I’ve seen so many articles on social media about “feedback culture” and how important it is. Do you think it is executed well at your organization? As a leader, how can you step up the feedback culture to really impact your team?
Quite often the feedback that is most widespread in organizations is corrective feedback or only given during performance reviews. This is great feedback that needs to be given, however, in isolation it’s exactly like one of those diets that only tells you what not to eat; eventually you get bored of it and immediately put all that weight back on. If you only ever hear about your deficiencies, how do you know what great looks like?
Positive reinforcement needs to be given when excellent work is being delivered. It might sound like a no-brainer but it’s so common that this is just overlooked as being important. Have you ever heard - “My appreciation is your paycheck”? If you agree with this - the inconvenient truth is that you have to pay employees in recognition as well as the paycheck.
Back in ” SLMR’S OR “SLAMMERS” – AN ENGINEER’S REALIZATION”, I mentioned that every team should do the following:
Record all wins that you can attribute to the work delivered by your people, share them often, and celebrate them publicly in your organization.
Ask your customers to share in the success and celebration of the success.
I would like to expand on this and share some techniques that you can use to help you improve your team morale.
Recording wins:
It’s really easy to forget that all the success you get to enjoy as the leader of a team doesn’t organically spread throughout the team or organization. Very rarely does the good news travel as far as the bad, and you have to make a conscious effort of giving it a helping hand.
Create a culture that encourages the recording of team wins, remind the team often and share whenever you get in front of them for a town-hall or other event. Newsletters work but have a lesser impact than you verbalizing the win in front of the team.
It takes effort and can easily be overlooked as a busy leader of a team, but as with “The Value of One on Ones”, it is an investment worth making.
Customer Sharing:
If you have built a strong relationship with your customer, they may feel honored to be able to help your team feel valued. From experience, I can say it is hugely a impactful event for a team.
Informal:
I’m going to write more on this one, but you must keep a running list of people that are delivering excellent results (or really trying to!). You will be surprised how positively they react when you mention what you heard about them. Just remember how much it means when your boss takes the time to simply tell you “good job”. This becomes even more important on a large team.
While none of this is rocket science, it is so common to see these “little” things neglected so badly. In a world that is increasingly moving away from traditional performance reviews, we all have to get better at consistent and continuous feedback.