Leadership Skills iLead – Authenticity – How to Give Feedback
Leadership Skills iLead – Authenticity – How to Give Feedback
The annual feedback session from manager to staff is often awkward. No one likes situations that could include confrontation. If there is a tough message to be delivered, it’s even worse.
Most managers use the sandwich method to deliver feedback. This is where you give something positive, an area for improvement and finish with something positive again. This is a great structure to follow, but it is only part of the story.
As part of the iLead Leadership program I teach managers how to give feedback so it is helpful to the person receiving it. I’ve put together a short video on how to do this.
You can see it by clicking on the image below.
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Transcription Leadership Skills iLead
If you’ve ever had to give feedback to somebody, you know how daunting it can be – the once-a-year performance appraisals.
Here’s a technique that will help you give better feedback so it’s easier for you to deliver and better for your audience, the person you’re giving the feedback to, to receive.
iLead Leadership Skills: Authenticity
The seventh module of the iLead leadership skills program is about authenticity.
How do you be authentic to who you are and what it is that you stand for, and how do you give authentic feedback and deliver your message in an authentic way so people want to hear it, want to listen, and act on what it is you have to say?
The once-a-year or twice-a-year feedback sessions where you have the manager and the staff comes together for the feedback session are often awkward for both sides. What are they going to say? And how am I going to say this?
Whilst there should always be strategies in place to ensure that nothing new comes out in these meetings, delivering that new message at any time of year can be difficult.
Leadership Skills: The Why
Most people are familiar with the sandwich method or the commend-recommend-commend. Start off with something positive, something that can be improved, and finish with something positive. It’s a nice way to sandwich the recommendation or the area for improvement. That works, but how do you give the commendation and the recommendation so they are listened to?
In the commendation, it is: what was good and why it was good. We need to know why what it is that I’m doing works.
Leadership Skills: The How
For the recommendation: what can be improved, why it needs to be improved, and here’s the part that you need to include – the how. If you don’t include the how, and you give me “I need to improve,” well, how am I going to do that? And to simply say, “You need to do it better” is not going to work, because I would have done it better if I could.
This is just one of the many techniques I share in the Authenticity module of the iLead leadership skills program. It helps staff give authentic messages and be who they are, so they are more likely to turn up to work and be involved in the message.
What I’d love you to do if you can is below, pop in a comment about your favourite time giving feedback, or, god forbid, the least favourite time giving feedback – or receiving feedback – so we can continue this conversation about authenticity and help you become a more authentic person in your roles, and help your organisation achieve more.
