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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There is a great need to widen the pool from which non-executive directors are appointed to  quoted companies, financial institutions, semi0state bodies and state agencies. The days of nominating pals, colleagues and former senior state employees as  a boardroom ‘grunt a month’ should be ended.

Read article here:        need to reform selection of non-executive directors

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OUR public service faces new challenges of retaining professionalism and motivation after the series of income cuts from the 7% pension levy last March and 2009 income tax levy to this month’s Budget pay-cuts of generally between 5% and 8%.

In particular the health sector has come through many challenges over the past five years with successes in community care, cancer treatment and primary health services.  A new challenge is the personal one of retaining individual motivation on lower net incomes.

Employment specialists see widespread reduced earnings as damaging the ‘psychological contract’ which lies at the basis of most employment relations. In many employments people would respond by taking whatever opportunities open to them to find an alternative job either here of abroad.

The health service is slightly different in that most of the 105,000 people working in the service also have a commitment to patient services which is often much stronger than mere ‘customer focus’ in the private sector. There is frequently more of a team focus which knits the capabilities of different people in ensuring patient services than among those who operate in individualist roles.

In these challenging times, the call for effective people management has never been louder. HR managers are amongst those on the frontline when it comes to maintaining that delicate employer/employee relationship – the so-called ‘psychological contract’ – and delivering high performance in a period where  reduced incomes, potential redundancies and other belt-tightening measures may become fairly common, even in the public service.

Across the public and private sector graduated reductions, with the higher paid taking a larger percentage cut, has been a common feature so that all HSE people share a common concern. In addition the extensive negotiations on modernising and improving efficiencies in the public service – from education and justice to health and local authority sectors – late last year may provide a basis for rebuilding public services in tandem with improved exchequer finances.

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