9 Best Practices For Constructive Feedback

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Whether we are giving feedback to an employee for their evaluation or talking with other business associates and customers, below are 9 ways for giving constructive criticism.

  • Private criticize but publicly praise
  • Focus on the behavior not the individual
  • Keep it short and direct
  • Use an “I” message vs. “you” message
  • Be positive in your delivery tone
  • Describe succinctly and clearly what you want the person to change
  • Be empathic
  • Don’t be spontaneous in your criticism, be thoughtful
  • Recognize when the person makes changes

Tough conversations with constructive criticism is never easy, but following the concepts above can make the outcome a positive one. Here’s to having conversations that can propel you to the next level!

Mike

Hiring Your Next Employee?… Consider These Questions

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Must ask questions for interviewing new hires.  As you begin to look at opportunities to hire your next employee consider the following questions to ask.

  • In what ways will this role help you stretch your professional capabilities?  This question drives at what the candidate will reveal as areas where they want to improve their skills.
  • What have been your greatest areas of improvement during your career?  This points to areas the candidate felt were weaknesses and how they have addressed them.  Of course, if the indicate that they don’t have any areas of improvement, then they may not be the right candidate.
  • What is the toughest feedback that you have received and how you learned from it?  This shows that a candidate can admit to mistakes and how they handled it along with what they did to use it in their learning process.
  • What would someone most likely misunderstand about you?  This can show a candidates ability to understand others and how they themselves may be misunderstood in certain situations.
  • If you were to give a user manual to you staff in order for them to get to know you, what would it include?  This shows the candidates work habits and general style.

For our company we hire for “attitude” and train for “skills.” We can always teach someone a new skill, but it is very difficult to change someone’s attitude that has been baked into them since childhood.

Here’s to asking the right questions to get you the right new employee!

Mike

Are Your Goals SMART?

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I have had the privilege to be a part of a strong peer business group, Vistage, where part of the accountability is our goal setting.  What I have learned over the years is the more specific and measurable the goal the better.  My team forces me to put a timetable on each goal, otherwise, they tell me I have an aspiration, not a goal.  I encourage you to set your own SMART goals.

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Actionable
  • Realistic
  • Timely

When you implement these concepts with each of your goals, watch your accomplishments go to the next level!

Mike

A “How To” For Constructive Criticism

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Feedback from customers and employees is important to our growth.  How we give feedback will make a big difference on the recipient’s desire to act.  At times, the feedback will require some criticism.  Vistage speaker Bill Scherer gives some tips on giving constructive criticism.

  1. Praise in public, criticize in private
  2. Focus on behavior, not the person
  3. Clearly describe the behavior you want an employee to change and why
  4. Ensure the person has an ability to change the behavior
  5. Keep comments short and on point
  6. Maintain a positive tone
  7. Use “I” statements
  8. Show empathy
  9. Avoid spontaneous criticism
  10. Recognize positive behavior change

Follow these guidelines to help deliver the message in the right context, where action can and will want to be taken.

Here’s to positive dialogue that propels your business health!

Mike

Employee Engagement

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Do you remember your first day at a new job?  It’s often filled with excitement and new opportunities on helping the company you just joined succeed in its mission.  However, have you also felt this excitement wear off after a while?  Did you feel yourself get more disconnected?

This dissatisfaction with some or maybe all aspects of your job is also something you have seen among other employees.  Keeping engaged and excited employees is a difficult process for any company, and especially for ones with fast growth and lots of employees.  Recent research has found that when we can make a connection of one’s work to the beneficiary of that work, like our customer, employees get more job satisfaction.  For instance, Adam Grant of the Wharton School found that fundraisers who were attempting to secure scholarship donations felt more motivated when they had contact with the scholarship recipients.

Giving feedback to employees on how their work is impacting the company’s customers is a strong motivation tool that lifts productivity.  Its making these types of connections for all employees in all areas of the company can give them a picture of how they contribute to customer satisfaction.  What opportunities do you have in your organization to provide these types of connections?

Make the connections to level up your employee engagement!

Mike

Make Your Compliments Count

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One of the best ways to brighten up someone’s day is to give them a compliment.  

However, not all compliments are equal.  In her article “The Secret to Giving a Compliment that Makes People Glow” by Mary Halton, she describes the 3 ingredients for a great compliment.

  • Use their name
    • Using someone’s name says you value them as a person
  • Compliment something specific
    • Instead of using a generic statement like “Good job,” be specific and say something like “Your singing took me back to my childhood when my family would sing around the campfire.”
  • Don’t praise and run out
    • After your compliment, ask a follow up question such as why they chose to sing that particular song

Compliments can go a long way in building your relationships, so make them count.

Here’s to making it count!

