Feedback to push groups forward

The book used to discuss feedback for this blog post is Mel Siberman's "The Consultant's Big Book of Organizational Development Tools: 50 Reproducible Intervention tools and Activities to Help Solve Client's Problems.

This is a fantastic book for organizational develoipment practioners (a.k.a. OD practioners). It involves addressing the practical problems of organizational behavior in teams. Chapters focus on group formation, conflict, coaching and feedback.

Feedback is critical to the millenial generation. According to Abanet.org, millenials need "supportive work environments" and have "demands and high expectations". So whether as a manager, or a peer, be prepared to give feedback to your younger bretheren.


Five Rules of Giving and Recieving Feedback Everyone Can Use (From Silberman's book):

1) Recognize Strengths - As my cousin pointed out to me recently, "Nothing motivates a person like praise." Strengths are not always obvious, but after repeated interactions with someone, you get some indicators about particular behaviors that make them effective in their position. Use any word you like: motivator, listener, organizer, creative force, flawlessly excecutes, or free-thinking maverick. There are all sorts of labels for strengths we have.

The importance of positive reinforcement can not be overemphazied if you want a workplace where people enjoy their work and perform at their best. Recognizing people's strengths can remind people of their contributions to the group or organization. This isn't too say there won't be conversations that require disipline or difficult topics that need to be discussed. Simply put most conversations requiring feedback should have positive reinforcment, and there is no better place to start then strenghs.



2) Describe Behaviors - People can alter behaviors. Framing things as "behaviors" gives responsibility to the individual to improve a behavior. If we frame something as personality factors, the criticism is virtually unchangeable.

Consider this example

1. "Bob, you are coming to meetings 5 minutes late"
2. "Bob, you are a tardy person"

By showing a person a behavior that is disruptive, they can then use the information to change. They either will or won't make a change. In a fair way, it forces the person to own that behavior.

Telling people they are this, or they are that is not only going to cause reactive behavior (probably more disobedience, or lack of concern), but ultimately may cause that person to negatively view themselves because of the reinforced frame words. Consider the negative impact of name calling or objectifying people.


Part 2 Later This week