Giving Feedback

The Best Strategy to Engage Your Team

In a recent focus group, I asked the employees what type of manager feedback engages and motivates them. Interestingly, their ideas were not time consuming, expensive or too challenging, often the excuses you hear when you ask a manager how often they give positive and meaningful feedback to their staff. Here are some of their ideas:

Having regular catch ups with their manager
Managers hosting social events (lunches, bar-be-cues) to say thank you
Team meetings where managers acknowledge the hard work and efforts of the team
Managers who solicit ideas, opinions and feedback from their team
Providing specific examples of what part of their performance can improve
Working with individuals to create a constructive development plan and following up to see how things are progressing.

What can we learn? If you are a manager, find opportunities every day to talk to your staff not only about what needs to be done, but how you can help them achieve their goals. The value of having regular catch ups with and giving feedback to your team is probably one of the most valuable things you can do as a people manager. If you are an employee who feels you are not getting enough quality feedback from you manager, ask for it.

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