Monthly Archives: September 2013

How to Give Great Feedback to Your Staff

Posted on by

Motivating your employees is about more than your charisma and vision for your business. To help your employees perform their best, as their leader you need to provide feedback – the right kind, at the right time. Feedback is an essential tool for any manager, whether you run a small business or a large company.

Just as they need blood and oxygen, our brains need to receive comments about how they’re doing. Feedback works on the emotional system in the brain. It enables the brain to use higher-level thinking skills to decide how to continue doing good work, make the good work better, or make changes to get more positive responses and work harder toward company goals. Your leadership skills rely heavily on your ability to give and receive feedback.

Here are some ways in which you can feed your employees’ brains and give great feedback:

Be specific and timely. Comment while the task is still in the mind of your employee. This is especially important if you’re working toward a specific goal and you want to keep the momentum going. Specific feedback corrects or reinforces certain behaviours, enabling the brain to focus on something concrete, which it doesn’t do from a simple “Thank you.” If you decide to congratulate employees as a group, be sure to talk to each one personally as well.

Fit the feedback to the person. Now and then you may need to provide a pat on the back to one of your employees, or a nudge in the right direction, in a subtle yet supportive way. For such feedback to be really motivational, provide it in a way that’s best suited to the recipient.

Connect your feedback to company goals. Goals help the brain focus. Make your employees feel that their contributions are valued and create a positive emotion with the feedback. Some employers want to encourage competition, so they make sure that the entire company or department sees how everyone is doing.

Set up a schedule for follow-up conversations. A quick memo or email can easily be misinterpreted, so continued face-to-face feedback is best. Studies have shown that negative feedback may be less stressful to the brain than no feedback at all; for this reason, follow-ups are especially important for employees who need improvement. Put your message in writing as well as delivering it verbally.

Build on employees’ strengths when giving negative feedback. By beginning with the strengths, you involve the prefrontal cortex right away. If you begin with negativity, the information may never reach the frontal lobe; it may get stuck in the primitive emotional areas and put the employee in survival mode. Always give suggestions for improvement.

See if you can work all these points into your appraisals, or any time when you’re giving feedback and you’ll find it much easier to deliver, as well as much more effective in creating improvements in your employees’ performance.

With thanks to Marilee B. Sprenger, author of The Leadership Brain For Dummies

Getting Started with Performance Appraisals Part 2

Posted on by

Here are some things to think about, before you carry out your annual staff appraisals, to make them less daunting and more effective. We’ll go into more details on these tips and what to actually in the appraisal meeting, at our forthcoming workshop on 11 September 2013.

Prepare. A good appraisal form will provide a natural order for proceedings, so use one. If you don’t have a standard appraisal form then find one online – there are plenty of templates available. Organize your paperwork to reflect the order of the appraisal and write down the sequence of items to be covered. If the appraisal form includes a self assessment section and/or feedback section, make sure you give this to each member of staff in plenty of time, allowing them to complete it before the meeting.

Part of your preparation should also consider ‘whole-person’ development, beyond and outside the job skill-set. Many people are not particularly interested in job skills training, but will be interested and motivated by other learning and development experiences. Get to know what your people are good at outside of their work. Appraisals are not just about job performance and job skills training. Appraisals should focus on helping the ‘whole person’ to grow and attain fulfilment.

Inform. Let your staff know when and where their appraisal will be held. Give them the chance to assemble any data and relevant performance and achievement records they need.

Venue. Plan a suitable venue that’s private and free from interruptions. Privacy is absolutely essential.

Layout.  Room layout and seating are important elements as they have huge influence on atmosphere and mood. Irrespective of content, the atmosphere and mood must be relaxed and informal. Remove barriers – don’t sit across the desk from your staff member; use a meeting table or easy chairs and sit at an angle to each other.

Introduction. Relax your member of staff by opening with a positive statement. Smile, be warm and friendly to create a calm and non-threatening atmosphere. Set the scene by explaining what will happen and encourage a discussion and as much input as possible from them

When you spend some time thinking about how you’ll carry out your annual appraisals, they’ll be much more effective for both you and your members of staff.

For more information, come to our workshop on 11 September 2013 for just  £12 +VAT. Click here for the details and online booking.

Getting Started with Performance Appraisals

Posted on by

Here are some things to think about, before you carry out your annual staff appraisals, to make them less daunting and more effective. We’ll go into more details on these tips and what to actually in the appraisal meeting, at our forthcoming workshop on 11 September 2013.

Prepare. A good appraisal form will provide a natural order for proceedings, so use one. If you don’t have a standard appraisal form then find one online – there are plenty of templates available. Organize your paperwork to reflect the order of the appraisal and write down the sequence of items to be covered. If the appraisal form includes a self assessment section and/or feedback section, make sure you give this to each member of staff in plenty of time, allowing them to complete it before the meeting.

Part of your preparation should also consider ‘whole-person’ development, beyond and outside the job skill-set. Many people are not particularly interested in job skills training, but will be interested and motivated by other learning and development experiences. Get to know what your people are good at outside of their work. Appraisals are not just about job performance and job skills training. Appraisals should focus on helping the ‘whole person’ to grow and attain fulfilment.

Inform. Let your staff know when and where their appraisal will be held. Give them the chance to assemble any data and relevant performance and achievement records they need.

Venue. Plan a suitable venue that’s private and free from interruptions. Privacy is absolutely essential.

Layout.  Room layout and seating are important elements as they have huge influence on atmosphere and mood. Irrespective of content, the atmosphere and mood must be relaxed and informal. Remove barriers – don’t sit across the desk from your staff member; use a meeting table or easy chairs and sit at an angle to each other.

Introduction. Relax your member of staff by opening with a positive statement. Smile, be warm and friendly to create a calm and non-threatening atmosphere. Set the scene by explaining what will happen and encourage a discussion and as much input as possible from them

When you spend some time thinking about how you’ll carry out your annual appraisals, they’ll be much more effective for both you and your members of staff.

For more information, come to our workshop on 11 September 2013 for just  £12 +VAT. Click here for the details and online booking.