A Short Guide to Strengths-Based Feedback

Most of us can easily relate to a time in our lives where we have had to have a courageous conversation, which perhaps required us to collect all our courage to share our opinion for either our own or other people’s sake. These conversations often make us anxious when anticipating how that discussion will happen.

These types of situations can be highly challenging, but knowing the importance and benefits of their outcome and ways of facilitating such conversations can help us tremendously. We can essentially call a conversation ‘courageous’ when we face this challenge, despite our – very natural – preference of avoidance (Powrie, 2020).

In the business context, dealing with and delivering such conversations can be crucial for success. The benefits of having such discussions include effective problem-solving, increased awareness around diversity, a safer environment, and possibly higher levels of motivation and engagement (Buxton, 2018). And while these situations can arise anytime, the most common reason such conversations may occur usually relate to one of the following situations:

·??????Giving and receiving feedback

·??????Setting goals and objectives

·??????Establishing trust and being honest

·??????Solving sticky situations

·??????Conflict handling

Why does giving feedback matter?

The importance of feedback is well known. Giving feedback is an important tool for both management and co-workers to support and to provide information on performance; conversely, the lack of it is often perceived as a breach of the psychological contract, that can result in decreased motivation and innovation (Eva et al., 2019).

The effectiveness of giving feedback can depend on both its content and context. A supportive feedback environment can be built by a combination of good feedback quality and delivery, the use of credible evidence, the sharing of both positive and negative feedback, and through encouraging employees to seek feedback (Herold & Parsons, 1985; Whitaker et al., 2007).

So, how should feedback be delivered?

A successful and popular approach to giving feedback is through adopting a strengths-based method. According to Aguinis and colleagues (2012), focusing on positive behaviours and achievements is superior to pointing out flaws in terms of consequences. Perhaps non-surprisingly, a weakness-based approach can inadvertently result in employee dissatisfaction, defensiveness, and less actual improvement. They provide nine recommendations for delivering effective strengths-based feedback:

1.?????Identify and praise the employee’s strengths and encourage them to maintain and continuously improve them

2.?????Areas of development should be linked to knowledge rather than ability, which is more difficult to change

3.?????Understand that some abilities are unlikely to significantly improve, build on strengths to compensate for these areas

4.?????Make sure you are familiar with the employee’s job requirements, knowledge, skills, and talents

5.?????Always deliver feedback in a private space

6.?????Involve the employee to participate in the feedback session and be considerate in your delivery

7.?????Be specific and base your feedback on evidence

8.?????Link employee behaviours to not only themselves, but also to their impact on the team and the organisation as a whole

9.?????Provide a development plan and monitor progress after a certain period of time

As a general guideline, following these steps should result in better employee wellbeing, engagement and productivity, while avoiding most of the disadvantages that come with focusing on one’s mistakes and shortcomings (Aguinis et at., 2012).

But giving feedback is only one of the many types of courageous conversations. If you would like to learn more about the topic, including what goes on from a neuroscientific perspective and tips on how to manage all sorts of difficult discussions, check out the latest episode of The Chief Psychology Officer podcast with Dr Amanda Potter and Angela Malik on ‘How to Have Courageous Conversations’, available on the official podcast website: https://www.thecpo.co.uk, as well as on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Written by Attila Simony , Business Psychologist at Zircon.

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References

Buxton, M. (2018, August 6). 7 Powerful Reasons for Courageous Conversations. LinkedIn. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/7-powerful-reasons-courageous-conversations-marcia-buxton/

Eva, N., Meacham, H., Newman, A., Schwarz, G., & Tham, T. L. (2019). Is co-worker feedback more important than supervisor feedback for increasing innovative behaviour? Human Resource Management, 58(4), 383-396. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21960

Herold, D. M., & Parsons, C. K. (1985). Assessing the feedback environment in work organizations: Development of the job feedback survey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70(2), 290–305. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.70.2.290

Powrie, N. (2020). Transforming difficult conversations into courageous conversations. Nadine Powrie Consultancy Limited. https://nadinepowrie.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Difficult-conversations_FINAL.pdf

Whitaker, B. G., Dahling, J. J., & Levy, P. (2007). The development of a feedback environment and role clarity model of job performance. Journal of Management, 33(4), 570-591. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206306297581