Updated April 24, 2023
How to Give Positive Feedback at Work?
Positive Feedback at Work- Before discussing how to give positive feedback, we must first understand what feedback means. Feedback is a way of communicating one’s observations about another person’s behavior, attitude, and performance. It is a way to express one’s desires and expectations to others. It is also a system to initiate an interaction about how to improve the current situation, resolve problems, and enhance the performance of an organization and its workforce.
Why is Positive Feedback Essential?
In an organization, feedback is very important and plays a vital role in the overall success of the organization. Giving feedback to one’s colleagues and employees provides insight into their performance. It also offers solutions to problems. Positive feedback not only improves the performance of the organization and its workforce; but also helps the organization to grow. Providing regular positive feedback is essential. Feedback sessions have the following benefits:
- It is a way to collect information about the organization’s and its management’s goals and expectations. This is also a way to identify the positive and negative aspects of the workforce and how these can initiate positive results.
- It is a process that provides views and ideas of the entire workforce. These ideas and suggestions can be used to resolve current and future problems, increase the organization’s efficiency and plan realistic and fruitful strategies and action plans.
- Through the feedback process, we can measure and analyze the existing strategies and action plans and how they have established the current goals and objectives, and whether these strategies are effective or need modifications.
- Feedback sessions help the employees to express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings. These sessions help in identifying ways to resolve problems and identify ways to improve the performance of the workforce. It helps in improving the employee and employer relationship. It enhances team spirit and cohesion and develops motivation and inspiration among the crew.
- The feedback sessions help make effective and realistic future decisions for the organization. They can lead to the development of resourceful and competent policies and amendments.
- Feedback sessions also facilitate coordination among the different departments of the organization. All the departments will work in unison to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives. This will, in turn, facilitate easy functioning within the departments. It will also enable answering various inter-departmental queries and effective feedback questions efficiently and quickly.
Tips for Providing Positive and Productive Feedback
Below are some tips for providing positive and productive feedback.
#1. Create a comfort zone
Ensure that the person you give the feedback to is comfortable with it. He will not apply it practically if he is uncomfortable, and the input will become unproductive. Always remember that your feedback should not embarrass the other person. It should not make the other person feel bad about it. Say the thing so that the person gets the message and is motivated to improve his performance and attitude.
#2. Be positive
The positive feedback you give is taken openly by people, and they tend to take the new ideas and directions you give. Whereas negative feedback comes as a threat, the person feels that change or adjustment needs to be done and becomes defensive. Negative feedback cannot be done away with, but one needs to follow it up regularly to reach a positive outcome.
#3. Be specific
Do not speak in general while giving feedback, be specific. Identify the area and point out what you exactly want. For Positive Feedback example, when you want a person’s ideas or opinions, DO NOT just say speak up. You can say, “You are smart and creative; I will hear at least one idea or suggestion from you in the meetings.”
#4. Be immediate
Always remember that you need to give your feedback over short periods. Do not take too long to share your views on someone’s performance. It will be useless. If a person works in a way and receives late feedback, it may be difficult for him to make the necessary modifications, or he may even forget that thing over some time. Therefore, it is best to give regular feedback when things remain fresh in mind.
#5. Be respectful
Another thing that needs attention is that you need to be careful not to hurt the sentiments of others. To avoid this, one can start by asking the person what and how much he understands a particular work, situation, or thing. Tell him about his positive assets and how they can be helpful to him. And then tell him politely about what he lacks and how he can improve them.
#6. Outline
When giving feedback, give objective and forward-moving feedback, which inspires and motivates the person to perform better. Let him know that he is being graded for his performance. Make sure he understands every aspect of what you require and desire. Make them feel you are also there to help and guide them to success.
#7. Identify
Identify the behavior or activity which needs a mention. Give details about the person and your observation of the work or activity you liked. Tell the person what they did that requires appreciation.
#8. Link
While giving feedback, try to link the performance of your employees or colleagues to the positive outcomes of the organization. Recognize the efforts and behavior, and encourage them to keep the same attitude towards their work. Tell them the success of the outcome depends highly on their high-level performance.
#9. Elaborate the impact
Tell your positive feedback for employees or colleagues how their performance and contribution have resulted in positive change in your life, inspired other co-workers, or benefited the organization.
