We’re at the end of the first month of the new year. I thought about sharing something about feedback that helped me a lot in my conversations, especially in one-on-ones with my team members.
There are three types of feedback: Appreciation, Evaluation, and Coaching (that I learned from the Thanks for the Feedback book).
Appreciation: It is the feedback we all love when it’s authentic and given on time. Examples: Great job! Thank you for your dedication. I appreciate you taking responsibility. I appreciate the feedback you gave last week; I was able to improve thanks to it. Evaluation: The feedback is to evaluate skills, align expectations, and clarify consequences. The goal is to rate the person against standards and expectations. Examples: You exceeded our expectations last year. Our expectations for you were X, Y, and Z, but you could meet X and Y. We increased your compensation by A% because you achieved a lot during the last year. Coaching: The feedback is to give a direction. It’s aimed at trying to help a person learn, grow, or change. The coaching is aimed at improvement. Examples: You should work on your debugging skills. To improve your communication, please read these two books. Here is a great article about mentoring that you wanted to learn.
We need all three of them. But we feel disappointed or become defensive when we expect one, but receive the other. Therefore, we should try separating them.
When you’re talking with your team members, listen to them. As leaders, our job is to understand which feedback our team member needs and provide them with the correct type of feedback. We need to talk about the purpose of the feedback and discuss it to figure out the type of feedback. If we can, we should separate evaluation from coaching and appreciation.
In yearly performance reviews, we should separate evaluation from coaching and appreciation. First, we have to have the appreciation feedback. Second, we should have the evaluation feedback. And last but not least, we have to provide consistent coaching during the whole year. Separating evaluation from coaching and appreciation may sound unauthentic, but we can still give evaluation feedback with our perspective added on top and keep the feedback authentic.
Preview: