Feedback. It’s essential for creating a positive and nurturing culture that allows your employees to grow and thrive. In providing clear and constructive feedback, you’re helping guide and motivate your team, reducing opportunities for miscommunication and boosting productivity. But it doesn’t always feel like that. As managers, we know we need to give feedback, but it can feel a bit scary, a bit uncomfortable, and can be one of the things that keeps us awake at night. Be honest, how many times have you avoided giving feedback, or brushed it under the carpet, hoping it just resolves itself or disappears altogether?

Giving and receiving feedback needn’t be loaded with apprehension. Done in the right way, it’s a powerful tool, showing people that you care about them, personally and professionally. We should strive to create a culture of feedback within our organisations, where we aren’t reliant only on formal processes, such as performance reviews, but provide feedback continuously in the impromptu moments. In saying this, it’s essential that the recipient is in the right mindset to receive what you have to say.

At Realise, we provide specific coaching on how to create a feedback culture and how feedback can be best delivered. Here are some tips:

1. Reframe the idea of feedback from positive/negative to reinforcing/redirecting. Thinking about feedback in this way automatically changes your approach and makes giving feedback a lot less intimidating. Reinforcing feedback (when we want someone to continue with a positive behaviour) can be delivered anytime, anywhere. Redirecting feedback (where we want someone to do less of one behaviour and more of another) should be slightly more considered.
   
   
2. Think about timing. Is the person in the right mindset to receive the feedback? How are they feeling today? How are they feeling at this moment? We want to look for a neutral time where the feedback will be received as intended and not in a time of heightened emotion.
   
   
3. What’s your goal? Think about the purpose of your feedback and be prepared with specific examples that will help guide future behaviour. Hearing that you did a good job is great, but what specifically did you see that you would like repeated or to see more of moving forward? This clarity will help the feedback become meaningful and purposeful.
   
   
4. Feedback must be actionable. Forget broad, sweeping statements. Employees must be able to see that your feedback allows them to improve and reach their goals by taking action. For example, if we want a colleague to be more vocal during team meetings, this needs to be framed positively and where the person can see what actions they need to take to achieve this. We want to avoid top-level feedback such as “you’re too quiet”; this type of feedback doesn’t provide enough detail on how to improve and so is demotivating in nature.
   
   
5. Be aware of your biases. We all have conscious and unconscious biases, so it’s important to think about whether you would provide the same feedback to another team member. Research has shown that, in providing feedback to male and female colleagues of the same seniority, we are more inclined to provide warmer and kinder feedback to women than we are to men. And while kindness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a desire to be kind can inflate or misconstrue feedback, making it less actionable and less helpful. Similarly, feedback without kindness can be detrimental to someone’s wellbeing and mental health, so it’s important we’re conscious of our biases and look to strike a balance wherever we can.
   
   
6. And finally… ask for feedback from others. If there’s one way to diffuse the tension around giving feedback, it’s to receive it more regularly. The more you have feedback conversations and the more it’s embedded within your culture, the less stressful it’ll be. Of course, not every situation requires feedback, but it should be the norm. Feedback helps everyone grow and develop.

A few months back I spoke at an event in Manchester as one of three speakers. We had never met, nor had we planned what we were going to say. Ok not great, however, as a collective, there was one common theme in our speeches – managers are key to every aspect of your business. Sadly, there was an overwhelming agreement that organisations fail to invest in developing managers and equipping them with the tools to do their job.

Why do we under-invest in management skills and what impact does this have?

Many managers are promoted from within, and what a great business strategy, IF you have the right potential, skills and behaviours available to you, as well as the right development programmes and opportunities for them to grow into their new role. Managers are often promoted because they are high performing in their technical role, and they have potential but all too often they are left to just get on with the job. This often leads to managers feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and sometimes hating the people management side of their job, not to mention that teams become disengaged, which impacts on their performance, the bottom line, culture, retention and possible reputation. No company can afford to have a disengaged workforce.

Gallup has been studying the correlation between employee engagement and company performance for around 30 years. In their State of the Global Workplace report, a staggering 87 per cent of employees worldwide are not engaged, and companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 per cent in earnings per share. Managers account for at least 70 per cent of the variance in employee engagement scores.

So let’s make 2023 the year to give managers the confidence and skills to be able to engage, motivate, communicate, support and develop their own teams as well as the ability to deal with the tricky side of people management.

Where and how do you start to change some of this? This is a complex challenge; there are many places to look, analyse and change, however, Rome wasn’t built in a day. My advice would be to start having honest conversations with your managers to truly understand how they feel about being a people manager and what support they need.

We’re here to help! If you have thought about putting your managers through some training then check out our 7 week Managing People Programme, where delegates get the chance to learn new techniques to become a great people manager. Click here for more info on this, or to book your place you can email hello@realisehr.co.uk and one of our lovely team will talk you through next steps. So, what are you waiting for?

PRESS RELEASE

Immediate Release: 19/12/2022

Realise, Cumbria’s biggest HR consultancy, is providing young people with the opportunity to gain experience in HR & Recruitment throughout 2023.

Investing in several regional initiatives, Realise is looking to raise awareness around HR careers and entry pathways into the sector.

Claire McLean, Founder CEO of Realise, said: “HR is not typically talked about as a career opportunity in school. However, as an integral part of any successful organisation, HR provides a whole host of possibilities in business management with a clear focus on people. I’m keen to make sure that HR is made accessible to young people; it’s an exciting time post-covid to get into HR as businesses are heavily relying on their HR colleagues to steer them in the right direction.”

Realise will be developing an early careers programme to be delivered in local schools in 2023 and have committed to several schemes to help bridge the gap between the world of work and education. As part of Dream Placement, a unique Cumbrian initiative managed by the Centre for Leadership Performance, Realise will be offering a young person the opportunity to spend time in industry and learn from their range of in-house HR professionals.

Martin Norris, Head of Recruitment at Realise, will also be supporting Caldew School in an advisory capacity to support their careers programme and help further promote HR pathways. Cheryl Eastburn, Careers Lead at Caldew School said:  “we are delighted that Martin will be supporting our students as an Enterprise Adviser. Martin brings with him a wealth of knowledge on careers. He will be supporting us with bespoke activities that we have identified our students will benefit from so that they are work ready. This will be through mentoring, mock interview and individual career workshops.”

Cath Dutton from The Cumbria Lep adds: “We are thrilled that Martin has volunteered as an Enterprise Adviser.  Our Enterprise Advisers play a crucial role in bringing their business experience into the school by supporting the Careers Lead to deliver an outstanding careers programme for all their pupils.  Martin’s knowledge and experience will be a great asset to Caldew School”.

Cumbria Careers Hub are still looking for Enterprise Advisors in Dallam, Settleback, Kirkbie, Kendal and Millom School. If you would like to know more, please contact Cath at Cath.Dutton@thecumbrialep.co.uk