Are you criticizing performance or people?

 Are you criticizing performance or people? 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we discuss the topic of "People Skill at the workplace," let us discuss some of the proven processes to apply when dealing with people.
 

One of the typical moments we come across in our day-to-day professional life is giving our opinion to someone on his/ her performance or task. In this process, our intention is most of the time to correct the behavior but unfortunately ended up with criticism. We may be harsh and straight in our views. The strange part is others may not realize the intention and likely perceive it as criticism.

The side effects of criticism would be resentment, defensive, argument, and getting hurt.

As leaders or managers, we always have a dilemma on our communication style, whether we are giving constructive feedback or blunt criticism.

When you observe effective people, they never hesitate to give feedback when they see a sub-standard performance, but they never make it as criticism. They are aware of the fact that any perceived criticism will not solve the problem. They use the simple technique of “Begin criticism with praise.”
 
For example,

Your team presents a proposal for a new initiative, and you find that it lacks data, analysis, and proper justification. Instead of scrapping the proposal by stating it as wasting of time, you can express, “Hi, the intent of new idea and thought process is good, but nowhere the proposal justifies the need for it. The proposal is substandard, and the team needs to work further on it.”
 
In the above example, you are criticizing the performance and not the individual. You begin with praising the people‘s ideas and attacking the substandard of the report or performance only. In this way of response, likely no one will get hurt, and also others would take the message from the right perspective.
 
The point is that we cannot avoid giving feedback in a professional environment. However, we need to ensure the feedback should not be taken as criticism, which hurts the people and sometimes leads to defensive and argument. One effective way of dealing with low performance is to begin your criticism with praise.

This process needs awareness of our communication style when dealing with people. Just try it next time.

Let us discuss some more aspects of criticizing next week.

Improve your FEEDBACK process

 Improve your FEEDBACK process 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discuss the topic of "People Skill at the workplace," let us discuss some insights on improving people's skill management techniques.
 
Let us understand one more cause and effect of people's emotions.
 
By nature, most of us do not like when someone is pointing us and giving feedback. In a professional setup, we tend to listen to other’s views on our behavior or actions, but most of the time, we do not internalize. As a result, only a few people have the mindset to accept feedback as an opportunity for improvement.

The reason could be how we give feedback and how others receive it determines whether the feedback is genuine or criticism.

 We have discussed some insights on feedback from both GIVER and RECEIVER perspectives sometime back, and the link is given below.

https://lifeexcellenceinsights.blogspot.com/2019/10/responding-to-feedback.html

 https://lifeexcellenceinsights.blogspot.com/2017/04/mind-your-intention-while-giving.html
 
To overcome the above challenges in perceiving the feedback as criticism, the modern coaches suggest a new way of giving the feedback, and they coin the word “feed-forward.” The purpose is identical in both terminologies, but the only difference is in Feed-forward; we intend others to correct or improve the behavior with our collaborative, suggestive approach.
 
For example,

Assume that your colleague made a report with many analytical typo errors. You can give feedback that the report is full of mistakes and this needs to be improved. Depending on the person, the feedback will be perceived as a criticism or improvement area. In this process, you are just focusing on the PAST and no interest or suggestions to improve.
 
Whereas in the Feedforward scenario, you jointly work with him/her to improve the analytical, typo errors aspects in the future. You may be suggesting different ways to enhance the presentation like software installation etc. In this process, the receiver senses the message for improvement and clarifies the improvement methodologies.

The purpose of indicating poor performance is met, and in addition with FUTURE actions are also indicated. So this is something proactive and friendly approach to dealing with people on improving the poor performance or behavior.

This feed-forward calls for patience, passion for helping others. In my opinion, that is required for the people managers if you want to improve your people management skills.

Just try the feed-forward method in your professional interaction, as this works for me.

Let us some insights next week and stay safe till then!

Responding to Feedback

Improving communication in the workplace

As we discussed the minute difference between criticism and feedback on improving communication effectiveness in a professional environment, there are other aspects of improving feedback effectiveness.

