Welcome to this blog post. Now that you are here, please PAUSE for a moment and ask yourself “When was the last time I acknowledged or gave credit to someone for a job well done?”

You should be giving positive feedback much more often than you give corrective feedback.

It is much easier to do – and if people are used to receiving sincere and genuine positive feedback from you – then they will find it much easier to accept a timely and valid rebuke.

Everyone needs to be able to offer a legitimate correction at some point. Managers must be able to do this, and do it properly.

In my experience, many people find giving corrective feedback to be a major challenge. How this feedback is given says as much about you as the other person. Here are some guidelines to help you plan and deliver good and constructive, corrective feedback:

Do

• Give the feedback in private

• Give your feedback soon after the event

• Deliver it sincerely

• Be clear and specific

• Describe, don’t evaluate

• Confine your feedback to things you know for certain – stick to facts

• Be specific and give an example if you can

• Focus on the problem not the person’s personality

• Only give this type of feedback about things that the person can change

• Pose questions that encourage the person to find the solution for themselves

• Help the person to find alternatives if they seem stuck

• Maintain eye-contact (don’t eyeball!) and open body language

Don’t

• Give this type of feedback when either side’s emotions are running high

• Sound threatening

• Exaggerate

• Be judgmental

• Overstate the issue using words like “always”, “never”, “worst”

• Label the person (e.g. “immature”, “careless” “unprofessional”)

• Give corrective  feedback when the other person is upset or their confidence is low

• Hide behind absent, anonymous people (e.g. “lots of people think that you….”). Speak for yourself.

• String together multiple criticisms in one go

• Remind people of previous incidents that were resolved

Examples:

“When you are late for work, I get frustrated because it affects our roster and your colleagues get upset with me because they have to stay on to cover for you. Can you please organise yourself so that you can be here in time for your shift. If it has become too difficult for you to be on time for this particular shift, we could see if there’s another shift that suits you better. That way our roster will work and your co-workers can leave on time.”

“You were 15 minutes late for our sales meeting this morning. I am annoyed because we were not able to get through our agenda and because of that we will have to meet again tomorrow. I feel that my time today has been wasted. I would like you to be on time for our meetings so that we can get through our work and we can all meet our tight deadlines.”

“When you shouted at me in front of the customers yesterday, I was very embarrassed and felt humiliated. In future, if I do something wrong – or if you are annoyed with me for some reason – could we please discuss the matter calmly in the office.”

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