The simplest and most effective way to help your employees perform better

Being a leader in a startup is a tough job. You are pulled in all directions. Depending on your leadership team, you may have the responsibility to run operations, push business development, manage clients and investors, and on top of that deliver valuable products and services to the world. As you scale, you may start feeling an increasingly urgent need to delegate more, and delegate larger responsibilities like projects and not tasks. When this happens, leaders often react in one of two ways. They either say:

"we need to focus on recruitment"

or

"I am trying to delegate and empower my employees, but they just aren't able to complete the tasks at the quality level I need"

Both approaches share the same risks as no employee will know your business and your customers as well as you do in the beginning. As a result, your new hire or existing employee will take longer and struggle more to make decisions and execute than you will. Either approach will leave you realizing that the earlier, and more efficiently you can get them to learn what you know, the faster you can delegate with trust and focus on strategic priorities.

I know that there are many startups who do not have specialized HR learning and development processes, or even a dedicated HR manager. Therefore in this article, instead of writing about performance management using OKRs, talent management, learning and development systems etc. I am focusing on the simplest and most effective way a leader can start developing their employees to perform better and take on larger responsibilities: Giving Feedback. I'll go through in detail with you the WHY and HOW of giving feedback to help you supercharge your employees' growth.

Why will Giving Feedback lead to Higher Performance?

Feedback Acts as Signposts to Help Employees Reach Goals

Let's take an example. In the early days of your startup, you handled all the customer complaints. You can analyze all the complexities of a complaint situation in your sleep, and know from experience what measures protect your company, and keep the client happy. Chances are, you now receive a volume of customer complaints or requests that require a team of people to handle. You've written guidelines and standard operating processes to help your employees, however not all customers are equal, and some complaint situations are more critical than others. How can you help your employees learn to think critically and respond appropriately?

Immediate feedback using current customer issues during your team meetings can act as a signpost to teach your team how to think about a situation, and cause immediate follow up change in how they address the customer issue. The next time a similar issue comes along, they now have a signpost on how handle the situation, and will require less involvement from you.

Feedback Keeps Employees Engaged and Increases Their Profitability by 8.9%

Feedback increases the amount of time an employee stays in your organization, thereby saving your time and resources on rehiring and retraining. A Gallup study of 65,674 employees found that employees who received feedback on their strengths had turnover rates that were 14.9% lower than their peers that did not receive any feedback.

Furthermore, Feedback also leads to higher performance. Gallup also studied 469 business units and found that the units with managers who received feedback on their strengths showed 8.9% greater profitability than those who did not receive any feedback. A Zenger/Folkman study of 899 working individuals found that employees craved feedback. 92% of employees surveyed agreed with the statement "Negative (redirecting) feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.”

The data shows that employees want your feedback, positive and negative. So, why not create a Win-Win situation by giving feedback?

How Can You Give Feedback to Improve Performance?

There are three kinds of feedback that you as a leader will give your employees. They are differentiated by length of time, and complexity of the feedback. The shortest is Speedback: Speedback takes about 2 minutes. It is most effective when used to give immediate recognition, or corrective action (signposting) for a task. The second is Performance Feedback: Performance Feedback can range from 10 minutes to an hour. Performance Feedback is often given as a debrief following a task/project with the aim of helping the employee gain self awareness on what they did well and what they can improve on. A desirable outcome would be to co-create solutions for an improved performance next time. Lastly, we come to Career Feedback: Career Feedback normally happens once or twice a year. The focus is on longer term growth of the employee towards larger responsibilities. A Career Feedback session will explore the employee's current state, his/her career goals, and the organization's goals with the aim of creating a development plan for the employee.

The Importance of Positive Feedback

Before I go into detail on how and when to give each type of feedback, I want you to imagine that you share a bank account with each employee of yours. This bank account gets positive deposits when you have positive experiences with each other like exchanging positive feedback, supporting each other when needed etc. The both of you also withdraw from this bank account on a regular basis. Withdrawals happen when you share negative experiences, such as when you give improvement feedback, or when you take additional support from them.

Psychologist John Gottman explored positive and negative ratios in relationships, and discovered that the optimal ratio was 5:1. Whilst the study was on marriages, he was able to use the 5:1 ratio to predict if the marriage would end in divorce with up to 94% of accuracy. Work relationships aren't so different, an IBM’s WorkTrends survey of over 19,000 workers in 26 countries revealed that the engagement level of employees who receive recognition is almost three times higher than the engagement level of those who do not.

So, give Positive Feedback and give it often. Fill the bank account, so that when you need to, you can withdraw from it.

