How to give feedback in a remote world blog
Learning how to give feedback to colleagues can be difficult. What should my feedback be specific how do I maintain between directness and sensitivity? How do I encourage an engaging discussion that will leave my coworker feeling confident and positive?
Remote working environments could increase the challenges. Body language or subtle cues that may be readily perceived in-person may be more difficult to perceive remotely. And so, when it comes to offering constructive feedback, positive or not, wires get crossed, and those who receive it may not be in the best mental state to listen to the things you are saying.
But feedback, with all it's pitfalls and complexities are a vital component of collaboration. There is no way to simply pray that your team will magically narrow the gaps in those points of improvement. Nor will your team be able to continue their work indefinitely without leadership support and motivation.
So, in this article in this article, we'll provide some best practices that can help improve your feedback with colleagues at work. We'll dive into.
What can you do to provide constructive feedback
Take into consideration the way of delivery
There are a variety of methods for communication at your disposal make sure you choose the right one. It is a good idea to inquire regularly newly recruited team members (or existing team members) what they would prefer to communicate, and what they would like to hear from them in feedback.
While your workplace may standardize annual reviews, feedback can happen at any point and it is important to ensure everyone on your team is aware and at ease with the feedback. This could mean shutting off the camera, or sending out a thoughtful email, or booking more frequent 1:1s depending on their personal comfort level and objectives within the company.
Create a safe environment
If you work in a real office There are plenty of ways to establish a mood in your environment. It is possible to invite your colleagues out for coffee and unpack what they thought of a big client meeting that didn't go so well and then head to a boardroom for intense discussions, or take them to the hall to offer a short high-five. However, in an environment that is remote, it's harder to choose the best setting for whatever you want to discuss. You'll need create psychologically safe signals.
It could also mean that the meeting location will not have external distractions or work stress, dressing to the situation (a casual appearance goes far in making individuals feel more relaxed) and even suggesting a camera-off or phone conversation to break people from screen fatigue. The use of a voice-only conference also cuts down the anxiety aspect and promotes an active and engaged listening experience on both sides. That brings us to our next point.
Listen (but don't pry!)
A distributed workplace where communication patterns are constantly changing and the lines between personal and professional life are becoming less clear and transparent, listening actively builds trust and confidence. Listening actively gives you a situational awareness of what your teammates are going through outside of work, and what factors affect their work performance. Listening gives you opportunities to improve feedback delivery, understand what's not working and ways to build the best working environment for the colleagues.
Be sure to start with the good instead of the negative
It's been long established that the compliment sandwich--in which negative feedback is sandwiched in between two positives is an efficient way to deliver difficult news. However, positive feedback has gained a sense of significance nowadays. Most people are stressed on many personal fronts (like health, family as well as social and existential) and, despite your best efforts, most likely also professionally) and would greatly get positive reinforcement.
Out of these conflicting stressful situations comes what psychologists called negative bias that is the tendency to focus and dwell on negative criticism over positive feedback. Employers have to do their best to emphasize those who are positive over those who are not. However critical the comments may be, the best thing to do is start from a place of respect and empathy as well as acknowledge the hard work that your team members are putting into this difficult time.
Make sure you are specific and concrete with your feedback
In order to counter negative bias, you should keep your feedback specific, actionable insights rather than general remarks on confidence, attitude, work ethic or conflict resolution abilities and skills, which can be easily mistaken or ineffective.
Good feedback isn't just a review of your performance. It's also a chance to grow and setting goals. Feedback that is most beneficial comes in the event that you have a particular objective and target to achieve, and you can clearly communicate what this person could work on to get them there.
Feedback can be tied to actions and the impact it has: How their strategic thinking directly resulted in a profit, or the way the lack of communication led to another colleague having to re-do certain tasks and what could be handled better next time around.
Your feedback should be prioritized to highlight the most critical points
Rather than saving up the plethora of comments or praises that you can chuck out at a meeting, consider making your comments more specific to points that would make most impact in areas when it is needed.
Review the most important takeaways
After your discussion, request them to go over the key aspects. Then, you can brainstorm with them how they can overcome gaps in efficiency and/or grow further in their position (and what ways you may assist them) or ask them to offer up their report of the meeting if they feel at ease enough to be able to. It's important to make certain that you're on the same page and to be able to assure that the information you've received has arrived exactly where it was intended.
Follow up
In the weeks or months after your feedback meeting follow up with them to see how they're performing. This is an opportunity to continue building trust. Also, ensure they're capable of balancing their responsibilities in a variety of ways, or give the positive feedback.
Tips for video collaboration, as well as feedback
Use video to record presentations for review
Record post-mortem thoughts, and the group's responses
Questions on how to respond
What are some positive feedback examples?
A positive review example: "Sarah has done an incredible job at removing unnecessary jobs and creating helpful tools for our team. We would love to see her continue to increase her expertise through tackling new tasks and sharing her knowledge and skills through presentations and other tools." How do you write Peer feedback?
Couch constructive feedback and provide positive feedback. Your feedback should be actionable and specific and also connected to a goal. Make it possible for your team members to respond. Listen with empathy and offer support where needed. What is an example of constructive feedback?
A positive example of feedback "Phil has managed a workload that was 10% higher than in the previous year with enthusiasm managing his program efficiently in a timely manner. The one challenge that I'd like to present to him during the next year is to increase his communications with his stakeholders so that he can maintain a level of transparency throughout his project's life period to stay ahead of potential roadblocks."