Keep it positive

One of the areas I think most businesses need improvement is in the area of “feedback”.  There are basically 3 types of feedback:

1. positive
2. negative
3. none

I’ll start from the bottom up.

“None” is the type of feedback most managers give.  I’ve worked for only a limited number of places, but each of my managers was bad at giving feedback.  When I became manager, I was bad at giving feedback.  We’re not trained for it, so many don’t do it.  Or, they only do it once something has gotten really out of hand.

Feedback is really important.  One of the podcasts I listen to describes it as a way of doing minor course corrections to stay on track.  The alternative is that you go way off course and it’s harder to get back on track.  Also, you waste a lot of time.

It’s a great way to think of it.  If you’re driving and make a wrong turn, then make another, and another, before you know it, you’re an hour late.  However, if someone had said at your first turn, “this is the wrong way, turn around,” you could fix it and only lose a few minutes.

I also like to tell people, “In the absence of feedback people will keep doing whatever they’re doing.  Right or Wrong.”  And once a habit is established it’s hard to break.

The other type of feedback people seem to like to give is “negative”.  There are managers who think they’re doing you a favor by telling you all the things you do wrong.  We can all see the logic.  We’re just telling them they made a wrong turn and getting them back on course.  The problem is, if this is the only feedback they receive, you’ll end up with unmotivated employees who don’t want to do anything for fear of being reprimanded or told they’re “doing it wrong”.

Some management texts suggest the rule of 3 (3 good things for every one bad – or some other arbitrary number), but I think it’s fine to give negative feedback by itself.  The key is to follow up with positive feedback once the behavior is corrected.  To continue with our driving example, after the person gets back on the right route you’d say something like, “We’re back on track.  Good job!”  It’s literally that easy.

Positive reinforcement is the most powerful conditioned stimulus for humans.  As they say, “flattery will get you everywhere.”  I’ve worked at a job that paid me less because the boss showed he appreciated my work.  You get more work from happy workers than disgruntled workers.  Happy workers will go above and beyond.

When it comes to feedback you don’t have to “kiss ass” or “pamper/coddle” your employees, just give feedback that encourages the behaviors you want, rather than punish those you don’t.

To give a concrete example:  Say you have an employee who is constantly late.  Start with the negative feedback. (I’m going to use the model I learned from Manager Tools – any errors are mine)

“When you’re late it causes other people to stay past their scheduled hours and disrupts the flow of customer service.  Can you try to be on time in the future. Thank you.”

If the employee is on time for his next three shifts, follow up with positive feedback.

“I see you’ve been on time or early for your past three shifts.  That’s really helped keep our service at a high level.  Good job!  Keep it up.”

Hopefully, you’ll have more positive than negative feedback with your employees.

I use an example of positive feedback after a negative one, but you can give positive feedback all by itself.  “The way you asked the customer questions to get at the exact product they wanted was really good.  Keep doing that.”  It’s actually more important to encourage good behavior than punish bad.  You want to keep good things going and hopefully get others doing it, too.

So all you managers out there: Let’s get some feedback going!