I work in a lot of corporate as well as public sector settings and I am always amazed at the intellectual horsepower found among corporate executives, partners in professional services firms and SES leaders in the Federal Sector.  Unfortunately, this intellectual horsepower goes partially untapped because of one thing -  the lack of regular feedback.  This is certainly not true for all organizations yet in our experience it is for most.

Can you imagine the implication if guided missiles, satellites, GP-S’s, or your own body’s temperature gauge had no feedback mechanisms built in?  Bottom line, they would not work and in the case of the later the lack of a feedback mechanism would lead to death!  Now look at your organization and ask yourself -

• How effective are we at giving each other constructive feedback?
• If and when we do – what impact does it have on our performance and profitability?
• What, if anything, keeps us from having a more feedback rich culture (e.g. we are too polite to each other, we live in silos, etc.)?

Here are some common challenges that hinder an organization’s ability to improve performance through feedback:

• Engaging the performance review system is seen as a hassle and task to get checked off rather than an opportunity to provide substantial feedback and an opportunity to improve performance overall.  In addition, performance reviews are typically done once a year (sometimes there is a mid-year review).  While such reviews are valuable – they are not enough in and of themselves.
• People hesitate to give tough feedback to others or only give positive feedback. Time and time again I have seen this come back to hurt the manager, the person receiving feedback and the organization.  When less effective or disruptive behavior is swept under the carpet for even the best performers you run the risk of the behaviors escalating to the point you hurt team chemistry and/or lose valued employees.
• Even if an organization has a clear set of values or operating guidelines (and many are even lacking this) – they are rarely discussed let alone leveraged as feedback tools.  The benefit of having articulated values (or operating guidelines) is to ensure you are setting a context for how you work with your clients as well as within the organization.  Quite frankly, taking the time to develop values without integrating them into the feedback system is a waste of time!

Any of these sound familiar?  I would be surprised if none of them resonate for you.  To create a feedback rich culture you must:

• Create a context for feedback (e.g. your vision, mission, values, and key priorities) and make sure people know these will be used as vehicles to improve focus and performance.
• Provide feedback on approaches and behaviors that either support or detract from the context above.
• Make sure you have a process to support giving feedback that focuses on the items above and not the person.
• Leaders must model this and be open to receiving feedback themselves when they are not living up to expectations.

Again, feedback is necessary for any goal to be achieved.  Failure is part of the process of succeeding and failure must be embraced BUT ALSO LEARNED FROM!   Internal and external feedback is what provides those learning moments that allow us to navigate more quickly to our desired destinations!

Tags: achievement, feedback, improving performance

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Executive Engagement, Interpersonal Engagement, Leadership Development, Strategic Engagement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.