Giving Feedback To Your Team

As a leader, you are expected to provide feedback to your team, both positive and negative. It's one of those things that few are naturally gifted at doing, and most try to avoid it if they can. It's hard, presents a lot of uncertainty, and if it goes wrong there are big consequences.

According to research from the Development Dimension International (DDI) in 2018, when they studied new managers less than 25% of them received any kind of formal and structured training on how to give feedback. That's probably one of the reasons that 46% of new managers fail to meet expectations in the first two years according to Leadership IQ.

Managers often fear giving feedback because they've been on the receiving end when it goes wrong, and they don't want to step into that arena if it can be avoided. But if you don't learn how to give feedback well, it could impact your team, your company, and even your career.

I've created a structure for how to have a feedback conversation with someone on your team for the 98% of us who are not naturally gifted in this area. I'll break down each step and talk through the goal, strategies, and areas to avoid. I've used this method myself and train new managers on my team to use this structure to improve the communication and effectiveness of these discussions.

G - R - A - P - E - S

Providing Effective Employee Feedback

Start by doing a quick statement about the area of feedback to provide to your employee and share that you'd like to learn more about the situation. Keep it focused on one scenario to minimize confusion. Utilize the term GRAPES to help you structure the pieces of the conversation.

G - Gap Assessment

• Goal: Assess the gap in what the employee believes about the situation, scenario, or behavior and what you believe to determine the appropriate structure for the feedback.
• Manager Expectations: Ask questions about the topic and actively listen.
• Question Examples: Help me understand... Walk me through your thinking...
• Tips: Repeat back what they share to show you heard and understood. Probe the "why" behind the questions to get to the root of their behavior or understanding. Don't argue, defend, or challenge at this stage but focus on asking questions and actively listening.

R - Reaction to the Situation

• Goal: Assess their understanding of the situation and the reactions of other individuals from their standpoint versus your understanding.
• Manager Expectations: Ask questions about how the employee and others reacted and actively listen.
• Question Examples: What was the response you expected? How do you believe others pereceived that? What do you think about the reaction?
• Tips: Write down their reaction expectations versus yours to gauge gap. Avoid arguing back and forth at this stage and let them share their reaction and beliefs about it. Actively listen and repeat back what you hear to demonstrate you are listening.

A - Actions & Awareness

• Goal: Have individual gain awareness of the impact of their actions.
• Manager Expectations: Focus on the actions from your point of view and discuss the awareness level of the employee for how their actions impact others.
• Question Examples: Why do you believe they responded like that? How could your actions have been interpreted? What could you have done differently?
• Tips: Key here is to understand their level of empathy and awareness for how their behavior impacts others, which will determine the amount of feedback you need to provide in future steps. Share experiences that you've experienced that had a similar or opposite reaction. Focus on asking questions and ensure you remain calm to understand how your employee viewed the situations and actions around them.

P - Perception vs. Reality

• Goal: Take all the information from the above steps and share your perception and reality against that of the employee.
• Manager Expectations: Focus on identifying the gap between their actions and results and your belief of how the situation or behavior impacted others.
• Question Examples: You believed "X" and the reality is "Y." Your results were not what you expected because... Individuals respond differently than you might, so let me share why..."
• Tips: Their reality, yours and other teammates are all valid to the situation so ensure there isn't a discounting or dismissal of other's beliefs and feelings. Avoid using words like "always" and "never" but be specific on a single topic and the situation for that one situation. Be clear about feelings, facts and observations of all parties involved. Don't let the employee dismiss or discount the feelings of others or blow off their reality.

E - Expectations

• Goal: Share your expectations of how to handle this situation in the future.
• Manager Expectations: Clearly explain your expectations and share the reality and behaviors that you expect to see and why those are important to you.
• Question Examples: Do you understand my expectations? Do you know why this is important to me?
• Tips: Be specific and condensed in what you share. Incorporate their prior beliefs and statements to demonstrate you were listening. Talk about the why behind your expectations to ensure they understand your position. Ask them to repeat back or share with you so they can demonstrate they understand your expectations clearly.

S - Staying Connected

• Goal: Process that you and your employee will use for the future to provide feedback on situations like this.
• Manager Expectations: Brainstorm together how to handle this in the future and share a documented process for how to discuss expectations and situations and ensure your employee knows you are investing in their development with coaching.
• Question Examples: How would you like me to provide feedback on this situation in the future? What other questions to do you have about what we discussed?
• Tips: Talk together about how to handle the situation if another employee is involved. Make a follow up and feedback plan that works for both of you. Avoid being directive for how to proceed and be flexible in getting what you want.

This process may look simple, but when actually use it to have a discussion, you realize the importance and often difficulty of each step, but it's something that you can learn and gets easier the more you do it. Active listening is required for most of the early conversation and it's natural to want to respond or rebut or argue back, but when you take the time to listen to understand not listen to respond, the later part of the discussion takes on a different tone.

Your goal is:

• Understanding their perception versus reality to provide an appropriate response and next steps.
• Ensure you get as much information from the employee first allows them to be more open to hearing your thoughts and feedback.
• Asking lots of questions to get to the root cause or behavior takes time, but will help you provide better feedback to change behavior long-term.
• Temper your instinct to want to respond, defend, correct right away before understanding the full picture from their view.

Providing feedback for your team is important and often uncomfortable. Working through the steps, focusing on listening and repeating back what you heard will ensure the discussion has the best possible outcome.

Remember to be clear, concise and focused when giving your feedback and information. Don't try to do too much at once and keep it simple and on task. Be sure to set clear expectations about the future and how you'll be providing feedback. Write down your discussion topics, questions and possible responses for each situation to think it through. Roleplay with another manager or leader before giving feedback understand how your information might be received. After, send a email with the summary of what you shared, your expectations and next steps to close the loop on the conversation.

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