Learning to give feedback
You'll need to give feedback regularly in your career, to your manager, to a customer, to a supplier, to members of your team or even to your colleagues. So it's important to be prepared!
What are the reasons for giving feedback? Here are a few examples:
- enabling others to improve
- avoid surprises at the end of a project or at the end of the year
- clarify expectations and increase team motivation.
There are several methods for giving feedback. Today we're going to take a look at the STAR method.
The STAR method
The 4 elements of feedback
There are 4 elements in STAR feedback:
- Situation: describe the situation, what, when, who, and be as specific as possible.
- Tasks: you need to describe the task or behavior you expect to achieve
- Action: you must explain how the action failed to meet your expectations.
- Results: you must explain the impact and consequences of the action you have observed.
Let's take an example for a moment:
I don't like it when you don't do what you said, you're disrespecting us all. You're the one who was supposed to do this part of the presentation, your behavior is so uncool!
Effective? Not really. This type of feedback is very general and can lead to conflict.
Let's apply the STAR method to get more relevant feedback:
- Situation: Yesterday at 6pm, you didn't send your part of the presentation that was due at 7pm.
- Task: you had to create the concluding slides with a detailed analysis and you were the only one working on them.
- Action: we had to redo the slides in a hurry between 6:30 and 7 p.m.
- As a result, everyone was over-stressed and the final result was not what the teacher had expected.
More efficient and relevant, isn't it?
Here are a few more tips to improve your feedback.
It's important to suggest solutions to the person. Give them ideas for improvement! Don't just raise a problem.
Above all, don't go in for personal attacks, avoid tu or vous, use je instead.
For example:
You lack communication vs. I think you need to be more communicative with others.
You always send me the items when I follow up twice vs. I'd like to receive the items in advance.
Receive feedback
Now that we've talked about giving feedback, let's talk a little about receiving feedback. Here are a few tips.
Concentrate on what the person has written, and avoid having an emotional reaction! Try to stay calm and analyze the message to understand it properly.
Be open to change, reflect on the message and make sure you've understood the feedback and what you could change to improve your behavior.
Identify areas for improvement based on this feedback. What actions could you take to correct the situation next time?
Intra-group feedback is akin to the 360-degree evaluation you may encounter in the workplace. This type of feedback enables you to compare your self-image with that of your work group. It enables you to identify your strengths and areas for improvement. This type of feedback will help you to take a step back from your position in the group, but also from the things you need to improve to work better as a team.
