Feedback

How's everyone doing?

If you want your people to develop their competencies, they will need your feedback.

Most people don’t give enough feedback to their team members.

Praise good outcomes AND good efforts. Don’t wait until performance reviews. Let them know how helpful they were, or how good the quality of the design was, or how great it is to have them on the team. Frame the words and tone of your praise to fit the person, and focus on the aspects that matter most to the other person, so the praise “lands” with them.

For example, DON’T give a back-slap and a loud “great job!” to a shy introvert—from their point of view, you are yelling and hitting them. A calm “excellent work on X, Y, and Z” will be better recieved.

If something needs correction, don’t just red-pen the draft. And don’t just fix it yourself “because it’s faster.” Use revision discussions to grow the person’s professional skills (so you won’t have to make corrections next time!). Make sure they understand how to make their work better—e.g., “use the one we did last month as a formatting template” or “if the numbers are not in this range, check X and Y before continuing” or “confirm the electrical design changes to make sure this portion of the design will all still work.”

The point is NOT to punish—people who are punished learn to avoid making the mistake again, but they also learn that you are a person who makes them feel bad. You don’t want the lesson learned to be “my boss is a jerk.”

Focus your feedback so that, whether it is positive or negative, the person leaves the discussion even more motivated to do it even better next time.

(image generated using Midjourney)