Do you actively and regularly seek feedback from your team members? If not, you could be losing out on the effectiveness of those reports over time.
Explained below are some of the benefits of receiving feedback from team members on a more regular basis. You’ll also find some ideas of how you can start seeking feedback from your team and delivering it in a way that encourages increased engagement and improved performance.
Click and Skip to what you want to read:
- Why feedback matters
- Why you need weekly responses
- Characteristics of effective feedback
- How to solicit effective feedback
- How to give effective feedback
Why feedback matters
When team leaders, managers, and other higher-ups in the company receive regular feedback from their employees, the entire business benefits. The following are some specific advantages that employee feedback can provide:
Reduced costs
Failure to listen to feedback can get expensive, fast.
When team leaders and other higher-ups don’t listen to feedback, team members may become less productive, their work quality may suffer, and they may be more inclined to leave the company altogether. This leads to increased expenses as you scramble to recruit and hire replacements.
By seeking feedback regularly, you can come up with solutions to potentially expensive problems sooner and prevent them from spreading throughout the company. You can also improve employee morale and increase employee retention rates for further savings.
Increased engagement
If employees feel that they are being listened to and supported while on the job, they are three times more likely to be engaged than those who don’t receive support from their managers.
Engagement tends to increase when employees receive regular feedback, too. If you show your team members that you are invested in their happiness, they’ll reciprocate with increased investment in their current and future projects. Check out our infographic and article explaining what employees really want from their managers.
Better leadership
If team leaders can learn to solicit effective feedback and accept it from their team members, they will find themselves working harder too. Leaders will become more competent and confident in their work, enjoy greater job security, and have more opportunities for promotions and advancement in the future.
Better company culture
Imagine Company A – never checking in with employees, or considerably worse – checking in but never acting on the responses. On the other hand, Company B regularly seeks feedback from its employees and makes changes based on the feedback it receives.
Between the two companies, it seems obvious that Company B will have a better, more positive culture than Company A, most importantly because they care more.
If you want to create a company culture where people feel seen, heard, and eager to contribute to – you need to make sure feedback is regularly solicited and acted upon.
Why You Need Weekly Responses
Furthermore, to see the benefits that employee feedback has to offer, you have to regularly ask for and receive it. Ideally, you’ll seek out weekly responses.
Getting feedback from your team each week ensures that you’re in touch with the most important topics and/or challenges. Weekly responses allow you to dive into any individual issues before they seep into the whole team and sacrifice everyone’s productivity.
So, how do you know that the questions you’re asking will elicit the responses you need to actually make changes? Well, let’s take a look below:
What Does Effective Feedback Look Like?
For feedback to be effective, it needs to meet certain criteria. The following are some key tenets of effective feedback:
Specific
Good feedback is specific and has a particular goal attached to it. The person giving the feedback knows what they want to accomplish by delivering the message.
Actionable
To be effective, feedback also has to be actionable. The recipient needs to know what the problem is, and they also need to know what they can do to make things better.
Timely
Feedback is most effective when it’s delivered in a timely manner.
For example, the person giving the feedback shouldn’t bring up something that happened 6 months ago. Instead, they should address the problem as soon as they notice something is amiss.
This is another benefit of asking for weekly feedback. It allows employees to bring up problems and get them solved sooner, rather than letting them fester.
Driven by impact
Effective feedback is also impact-driven. It lets the receiver know how their specific actions have impacted another person, the team, or the company as a whole. It also explains why a particular behavior is or isn’t working.
How to Solicit Effective Feedback
The key to receiving effective feedback from your team is to ask the right kinds of check-in questions and to ask them at the right time. Here are some specific tips to help you get better feedback when you ask for it:
- Ask specific, leading questions (“What can I improve about my leadership style?” not “How am I doing?”)
- If asking questions in-person, be an active listener and do not interrupt or make excuses
- Act promptly on the feedback you’re given
This last point is particularly important. If you never make changes after you receive feedback, your team is going to be less inclined to give feedback in the future.
How to Give Effective Feedback
Being able to give effective feedback is just as important as being able to accept it. Your employees will be more engaged and more productive if they know what they’re doing well, how they’re progressing, and where they can make improvements.
These tips can help you to start giving better feedback:
- Focus on behaviors, not the person doing the behaviors
- Balance negative feedback with positive comments
- Be specific
- Be realistic
- Be timely and avoid delayed feedback
Be sure to offer continued support, too. Don’t just tell team members what they’re doing wrong and leave them to figure out how to fix it.
Get (and give) More Effective Feedback Today
Receiving weekly feedback from your team is an incredible way to improve the work environment and make informed changes that will positively impact the business now and for years to come.
Keep the guidelines discussed above in mind so you can solicit effective feedback from your team and, when necessary, deliver it.
If you need more help providing or receiving feedback, consider giving Team Compass a try.
For only $29 per month, Team Compass is an intuitive software that gives you an overview of team productivity, and allows you to give recognition and feedback with templates and 1:1s; all while creating a more goal-oriented company culture.