Feedback is ever-present in our daily lives. We are receiving feedback at every moment we are awake. In our professional life, we receive or give feedback about the performance once or twice per year. This feedback is essential for ensuring that we’re on track to leading our team to achieve the goals that are important to our organizations. In this blog, I will talk about the power of feedback. How to give a proper feedback to the build a well-functioning team?

Feedback can be divided into two types:

• Positive Feedback
• Constructive Feedback

Positive Feedback

This type of feedback is mainly used as a motivator and we can also call this as a praise. It acknowledges the good work that the receiver has done and you are rewarding him with your words. This kind of feedback is designed to encourage a person to continue his specific traits to perform the assigned tasks.

Constructive Feedback

Constructive feedback is to let the receiver know about something he did incorrectly in an appropriate way. The message is constructive and helps the individual to improve, rather than just being a message about what they shouldn’t do. Constructive feedback helps the person to develop better and more effective.

But it’s not always easy to give the right feedback and choose the right words. There come many factors like good relationships, fear of being exposing your name etc. If you’re too honest in identifying only the critics, then you discourage and demotivate the receiver. If, on the other hand, you’re too forgiving, nothing will change and the team member won’t get the opportunity to improve. That’s the reason why Team Leads/Project Manager /Team members find this situation difficult to select the right type of feedback. The simple trick to handle this is to say the truth in a constructive way with meaningful sentences. Here are some tips that can help to give the right feedback.

• My first tip is to use self-directed feedback, which means that you ask the team member to first evaluate their own performance. This will open up the door of discussion and you can turn the discussion based on the recover self-analysis and team member will be to listen to it.
• The feedback should be the mixture of positive and critics in layers. If you give only the negatives you can easily demotivate the team member. You have to build up people’s self-esteem with your positive words. You can deliver your message this way: “What I liked was… Can I suggest something you might do differently? You are always so good at …”
• Be specific in telling the team member what he is doing well and what you would like to see changed.
• You have to create a safe space for the team member to speak his inner what he thinks off. Bring him towards dialogue to express his views and react to your comments.

Feedback should not have a negative angle at all. You can keep your team members motivated by acknowledging all the things they are doing well. It should be an ongoing activity. Always acknowledge at right time when you observe that your team member has done his job great. Even if you get an email about some accomplished task, there is no harm in writing one sentence of appreciation as a Manager for the person who did this. Even the word “Well done or Great work” has a power. So be open in giving honest constructive feedbacks. Be happy and let others happy with your wise words.