#10. Express gratitude
Always remember to thank the person for his efforts and attitude, and let him know that you would expect the same type of dedication, motivation, and positive performance from him in the future.
#11. Spread the message
When you see a good performance from your positive feedback for employees, make it a point to praise him in front of other employees. This increases the loyalty and motivation of that particular person, and he thrives on performing more efficiently. On the other hand, sharing it with other employees will also encourage them to work with the same efficiency.
#12. Line of feedback
Feedback doesn’t need to come from top to bottom. Encourage your employees to praise their co-workers, subordinates, and superiors as long as the feedback should be authentic and appropriate to share.
#13. Develop a plan
If your organization is big and you cannot be available to observe the behavior and performance of your employees, develop a positive feedback system to gather information on the performance of your employees and colleagues. This plan or format should be simple, and every individual should clearly understand it so they can contribute to it. It should be developed to suit every employee and be fair to all.
#14. Documentation
It is always better to develop a performance report for each individual. Note down his positive assets and how one resolves problems. Thus, this documentation will also be helpful at the time of performance appraisal and making promotion decisions.
#15. Prepare
Prepare well before giving feedback. Make a note of the things you want to talk about. Employee’s behavior, attitude, and performance. How it has benefited the organization as a whole and the other co-workers. Where more effort needs to be put in, and so on.
#16. Way of communication
Make sure that your Positive Feedback is meaningful and helpful. The feedback should be work-related and elaborate on the employees’ job behavior and performance. Your non-verbal communication, such as your expressions and body language, is understood and interpreted well by your workforce.
#17. Time of feedback
The feedback should be productive and constructive. They should be as close to the performance time as possible so that it can further motivate the person to improve his performance and do away with the existing loopholes.
#18. Know your employees
You should know the positive and negative aspects and qualities of your employees. You should also understand what motivates them and how their performance can improve.
#19. Clarification
Before making a decision, always take your employees’ feedback about what they think about your expectations and problem-solving strategy. Clarify why a particular thing needs to be done how you desire. Thus, this will ensure understanding of the aspect by your employees, which will indirectly affect the success and performance of your employees.
#20. Interactive feedback
Always allow your employees to speak their minds. Allow them to talk about their performance, work strategies, and the problems they encountered while working. This gives a Positive Feedback idea of how they succeeded and offers ideas and strategies to other employees who can use them to resolve their problems.
#21. Express concern
Avoid negative feedback as much as possible. But if you still need to bring in the negative, express it as a concern. A pitch of concern brings in the sense of importance and care. Avoid anger, frustration, and harsh tone while giving negative feedback. Hence, let your silent expressions do the work.
#22. Direct feedback
Feedback is productive and successful when it is direct and informal. When you want to give feedback to a person, make it a point to give it face-to-face or in their presence. You should avoid doing this through the messenger process.
#23. Observations, not interpretation
Always make sure that you convey the observations and not what you interpret. Tell what you have noticed and not what you think. And report the observation at an actual level, not as a behavior attribute. Thus, these observations should be factual and non-judgemental.
#24. Content
While giving feedback, make it systematic. You should start with what you are going to talk about. Also, provide the details about why you will speak about it. Elaborate on what positive aspects it brings out and how it benefits the organization and the workforce. Tell me how and when it happened.
#25. Develop growth Mindset
Negative feedback cannot be avoided. But you can change the way of giving negative feedback. Tell them how you, as a newcomer, committed several mistakes, learned from them, and reached a successful position in the organization. Take credit for your errors and motivate employees to develop a positive growth mindset. Also, teach them how to take in negative feedback and transform them into ways to improve themselves and excel in their work.
Feedback is an important and efficient two-way communication within an organization. It facilitates the smooth functioning of the organization and helps improve the performance of its workforce and the organization as a whole. It also brings about a sense of responsibility, team spirit, and loyalty among the employees, and they strive to perform at their best to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives. Therefore, we can say that feedback is a way to express one’s observations and thoughts to employees and colleagues. Feedback can be both positive and negative. One should always try to provide positive feedback, facilitating motivation and inspiration among the workforce for efficient performance. However, sometimes, one cannot avoid negative feedback. The negative feedback should not hurt the employees’ sentiments. It should be efficient enough to carry the actual message that needs to be conveyed.
One might feel telling people that doing an excellent job is easy, but the fact is that most people do not know how to give helpful, genuine, and constructive feedback.
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