Career
Four Guidelines for Making Managerial Feedback Better
The best managers use each instance of evaluation as an opportunity for action.
Posted December 13, 2024 Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Key points
- Providing high quality feedback is a technique as much as it is a habit.
- Performance evaluation alone is not enough to coach employees toward improvement.
- Managers must first be clear on desired outcomes before coaching on next steps.
How do the best managers keep people focused on the work at hand every day? Help people build repertoires of ability and skill every day? Make the connection between everyday work and every person’s greatness?
Responsive communication, or feedback, is the key. The person being coached performs and the coach responds, over and over. As much as it is a technique, giving constant feedback is a habit. Every instance of performance gets a response.
For most managers, that’s a hard habit to get into. You are just so busy. It takes time and energy to stop what you are doing regularly, tune in to each person’s performance, think carefully, say something to evaluate each person’s work so far, and then keep each person moving in the right direction. But this act of continuous due diligence is what sets true leaders apart from other managers.
It is vital to understand that evaluation alone is not coaching. Telling employees exactly what they are doing right and doing wrong simply does not provide enough information to guide them to the best performance. This is why the best coaching-style managers link every instance of performance evaluation to the delegation of concrete actions and deadlines and offer clear parameters, following these four guidelines.
1. Look at evaluation as a chance for action.
Turn evaluation into action. Many managers know when performance is suboptimal, yet fail to draw the line between evaluation and actionable next steps.
In these instances, take a moment to think about:
- The person’s overall work performance
- Their general strengths and weaknesses, and
- Specific instances of the person’s performance that support your evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses.
Then, select an instance of performance that indicates the person needs coaching on next steps.
2. Clarify your exact purpose for giving the feedback.
Before giving feedback, make sure you know exactly what tangible result you want as a result. While the overall goal may be to improve job performance, it is critical to keep the focus on immediate measurable outcomes. This provides both the manager and the direct report with a clearly defined end goal that can be used as a benchmark for success or failure.
3. Assign concrete action steps.
This is where you take feedback from evaluation to action by delegating specific next steps. Assign concrete goals and deadlines with clear parameters. These are the types of questions managers should be asking in one-on-ones with direct reports:
- What do you need to complete this assignment?
- What additional information, training, tools, materials, space, money, or people might you need?
- What is your plan for achieving this assignment?
- Have you set a schedule for meeting deadlines along the way?
- Have you created a to-do list or checklist for each step of the project?
- How long will step one take? What guidelines are you following for step one, and each step after?
4. Make expectations clear.
Being given specific expectations is always better than being given free rein. Even the most artistic or creative jobs require structure and guidelines. Image specifications, video length limits, or scripts: All of these are specific requirements that help people deliver the best final product.
The reality of today’s workplace is constant change. When priorities change, expectations change. That's why it’s even more critical for you to be engaging in ongoing management conversations with your team. Every time there is a shift or change that requires a significant adjustment or course correction in priorities and expectations, you need to make sure you ask the following questions:
- What has shifted and changed, and what adjustments and course corrections does this person need to make?
- How do they need to change or adjust their resource plan?
- How do they need to reprioritize their to-do list of concrete actions?
- Does the checklist, to ensure quality control for every concrete action, change as a result of this shift in priorities?
- What priorities should we be focused on, right now?
If you are not the expert on another person’s work, it’s OK that you don’t know or understand everything your direct reports may be doing. But it’s not OK for you to remain totally in the dark. When trying to spell out expectations in these circumstances, focus on outcomes:
- Exactly what is it you want the employee to accomplish?
- What final product do you want to be holding in your hands in the end?
- What is the effect you are looking for?
Also, set the expectation to be kept informed at each step of the process: “This is where we are now. This is how long it took to get here. This is what I am going to do next.” Document the basics of these conversations. While you may never become an expert, over time, you will get to know how to manage this less familiar work better and better.
