Unfortunately, managers don’t always give positive feedback, and sometimes they have to give negative feedback and to keep all employees on track and reaching their full potential. While giving negative feedback is no easy task, you can make the process easier by following the tips below.
- Separately provide feedback. Never give negative feedback to your co-workers in front of other team members as they may get hurt. Also, don’t email negative feedback. People can very easily misunderstand emails. Always arrange a personal meeting and discuss in person.
- Be constructive, not destructive. Don’t attack your co-workers by pointing out all their negative behaviors. Try to explain the results of their negative behavior and tell them how they can fix it. For example; the reports you produce don’t reflect this and that and it makes us lose money. However, if you prepare your reports differently / the way we showed you / x way, we can get ahead of our competitors / we save time and money.
- Don’t wait. Don’t wait for the next performance review to give your feedback. Be timely and give your positive and negative feedback regularly. If giving feedback becomes part of your weekly routine, your colleagues don’t get upset and your feedback doesn’t lose its importance because of the timeout.
- Give another a chance. Tell your partner that you still believe in them to try to encourage them. This will also inspire him. Also ask if she needs anything from you and how you can help. Then let him speak so that he responds to your statements and states his opinion.
- Agree on the action plan. Decide together how you can improve your partner’s performance. Maybe he needs more training or exercise. Maybe you should pair this person up with another co-worker to be their role model so they start doing the things they need to do and stop doing the things they don’t want to.
- Following. Specify a specific time to follow up with this employee. At this follow-up meeting, review what he has done so far and his improvements. This will help him regain confidence and encourage him to take on more responsibility. Don’t micromanage an employee out of fear that they might make another mistake. This could cause him to lose his confidence again.
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