Managing and accelerating the performance of the business is one of the biggest outcomes of a business owner. This means that an essential goal for them is to measure the performance of their team and as a leader, you need to improve the performance of your team by delegating and providing feedback. This is a fundamental need in which business owners need to devote a lot of time. This is also the area where they mostly go wrong. These are concerned topics that need an entrepreneur’s attention because feedback is what will enable the growth of their team, and through that, the business.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that feedback does not work if not implemented properly. There might be a lot of things discussed when giving feedback and although it may make a person aware about the things to be done or done differently, after a span of time, they’ll forget it if they don’t internalize or implement it, real-time.
Let us explore 4 strategies to improve team performance through proper feedback:
It is one of the most important prerequisites to Feedback. Feedback is essentially a response that is derived from the output of a person. How much a person is capable of putting in efforts and hard work is the source of bringing out the kind of feedback the result they get needs. You review the result and then decide what feedback to provide the person so that they can alter the result in the future for the better. So, the output expectation needs to be clear, for which people need GOALS. If you don’t have goals, how will you decide whether people have achieved what they are supposed to achieve or not? That’s what business owners get wrong mostly. They give feedback, but it is not based on anything concrete. This makes feedback situational and superficial. Only when there’s a problem or an escalation, you give feedback. This way, the context is not rightly set and this makes people forget to implement it according to the context of their issues. Thus, make sure their goals are firstly set not just for a whole year but broken down into months and quarters. This makes the feedback more intricate and dives deeper into the problems that actually need to be addressed.
After the feedback is provided, it is important for people to implement it but the step before that which is crucial, is to put the feedback into strategic steps and form a plan! How to do this? Record it. In a written form, via an email with the summary of the feedback conversation, broken down into action points. The plan needs to be a list of all the tasks with mutually decided, deadlines so that there is no scope for confusion. This way you can hold them accountable if the deadlines are not met.
This step needs to happen parallel with the implementation plan. A simple hygiene check- is the feedback working for the individual? Do they have any challenges or do they need any support from you in order to implement the plan well… This will accelerate the process of them implementing the feedback. Simply assuming that your feedback is relevant is a big mistake you can make. You have to be sure that it does and for that, you need to follow up on the feedback given. Have a little catch up a week or two after the feedback conversation.
It is essential to make sure that this process of feedback giving is a consistent process. Not just done when problems arise, but actually on a regular basis. It has to be a system because feedback is not just a report card. People need to work on their feedback in order to continuously improve. Do not sit with feedback only during appraisals either. That trivializes the importance and restricts it only to monetary growth. Accountability is key when it comes to feedback, giving and implementation. Make it a habit on a holistic level.
Read More: Business Operations Let’s have a Conversation!
This is how you can ensure that your team is not just getting regular feedback, but also working on them, implementing them, and achieving results both for their own goals and for the goals of your business.
Karan Hasija, is a professional business coach who believes in perfecting processes that help businesses grow and expand. A stickler for systems and strategies that help in fixing businesses, his workshops, and professional business development programs have added value to a lot of small and medium businesses over the years. Sign up for one of his courses to get more insights into how to strengthen your business.