Mike

Updating Your Organization’s Employee Experience

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The nature of work has evolved dramatically over the years, from what we deliver to how we create it. It wasn’t long ago when scores of people sat in rows of desks performing the same repetitive activity. Today, we don’t even need to be in an office, and can still accomplish so much more.

Each generation has fresh expectations for how their work environment operates and feels – and for most companies, the COVID-19 pandemic monkey wrench forced abrupt new changes. While our work environments, wherever they are, may not be “Dunder Mifflin” fun, it’s important to continue evolving your work environment.

Here are 6 recommendations for encouraging your workforce:

  1. Create opportunities for employees to grow their relationships. It’s difficult to make a positive connection with someone you know only by name and title. Consider planning a casual activity at lunchtime, creating interest-based groups, or finding opportunities for people to work outside of their normal teams.
  2. Provide ongoing feedback.  The years of annual reviews have passed. Much of today’s workforce prefer frequent feedback. Discuss goals and expectations more frequently to allow employees to attack incremental goals and have a say in creating expectations that seem fair and challenging.
  3. Offer flexible work locations. No more cubicles, but also no more wide-open workspaces. Promote creativity and collaboration with quiet rooms and lounges filled with comfy seating. Consider flexible furniture, like desks that enable a person to work while sitting or standing. We all know it’s unhealthy for people to sit in a chair like a slug all day. And don’t forget small and large enclosed places for phone calls and meetings.  Even after the pandemic passes, options like remote working, working irregular hours, and job-sharing will be huge bonuses to employees trying to balance their work and personal lives.
  4. Offer benefit packages that include mental health coverage and financial and mental wellness checkups. Some employers encourage taking “mental health” days to recharge. Some are insisting that employees working from home take time for a walk or non-screen-time during their workday. At the office, some employers are even providing meditation rooms.  How can you support your employees’ mental health?
  5. Focus on purpose. Identifying one’s purpose is important to today’s work force.  Help employees understand how their work contributes to the success of the company as a whole. Inquire as to how and why they do their work, what they feel their strengths are, what energizes them and what impact they feel they are making.  This may encourage some employees to create their own purpose statement.
  6. Finally, ask for feedback. A suggestion box is still a good way to do this. Make it easy for employees to give praise and criticism. Ask for ideas. Some of the most positively impactful changes come from employees on the front line.

How Well Do You Know Your Strengths?

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Would it surprise you to learn that most people have only imperfect knowledge of their own strengths? Most of us have a rough idea about what we do well, because our obvious strengths are often the basis for earning our living.  However, that knowledge is limited.

As a group, entrepreneurs may have a better handle on their strengths than most people. Knowing that many of my readers are business owners, my educated guess is that you recognize some of the following entrepreneurial traits in yourself:

  • Self-confidence
  • Ability to learn from others
  • Self-motivation
  • Determination
  • Decisiveness
  • Willingness to take risks

Many business owners would say they possess all of the above characteristics. That’s good because they may be the most important strengths for an entrepreneur to possess. Of course, the list above is far from complete. Most entrepreneurs are keenly aware of some of their strengths – those that help them succeed day to day.

Here’s another list of skills that would come in handy for any business owner:

  • Being innovative/inventive
  • Analytical skills – capable of researching and analyzing various aspects of business like product development, production, marketing and sales
  • Focus on financial results, i.e., the bottom line
  • Ability to delegate authority effectively
  • Organizational skills – capable of identifying what needs to be accomplished in each aspect of business and matching employees’ skills to the tasks at hand

Is it as easy to recognize from this list the skills that you possess?  Typically, this list poses more uncertainty for people. For example, some people have the capacity to be analytical, but they would rather not have to use those skills at work if someone else can provide them. Others see themselves as innovative. However, in reality they may not rank high when tested for those skills.

Assessing Strengths

There are tools available to help determine your strengths. The Clifton StrengthsFinder® is a popular online assessment that draws on more than 50 years of Dr. Donald O. Clifton’s lifelong work. Clifton was recognized with an American Psychological Association Presidential Commendation as the father of strengths-based psychology. The assessment is designed to help individuals identify, understand, and maximize their strengths. As a manager, it can be used to help you understand the strengths of your employees.

The importance of knowing your strengths, or those of your employees, is to help people focus on the things they do best every workday. This notion directly contradicts what most of us are taught from childhood – that we should focus on minimizing our weaknesses. Research by Clifton, and others, suggests we accomplish far more by maximizing our strengths and developing them to their fullest.

StrengthsFinder provides numerous strategies for making the most a person’s unique strengths. Its in-depth approach to strength analysis explores the nuances of what makes a person unique. The program uses more than 5,000 personalized strengths insights.  Two people with similar strengths get very different plans to improve themselves. The program will likely change the way you look at yourself, or your employees.

If you find that financial analysis is not one of your strengths, let us help!  Contact Trillium Financial today for a CFO-level roadmap for your business.