Sightlines

Getting feedback! Love it? Or loath it?

Giving feedback! Love it? Or loath it?

Over many years I have been fascinated by the way the subject of ‘feedback’ in the workplace keeps re-emerging as a top-of-mind conversation for people leaders and their colleagues.

On one hand, there seems to be an acknowledgement that effective feedback is a critical competency for those with leadership responsibilities. On the other are the hearsay assessments of just how effectively gets used in the New Zealand workplace vary considerably. There is also some informally collected data that suggests many individuals want their people leaders to provide them with more feedback than they currently receive. Our own very limited research has drawn the same conclusion.

What we don’t have is information to support these hunches.

With this is mind, Lines of Sight Limited has designed a feedback to build a more comprehensive picture of feedback in New Zealand organisations. We are hoping that you and other colleagues will provide us with your thoughts and insights by participating in an on-line questionnaire.

The survey will ask questions about:

Your thoughts about workplace feedback.

• Personal preferences when it comes to feedback.
• Your personal experience of receiving feedback.
• You, so that we have we are able to conduct some demographic comparisons.

The personal information you provide will be kept confidential. At some later stage, we'll post updates on the collated information we gather.

We estimate the questionnaire will take 15 – 20 minutes to complete.

If you wish to take part in this survey, click on the following link:

<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FeedbackinNZworkplaces">
Click here to take survey</a>

If you have other colleagues who might be interested in participating in the survey please direct them to this web site or suggest they contact me for a personalised information.

 

Some TO DO's to consider   Get hold of a copy of Giving Feedback. It's a small publication in the Pocket Mentor series published by the Harvard Business School Press. Straightforward, practical, ready-to-apply advice. Find a great coach, teacher or mentor you can track for a day. Observe the way they use feedback to develop effectiveness in others. Record your observations and identify what you could add to your leadership toolkit. Ask colleagues who depend on you for feedback for some feedback about your effectiveness as a people leader. Ask them what more you could do. Or less. Or just the same as you do now. Be gracious as they give you feedback. And grateful too! Contact Lines of Sight team to talk about one of their in-house feedback workshops: Giving Effective Feedback. Receiving Feedback Effectively. Giving and Receiving Feedback: What gets in the way? And what to do about that.

 

Feedback

Feedback is, first and foremost, about learning, developing, and changing. The organisations we manage, the people we work with and supervise, and we ourselves as managers all have to learn, develop, and change in order to survive, let alone prosper, in today's increasingly complex and rapidly evolving business world. Indeed, the need for feedback, both at organisational and individual level, underlies virtually all management, leadership development, and organisational change challenges we face. Given these realities, building our skill at giving feedback and opening ourselves to receiving feedback from others remain critical success factors to effective management today.

p ix, Harris, Jamie O., Giving Feedback, Boston : Harvard Business School Press, 2006