Uncomplicate – How to give feedback

Uncomplicate by Freshworks brings you crisp and insightful videos which will focus on answering one tactical question around sales & marketing, support & collaboration, employee engagement, and growth.

Feedback can make or break individuals. Irrespective of the way it is given, how often it is given, and who it comes from, feedback on a person’s work and activities can make a sharp difference to him and push him either to great heights in career or have him spiral to the depths. 

And giving feedback is something one cannot get away from. At some point or the other, in a workplace, everybody is bound to be put in a position where he needs to give his colleague feedback. 

So, how does go about doing this? Ryan Engley, VP, Product Marketing at Unbounce, takes us through the process of formulating and giving people feedback on their work. 

The three-stepped approach

“I would like individuals on my team to be asking for feedback as much as possible. So it’s not just up to the manager to give the feedback,” Ryan says. 

He talks about how a three step approach they introduced at Unbounce helped them crack the art of giving valuable feedback. The three questions would be: 

  1. What are the three things that went very well in the previous quarter/year/month?
  2. What are three things that you found to be tricky?
  3. What are the three things you would do differently next time?

With this, the employee would first evaluate his own work extensively before the manager evaluates his work and gives him detailed feedback. Moreover, both the employee and the manager would be evaluating the work on similar parameters and criteria.

In addition, it is important for individuals to work with managers to co-create their goals. By doing this, you’re making the process of giving feedback easier, and one can be more receptive about feedback, Ryan says. 

Unbounce Ryan Engley

Dealing with negative reviews

Providing positive feedback and compliments is easy, but giving someone critical or negative feedback can get a little messy. The trick here is to gain an employee’s trust to the extent that even negative feedback is received well. Trust is fundamental to how any team functions. 

“If you have trust, and you really show empathy for your team, I think they will believe that you have their back when you’re providing that kind of feedback,” Ryan says. 

However, no matter how strong the bond is between the team members, and how well they trust each other, it is important to ensure that the feedback is about the person’s work, and not his behaviour. 

“It’s a very different thing to criticise a person versus a behaviour to say – ‘no, you weren’t very good at this’ versus to say ‘when you wrote this thing, it came out this particular way’, and that’s tricky,” he says. 

Is there anything else you think people should keep in mind while giving colleagues feedback? How do you handle this in your workplace? Do let us know in the comments section below!