Type 1: Speedback

Speed Back is a wonderful way to give feedback. Adults learn by experiencing, reflecting and then practicing (Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory). The best way to short cut the process, is to give immediate feedback, so as to allow immediate practice. The barrier to entry is really low, as all you have to do is find two minutes in your project briefings, during lunch, after a client call together etc. and you accelerate your employee's learning.

The best way to give Speedback is through the Situation Behavior Impact (SBI) model.

1. Describe the SITUATION e.g. "In the customer call that we just had, the customer was upset because..."
2. Describe the BEHAVIOR e.g. "You allowed the customer to feel heard by reflecting their concerns, and..."
3. Describe the IMPACT e.g. "As a result, the customer felt like we were on their side, and agreed to..

Pro Tip 1: Speedback is great for filling your bank account with positive moments of recognition and feedback! Let your employees know that you are watching and appreciative when they do great things.

Type 2: Performance Feedback

Speedback is great for positive recognition, and small improvements to tasks during a project. However, Performance Feedback is ideal when dealing with learning situations of more complexity such as debriefing decision making, execution etc. after a project or projects. This is because Performance Feedback focuses on developing the self awareness of an employee regarding what good looks like, and co-creating solutions with them on how to improve in the future. This empowers and supports the employee to create signposts for themselves towards their work goals.

The best way to give Performance Feedback is to elicit self reflection, then use the SBI + S (Solution) enhanced model.

1. SELF-REFLECT: Help your employees self reflect by asking questions like: "Were you satisfied with the outcomes of the project?", "What do you think you did well?", "What do you think you can improve on?"
2. SITUATION: Describe the situations concerned e.g. list the projects and tasks you are discussing today
3. BEHAVIOR: Describe what you have observed. Remember to use objective, concrete, behavioral statements. Take responsibility for the feedback by using "I" statements. If their self reflections were accurate, praise them for it as it means they are able to better steer their development.
4. IMPACT: Describe impact of their behavior. Remember that Impact can also be emotional, in this case, highlight emotions the behavior created e.g. "When things got very stressful, I observed that at times you micromanaged the work of (insert name). As a result, I observed that (insert name) felt quite demoralized and withdrew from engaging actively with the team"
5. SOLUTION: Co-create a solution together. Help your employee reflect by asking questions like "How do you feel about the feedback that I just shared?" "What do you think we can do to avoid this next time?

Pro Tip 2: Remember to end your conversation with a "contract of commitment". Check if you have a mutual understanding of WHY the change is important, and WHAT needs to be done.

Type 3: Career Feedback

Career Feedback can be very powerful as it allows you to understand and engage with the motivations of your employees. Career Feedback is done once or twice a year. The goal of Career Feedback is to find the sweet spot where your employee's motivations and company goals intersect. For example, if your employee says that they want to grow into a team leader and learn to manage people, and the company is scaling to a point where you need a team lead. You could set a goal together for the employee to potentially take on the team lead position in 6 months. During the Career Feedback session then, you would assess where the employee is at, and what they need to develop in order to get to the Team Lead position. The goal provides a strong motivational push for all activities, feedback, and development opportunities during the following 6 months.

Career Feedback may follow the following format:

1. MOTIVATION: Seek to understand your employee's motivations. You can use questions like "What impact do you want to have within our company that you don't (fully) have today?" "What do you want to be able to do that you cannot do today?", "Where do you see yourself in 2 years?"
2. SELF-REFLECTION: Ask your employees to reflect for themselves on where they are in terms of their abilities, and where they need to be to reach their goals. You can use questions like "What do you think you are doing well towards achieving those goals?", "What do you think needs improving so that you can achieve those goals?", "What are your biggest obstacles/pain points?", "How can you overcome them?"
3. SBI-S: Share your input using the SBI-S model as discussed in Performance Feedback. Ensure to link what you are sharing with their self-reflection and goals
4. DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: Agree together on the goal, and what steps the employee will take to develop towards it. This is a great time as well to ask "What can I do to better support you to achieve your goal?". Here is a useful example of a Development Plan: Sample Development Plan for Managers

Pro Tip 3: Ask for permission before giving feedback. This mentally and emotionally prepares your employee for receiving feedback, which employees value but can still be difficult to accept.

Conclusion

Feedback is an amazingly simple and efficient way to accelerate your employee's growth. Remember the magic ratio of 5:1, give positive feedback whenever you can! As always, it was a great pleasure sharing with you. If you want to discuss any of your startup leadership challenges, or simply practice and refine your feedback skills, feel free to drop me a note at [email protected] or visit me at www.alisonleejy.com.

You may also be interested in my Guide to Hiring for Startups.