We can't change the past, but we can influence the future.
Feedback discussions often backfire. Studies show that the effects of feedback on performance are highly variable, not always positive, and the most common effect of feedback is none at all.
The feedback fallacy: Why the current way of giving feedback doesnt work :
Fundamental Attribution Error: Feedback givers and receivers disagree on why things went the way they did. The person giving feedback thinks it’s because you lack certain abilities, or didn’t work hard enough, or didn’t pay enough attention. In contrast, feedback receiver tends to do self-enhancement (i.e we give ourselves extra credit) during success and self-protection (i.e as we don't want to think badly about ourselves and hence blame circumstances beyond our control) during a failure.
Insight: There is always a disconnect between the feedback giver and receiver at an unconscious level.
Solution: Future Focused Feedback
Don’t discuss why things went wrong in the past; instead focus on what we can do going forward in the future to make things better.
Sample Future Focused Feedback Discussion Template :
Assume the feedback receiver has the motivation and competence to improve.
Express the goal of the discussion is to improve things for the future: This helps the feedback receiver become more open for discussion.
Ask what happened: This allows the feedback giver to gather information while also allowing your employee to tell their story and vent a little
Praise what has gone well in the past and stick to the facts where performance has been disappointing; avoid discussing causes and explanations.
Invite discussion of what to do next, including potential opportunities and practical actions. Develop solutions together.
Why could this work? When we talk about the future, we know that we can change things for the better because the future has not yet happened. However, when we talk about what went wrong in the past, we are really stuck as we can’t fix what happened back then. And so we are less flexible about thinking maybe it’s something we should change.
Performance management need not be tied to unearthing the determinants of past performance and holding people to account for past failures. To inspire behaviour change, feedback should focus less on diagnosing past performance and more on designing future performance.
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