Written by: Ilham N. Musayev, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better” — Elon Musk.
There are many ways and definitions of perceiving and understanding the meaning of “feedback.” However, not everyone understands the true mission of the feedback and its intentions in the same way, which creates the biggest conflict in our minds and behaviors. For information, most people get it negatively and set themselves for negative emotions when they hear about receiving the feedback.
I tried to explore and find where the average point is and, after some time-consuming web search, found the closest definition on what makes sense to me from indeed.com:
“Effective feedback is a way of giving input that can be positive (such as a compliment), negative (such as a corrective measure) or neutral (such as a general observation), but it is always useful to the receiver. It provides recipients with insight or suggestions that contribute to desired outcomes. If you want to give effective feedback, you should aim to be supportive, encouraging, and specific on the direction that's needed to change, improve or continue actions and performance.”
With these insights in mind now, let’s continue our conversation about the power of giving and receiving feedback.
Nowadays, giving and receiving feedback is so critical business communication skill. And most importantly, it is a two-way process of both giving and receiving information efficiently and constructively. Today, in our lives, feedback is a paramount part of business, education, training, and even professional coaching engagements.
If it is provided in a professional manner with consideration of the above factors, it proves to be very motivating, helps in personal and professional development. It helps any person who received it to focus on their blind spots, build on existing superpowers, and that way improves performance further in the desired direction. One important thing I would like to highlight is that feedback could be given or received by anyone, not just seniors to subordinates or elderly people to younger.
As long as it is mastered and provided in the right format and environment, neither age nor position/status make a difference. However, mastering it is an art, and it takes time to build some skills. So, practice…practice…practice and never fear failure.
And here is the number one [1] skill required to master: Active listening! That’s where all magic starts; that’s where all difference is made.
As a result of providing quality feedback following benefits were obtained:
It is a free but yet, powerful way of communication that helps to improve performance, grow in the desired area, find blind spots and learn about any areas of improvement, including bad habits.
It opens up avenues and an effective way to motivate.
It may not be obvious; however, feedback is a way of learning for each and every person. By being a two-way process, everyone tries to learn something positive from the other person’s suggestions, perspectives, or insights.
Important: It is all about mutual understanding, respecting each other’s opinions, and learning something from each other’s experiences.
There are a couple of special areas or how I like calling them “tricks of the trade” in giving and receiving well-structured feedback.
Here are some, which require most of the attention and time to master: 1. Prepare in advance and stay positive. Read that again… The more positive and encouraging you are, the more you are motivating people you provide the feedback. The better we are prepared, the better we stay on track and won’t waste anybody’s time.
2. It is all about the right time – feedback should be timely! Any feedback received on time and with relevance to the situation is golden. It helps to boost the learning momentum for that specific time and situation and unlocks blind spots by offering areas for improvement.
3. Do not take feedback as a formal process – think out of the box! Providing feedback for some people or organizations could be considered a formal process. However, this is not a healthy approach as it builds boundaries rather building trust and cooperation.
We have already mentioned that the feedback is about two-way communication. So, let’s keep it exactly that way and use it as a way of communication, learning, and helping each other to become better versions of ourselves. If we change the focus, we can change a lot and build a strong environment where feedback is used to grow, develop each other, and not powerplay, which is a popular way of how it has been (or being) applied.
4. One important moment in sharing the feedback is that it should be free of additional noise. In other words, it should be clear and concise!
The power of the feedback is in trying to focus on specific and related facts and by doing that removing all ambiguities and unnecessary gray areas.
I personally believe that any feedback process should be fair, theme and area of conversation should be mutually agreed upon, and it should not be forced. If receiving party is not ready or not quite aligned with the reason on why it is provided and where the value is obtained, then that is where the conversation needs to happen in the first instance. In order to be fair and for both parties to get most of the value from this communication, I trust that good coaching skills can massively help.
So rather than giving feedback without alignment with the other party and understanding direction of their thought process - start by asking questions. Begin your conversation by asking the other person about their perspective. You want to learn about their experience and what they think of their work/actions. It will be much easier and natural to raise your concern if they’ve already voiced it.
Be positively set and hope that people are willing to brainstorm ways to handle the situation differently in the future. Be open and clear that they’re being evaluated on their results/behaviors/outputs, not their effort.
One important thing which is always neglected to happen in feedback conversations is the takeaways that receiving party gets. My personal position on this case is that it is always important to structure a conversation in a way that there is time left for that magic question:
“What are your key takeaways from this conversation?”
Again, again and again – coaching skills are making such a difference here that the learning process becomes natural, and it serves to faster and powerful growth. Letting people reflect on their takeaways is so critical. It helps to understand the value of the conversation and provides opportunities to shape the messages in the right direction if they were not received correctly. It can save a lot of wrongly wasted time and helps to improve the quality of the communication, and that is where the trust is coming.
Taking care to deliver feedback with clarity and sensitivity will help people around us focus on the reality of our messages, even in a remote environment.
And now a one-billion-dollar question: What was the last time you have asked for feedback? Any feedback.
Ilham N. Musayev, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ilham N Musayev is a mentor and coach (outside of the company he works for) who helps people unlock their potential in career and personal development. He also helps in the area of personal effectiveness, setting realistic goals, and becoming organized and structured. Ilham also helps to re-gain the [lost] confidence and look to issues and problems from a different perspective. Another area of his support is helping to cultivate servant leadership via coaching and mentoring technics.
Overall, he is an energy sector professional with 23 years of the practical experience obtained by working in one of the leader companies in this sector. Ilham’s experience is very multilayered. He worked and gained his experience from the following functions: Wells, PSCM, Operations, Global Projects, by mainly providing project controls support. For the last three years, he worked in Modernization and Transformation and Agile Design Teams and helped his company transform into new working ways. He currently is a part of the Agility team and, as an agile coach, supports the company by implementing agile ways of working.
Ilham holds the following professional certifications and accreditations: EMBA, PMP®, ICP-ATF; ICP-ACC; PSPO I; PAL I. He also is a Professional Life Coach and ICF Professional (Member).
Ilham’s position is that staying open for support, serving people as a leader, and helping people to grow is what wins hearts and minds and is the only answer to all questions.
His mission: “Aspire to inspire before we expire.”
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