The art of giving a feedback - 5 ways to criticize without hurting anyone
Whether you are a business owner, full-time employee, or even a student working on a graduation project with his team, you need to know a bit more about how to give a feedback without crossing the lines and insult the individual you are giving the feedback to.
Let’s face it. in every time you received a brutal feedback, you weather felt threatened and unappreciated, or you felt like giving up because the matter does not concern you anymore, in another term .. let it burn!
A wise team leader, business owner, or any entrepreneur ought to master the art of giving a feedback, because in the end, those people he criticizes, are the people who form his whole business, if he doesn’t comprehend that, he will be losing his business soon enough.
However, your team leader or the person you are working for might not be that wise, and does not have the ability to differentiate between what is hurtful and what is not, so you can study yourself the practical steps to deal with criticism in a professional way.
But, if you are heading towards a promotion, and going to be that wise team leader you always wished to have when you first started your job, here are the 5 steps you can perform every time you give one of your team members a feedback.
1. Start with something positive he/she did.
For feedback to be effective, it must be received. To help someone remain open to hearing something that he or she may find injurious, you need to start by giving the person an honest compliment.
Challenge yourself to find something meaningful about the person's work or intention rather than making up something superficial and unrealistic. Bare-minimum effort on your part will have bare-minimum results.
2. Hold on a minute and evaluate your own intentions for providing that feedback in the first place.
Check yourself. Investigate your value judgments, hyper-criticism, and perfectionist tendencies. Make sure it's not your obsessive need for control that's driving you to ask for a change in someone's performance.
While it's OK to want the person to continue improving, asking someone to meet the demands of your inner critic is counterproductive. If you can't live up to that voice that tells you your performance is never good enough--it's unreasonable to expect someone else to uphold your already unrealistic standard.
3. Point out to what could have been done differently.
Try taking a more objective approach and seeing the situation for what it is. Provide the person the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he or she did put in an effort and didn't do something incorrect intentionally.
With a sense of calmness, nonjudgment, and non-attachment, show or tell the person what he or she could have done differently to meet your standards.
4. Explain in detail what you'd like to be receiving from the person in the future.
Set an intention for the future. This is the moment when you explain exactly what you want and expect from the person next time.
Keep your feedback focused on the work itself rather than attacking the person's character, which will only breed mistrust and secrets leading to greater problems in the future.
5. Highlight the strengths by telling the person something he or she does pretty well.
End on a positive note. Instead of simply returning to the first thing you said, focus on pointing out one of the person's strengths. A strength is something that goes beyond this one task or event, and translates to all aspects of someone's work.
Great leaders and inspirational people are able to look beyond the current situation and find the deeper layers of motivation and strengths in others. When you have to give a friend or co-worker feedback, show the person how much you appreciate the value he or she brings, and do your best to inspire the person to work harder in the future.
When people feel respected, appreciated, and challenged to continue growing, they become driven to refine their work and themselves, creating better projects and more enriching lives.
Written by ENGY HASSAN
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