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How to Make the Most of Positive Feedback in Performance Appraisal
Animal trainers use it. The research supports it. You know it is the right thing to do. If you really want top performance from your people, give them the one thing most likely to help them deliver. Give them positive feedback.
Positive feedback is the simplest and most effective means of improving performance ever! It involves little more than catching people doing things right and then complimenting them on it. You must be sincere, and the more specific you are in describing exactly what the person has done, the better. Beyond that, it is hard to go wrong. One would think that every manager would be using it, every day!
But no! What one hears in corporate corridors is criticism, blame and accusation; put-downs and raised voices. We put great effort into catching people doing things wrong. We even produce printouts and reports to show the detail of exactly how and where they go wrong. Rarely however, does any of this produce the positive results in behaviour change that we want! Most often it produces cultures of blame, threat and unease.
Constant criticism causes people to lose confidence in themselves, and to become unsure that they will ever get it right. They avoid taking risks, knowing that they will be blamed for mistakes, but will not receive any praise for doing well. Doing it right becomes more important than doing it better.
A less obvious but more insidious effect of continued criticism is no effect at all, as people simply tune it out. You often hear managers say: But I keep telling them! When you hear this phrase you know that people are tuning out what they perceive as a background of constant and ineffectual nagging.
There is a serious disconnect here. Organisations claim to develop cultures in which people are highly motivated, where they can perform to the limit of their capabilities and where they grow and develop throughout their careers. A culture like this is built around people who are motivated, creative, prepared to take risks, and who are confident in the support they will receive from their managers and leaders.
When criticism and blame are used as tools to manage performance, they reflect a very different set of values and beliefs concerning feedback and motivation. Those who use criticism and blame would seem to believe that people work best when they are anxious and scared; when they are motivated by fear and when they lack confidence in their abilities.
As a rule of thumb you should aim to give positive feedback eight times more often than you give negative. If you want to test the effect of a positive motivating culture on the people around you, try giving only positive feedback for a week. Be sure to be specific in the behaviours that you are acknowledging and sincere in the way that you do it.
Use these two steps to give positive feedback.
1. Identify something that has value and that the person does well.
2. Tell the person how much you appreciate what they are doing.
Then STOP! Do not spoil the good effect by asking for anything more. Do not say: That was a great job you did; but. When you use the word but, it destroys all the effect of the positive feedback.
Positive feedback is one of the easiest and best ways of helping people improve their performance. As an effective leader you need to use it sincerely and liberally.
About the Author Maureen Collins trains people how to handle difficult conversations, on difficult topics, with difficult people in her consulting practice, Straight Talk. She has a B.Sc. degree in Psychology from Edinburgh University and over 25 years of consulting experience. She consults in communication in the workplace. Go to http://www.straight-talk.co.za for free downloads and Straight Talk Tips.
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