It seems its a continual struggle to consistently get and give good actionable feedback to employees.

Annual Review Surprise?

I hate annual reviews where the employee seems surprised by the revelation of some undesirable behavior or action that hasn’t been as clearly discussed as needed along the way. Especially if that employee is me.

Effective employee feedback in 2 forms

Effective managers give feedback at the point of need, whether good or bad, in One Minute Manager style. While this is good, and immediate, there needs to be a more concrete long term environment where change and improvement can be discussed, planned, encouraged and agreed to, regularly. This promotes  change in smaller increments. The discussion gets easier when it’s regular and part of the culture. It builds relationship. Feedback, in the absence of relationship, especially critical feedback, usually yields defensiveness. However, feedback in the presence of relationship, while still difficult sometimes, is more trusted and more likely to be acted upon. So the question is how do you do that type of feedback?

But do you have the right tools?

The times I have worked for large corporations they always had what I called “Performance Review DeJour” where online tools or documents were available to help the feedback process. And these were changed very regularly. However, being at a small company, or being a small business owner, can mean you don’t have access to these formal tools or methods.

So what is needed is a simple form that allows for the easy and regular capture of simple elements of feedback to the employee. Something that could be done on one sheet of paper (or screen). Something that would only take a few minutes but provide clarity and actionable discussion points.

In the next post I will share what I came up with, that is how you can B.A.K.E an employee to better results.