The best leaders walk around regularly asking everyone “How are things?”, “How am I doing?” or even “How can I support you better?”. When this happens over a period of time, constructive relations get built and the communication channels open up. However not all leaders do this well or often enough, if at all! The feedback loop, a bit like a train track, needs to be maintained and used frequently for everyone to know it is there and trust it works. Good feedback (Gallup 2009) ensures an individual improves their performance, changes negative behaviour and…
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The best leaders walk around regularly asking everyone “How are things?”, “How am I doing?” or even “How can I support you better?”. When this happens over a period of time, constructive relations get built and the communication channels open up. However not all leaders do this well or often enough, if at all! The feedback loop, a bit like a train track, needs to be maintained and used frequently for everyone to know it is there and trust it works. Good feedback (Gallup 2009) ensures an individual improves their performance, changes negative behaviour and is more motivated at work but, it is also absolutely essential to leading and driving innovation in an organisation. Continuous feedback is critical for agile performance.
To encourage a culture of growth and innovation, it makes sense to think that implementation of ongoing and continuous feedback would help. But enforcing a process that feels unnatural can be tricky so here are some top tips:
- Focus on an awesomely inspiring and engaging theme under which continuous feedback can sit e.g. “Engaging in our Future” “Innovation 2020” or “People Matters”. Without a strategic theme that has full leadership buy-in, it will be very hard work.
- Co-create your initiative with useful parties in and outside of your organisation. Take your time, get expert input and shape it together. This way you guarantee that it is not an “HR” initiative but a business one from the start.
- Plan for success with a pilot. Find those genuinely committed and open to continuous feedback and work with them. Refine and redesign with the benefit of this experience.
- Communicate and sell “what’s in it for me?” to all the key parties. Present, package it and use your champions to help you get going. Find a friend in marketing to help you.
- Consider carefully the needs and requirements regarding confidentiality and openness. Aim for maximum transparency and privacy at the same time. This needs to fit your aim and your current culture. Trust and openness can then evolve over time.
- Fully brief all employees and managers to ensure there is certainty about the objective and the process. Use it to pop in some extra skills training if required!
- Ensure your top leaders are the first to participate and that this really works positively. They might need your help at first.
- Build in a combination of structure and free-form so that key decisions regarding pay and promotion can be usefully informed and full diagnostics such as 360 degree feedback and other psychometrics can be integrated. Display the data using dashboard reporting at strategic points in the year.
- Give control to the employee and to the manager as much as you can. Make it theirs and for them to decide on their level of participation but recognise and reward when it works.
- Agree some principles, give rules and tips so that the right intention is understood and followed, agree if there is a validation or moderation. Always deliver what was declared on timings, confidentiality and access.
