And the same is true for entrepreneurship.

Both are about building effective teams, where individuals can express their unique personality, skills and traits in support of a team endeavour. But this is a slow, beautiful, human and creative process – more like gardening – than the high drama of the Reality TV shows.

This is the work of the Progressive Manager.

Coaching – Let’s reclaim an every day management tool!

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The profession of coaching continues to grow at an amazing rate. A search on google for coaching yields 78 MILLION pages. And as the profession develops, coaching becomes more and more complicated. There are professional coaching qualifications, codes of practice and ethics and a library of academic research on best coaching practice. Just to keep up to speed with developments in coaching seems to be a full time job.

However, coaching is not this hard. Many managers avoid coaching because of the complexity that has developed around it. The simple truth is that every manager should be coaching every member of their team, all of the time. All they need is to use a simple and practical coaching model and good interpersonal skills. And most improtasntly they must want their team members to do well. So much in coaching depends on intent.

Re-discovering coaching as a simple, quick and efficient way of building ability and developing excellent teams offer managers a straight-forward way to stand head and shoulders above most of their peers – who continue to believe that coaching is an expensive and usually outsourced development solution.