As a sender, even though you are keen on giving feedback than criticism, the fulfillment comes only when the receiver takes the feedback also in the right perspective.

How one responds to feedback determines the quality of communication between the two.

For example, your boss or colleague is pointing out some gap in your behavior or performance, you may choose any one of the below responses, and that response determines the quality of communication between you and others.

Taking too personally :

 Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the feedback. The consequence may be that your self-esteem may go down, and you may be cribbing about the feedback. No Improvements on the corrective action or forward-thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Defending the feedback giver:

Defending your position with justification to the feedback giver. Likely, you may win the argument as well, but you may lose the sight of the truth of feedback. No improvements in the corrective action or forward-thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Analyzing the feedback with a rational approach:

Listening and seeking further clarity from the feedback giver. Getting into introspecting. In this process, your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth.

The point is the choice of response to feedback determines the quality of communication and progress.
Just be aware of your response to feedback in case if you are receiver!

How are you perceived in the workplace?

In spite of your professional competency, how others are perceiving you in a workplace is an essential factor for your career growth. When you know the perception by others, it will be an eyeopener for you for both on strength and area for improvements.

Sometimes, you may not realize your strength since it is readily coming to you. Similarly, some of the weakness or area for improvements may not be known to you. Others are experiencing both, and they are forming a perception about you. When you know how others are perceiving you, that will give clarity to shape up your personality, which will propel your career growth.

How to know other's perception about you?

• Identify 3~5 people in your organization who are interacting with you more frequently. They could be your boss, your colleagues or your reportees. Some of you may be your wellwishers and observing you from distant
• Approach them with prior permission and tell your intention of knowing their opinions or perspective about you based on the association on the professional front.
• When they give their perspectives, avoid the tendency to defend or justify you
• Thank them for their feedback and consolidate the findings. If same or similar observations are pointed out by many, that could be your strength which you can leverage further or that could be your area for improvement which you can work on that.

The above method is powerful for personal development process you can try it out once in a year.!!

Giving Feedback for Development

One of the powerful methods of developing others is qualitatively giving feedback.

What is meant by feedback to others?
Feedback is your opinion or comment about other's positive or limiting behavior in any task or performance.
 
Why is feedback important for development?
Each one has their strength and limitation which may not be known to self. When it is pointed out time as feedback, it may help others to reinforce the strength or help to give up the behavior in case of limitation by taking improvement action.

How to give feedback to others?
Before giving feedback, understand your intention as this sets your tone and quality of feedback, whether your purpose is to criticize or to help another person to improve his behavior.
 
One of the effective ways to give feedback is by adopting the following pattern in your communication. 

“ what you notice/observe as good or bad behavior ”  and  “ some reasonings to be good or bad” and " suggestions to improve."  

For example,

you observe some repeated mistakes by your team member while preparing a presentation, and you can point out like this
 
“I observed repeated formatting issue in your presentation and how this performance will irritate the audience on readability  and how you can improve  by so and so methods." 
 
or you would like to give positive feedback about your colleague’s presentation, and your feedback  can be like this
 
"I liked the way you simplified the complex problem into the simple picture, and this helps the audience to connect the concept quickly."
 
Giving feedback is the art of communication, and this can be improved in multiple ways when your intention of providing feedback to help or develop others.

Mind your intention while giving feedback

One of the routine activities we are doing every day either at home or in a professional environment is to give feedback to others for their behavior or performance.Have you wondered how many times the “pointing out “ or feedback ends up with disagreement, argument, resentment or silence vengeance from others?

One of the reasons could be the tone we use in our feedback conversation. The quality of tone comes from our intentions.If our intention is to find fault with others and if we use the feedback as an opportunity, our tone will be more of commanding, sound .dictating and harsh.This results only in reaction from others and leads to poor consequence only.Alternatively, if our intention is to correct or help the other person to improve his or her behavior or action next time, then our tone obviously would be with more empathy, kindness and gentle.

Your tone results into the consequence of either arguments or accepting your views in a positive perspective.Hence mind your intentions, which will take care of your tone which will, in turn, take care of the quality of relationship with others.