Employee Feedback

Your employees need to know how they're doing -- hopefully, that falls into the category of "no-brainer." You want them to keep doing the good stuff and stop doing the bad, but they need to know which is which, and it isn't always obvious to them. Even when it IS obvious, sometimes they need a little reminder about what's important.

Your feedback to employees should be based on objectives you've agreed to. You and your employee should sit down and come up with a set of objectives they should meet during a particular period of time. These should be challenging but attainable, and you should have some way to measure progress, even if it's an "I'll know it when I see it" kind of thing. these objectives should be based on the firm's requirements...look at your strategic plan and decide what they should be striving for. Just make sure you both understand what the employee should be doing.

Try to have regularly scheduled feedback sessions. For newer employees this could be every 3 months while more experienced employees sit down with you every 6. Set a schedule, and stick to it. If there's a problem, or if they're doing particularly well, don't be afraid to step in earlier, but definitely don't go any longer than the timeline you've agreed to...they'll start to lose respect for the feedback if you treat it as unimportant.

Have them keep track of the things they do so you can have a more informed feedback session. If someone is your assistant and you've only got the one employee working for you, you can probably keep track of what they're doing, but if you have 20 people then a lot of things will be happening out of your sight. This also gives you a chance to see what they consider most important, and it's helpful if your view on that and theirs match up?

When offering feedback I like to use what I call "the sandwich approach." That is, I start with things they've done well and set a positive tone. Then I get into the problems they're having, with an eye toward improvement more than blame, and then I finish up with positive items again so the session ends on a good note and the chance of them being defensive about the criticisms is reduced.

Don't be too effusive with praise. If you're always telling them how great they are, even for the smallest things, then the value of that praise drops a lot. I once had a boss tell me "good job" so often, and for such little things, that when we finally had a formal feedback session I really didn't care because I knew he'd say "good job" for tying my shoes right. make them earn the praise, and make sure your criticism is only for things that matter, too.

Feedback should be a conversation, not a lecture. If they are having problems, try to find out why they think that is. See how they view their performance and you'll have a better idea what they see as their role in the firm. This might not be the place to ask for feedback on your own leadership style -- knowing you're going to ask them that question could influence the feedback you give them -- but definitely get a sense of how they feel about their performance to go along with your own perceptions.

If they've met the objectives you agreed to, then it may be time for new ones. Use these sessions to look at not just what they've done but also what they can do in the future. Once objectives are met it's time for new challenges.

Lastly, you should document these sessions. There's a good reason, and an unspoken one. the good reason is, you want them to have something to refer back to later so they can see where they're performing well, see where they need to improve, and understand how they've changed over time. The unspoken reason is, if you decide to fire them, you want a record of all the chances you've given them to improve and all the discussions you've had about their poor performance.

Good employee feedback is critical to growing a business and growing employees. Many of us prefer to avoid conflict or discussing less-than-happy topics, but that's what we pay leaders to do. In creative fields in particular, where progress and success can't always be measured by numbers or graphs or other objective means, you have to do something really unusual to help your employees understand how well they're doing: you have to actually talk to them.