This guest post is by Heidi Grant Halvorson, a motivational psychologist and author of “Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals,” as well as author and co-editor of the highly-regarded academic book “The Psychology of Goals.” Follow her on Twitter at @hghalvorson.
Feedback is more than just useful — it’s essential. It’s hard to get motivated, and impossible to stay motivated, when you aren’t sure if you are on the right track. So giving well-crafted, frequent feedback is one of the most important responsibilities of any leader or manager.
Here’s the problem: As you are no doubt well aware, much of the feedback that managers give isn’t all that motivating. Even with the best intentions, feedback can easily backfire, and many of us have a hard time understanding why.
What you may be surprised to learn is that scientific studies of motivation have identified clear, principled reasons why some types of feedback work, and others don’t. It is neither mysterious nor random. If you’ve gotten it wrong in the past (and who hasn’t?), then you can do a better job giving feedback from now on by sticking to a few simple rules:
- Rule #1: When things go wrong, keep it real. It’s not easy to tell someone that he screwed up, knowing it will cause him anxiety, disappointment or embarrassment. But don’t make the mistake of protecting your employee’s feelings at the expense of the truth, because without honest feedback he can’t possibly improve. And never take away an employee’s sense of responsibility for what went wrong (assuming he is in fact to blame), just because you don’t want to be “hard” on him. Letting him off the hook for his own mistake will rob him of a sense of personal control over his own work. Nothing is more de-motivating than feeling powerless.
- Rule #2: When things go wrong, fight employee self-doubt. He needs to believe that success is within reach, regardless of the mistakes he has made in the past. To do this,
- Be specific. What needs improvement, and what exactly can be done to improve? When you are a manager, helping your employee figure out how to do it right is just as important as letting them know what they are doing wrong.
- Emphasize actions that he has the power to change. Talk about aspects of his performance that are under his control, like the time and effort he put into a project, or the strategic approach he used.
- Avoid praising effort when it didn’t pay off. Many managers try to console employees by saying things like “Well Bob, you fell short of your sales goal, but you worked hard and really tried your best.” Why does anyone think that this is comforting? For the record — it’s not. (Unless, of course, it was a no-win situation from the start). Studies show that being complimented for “effort” after a failure not only makes people feel stupid, but also leaves them feeling incapable of reaching their goal. In these instances, it’s really best to stick to purely informational feedback — if effort isn’t the problem, figure out what is, and let your employee know.
- Rule #3: When things go right, avoid praising ability. I know we all like to hear how smart and talented we are, and so naturally we assume that it’s what our employees want to hear too. Of course they do. But it’s not what they need to hear to stay motivated. Studies show that when we are praised for having high ability, it leaves us vulnerable to self-doubt when we encounter difficulty. If being successful means you are “a natural,” then it’s easy to conclude when you’re having a hard time that you just don’t have what it takes. Instead, praise aspects of your employee’s performance that were under his control. Talk about his creative approach, his careful planning, his persistence and effort, his collaborative attitude. Praise the actions, not the person. That way, when he runs into trouble later on, he’ll remember what helped him to succeed in the past and put that knowledge to good use.
Image credit, jntvisual, via iStockPhoto.com
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i think this is good…i am guilty of being soft & protective…tks
Dangerous, even ignorant, to make generalizations about employee motivation. Those that can not do …write a book…it's easier.
Your statement is even more dangerous or ignorant than the one to which you are responding. When did you write a book? The ignorance comes from those who presume they do something harder than someone else just without ever having done the other person's job. If you want to criticize someone, criticize them on the merits of what they say rather than your perceptions of their inabilities.
BTW, you should check the dictionary. Cannot is one word not two as you have written.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cindy Kraft, SBWorkforce and Fast Track Tools, HR Solutions, Inc.. HR Solutions, Inc. said: RT @SBWorkforce 3 rules for giving meaningful feedback, by @hghalvorson http://ow.ly/2H2Ey -BE [...]
I think this information is applicable to how we praise our children and grandchildren as well!
I think # 3 seems like the hardest to do, but I guess it requires a manager to look more deeply into the actual work completed.
Great points. I find number three the hardest to carry out.
Excellent advice, esp the last item: praising successful efforts under the employee's control is key. I know that when I receive positive feedback of this character, I find it most helpful because I am motivated to continue demonstrating those efforts.
Good points, but also remember to establish a connection with the person you are counseling before giving them feedback. The old adage is true, "I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care."
Good points. I think that timeliness is important as well as being specific. There's a balance between seemingly micromanaging and providing timely feedback and as a manager you have to pick your spots. But for something that merits feedback outside a regular 1:1, the feedback should come relatively soon after the outcome is observed. Just a thought…
Good information. I'd take it a bit further and differentiate between praise/encouragement and advice; two very different things that do share a few characteristics.
When encouraging and acknowledging good performance, be:
Specific (the specific action/behavior and outcome, not the ability as noted in the article),
Pure (don't mix the message with advice, usually in the form of the big "but"),
Positive (gee, I hope this is obvious already),
Immediate (as soon as you observe it, or hear about the performer's success),
Frequent (more often early in the working relationship), and
Irregular (less often over time and at unpredictable frequency: catch them doing things right and make sure they know you're paying attention).
SPPIFI
Advice is a bit different:
Specific (what specific behavior needs to change),
Pure (don't try to soften the advice by mixing in praise or encouragement),
Limited (focus on the most important one or two things, not a litany of changes to make),
Just-in-time (immediately before it can be used, such as when preparing for the next attempt),
Ask for feedback (How well did it work? What did you/we learn from this? Should an adjustment be made?)
Maybe it was assumed but I've generally tried to praise publically and criticize privately.
Great Comment, how many times I have seen this violated. Also change your tone, let the person know you are disappointed in thier performance.
Oh, don't wait for that private moment if it is an unsafe act!
Great points! As a recruiter and as an employer I have to agree…
Sharing feedback on a regular basis helps build the trust required for your feedback to really count. It also gets you and your employees in the habit of receiving feedback effectively. I agree that it's critical to be specific and only give praise when praise is due. If you don't share feedback on an ongoing basis, however, it either is lost (missed opportunity for learning and engagement) or it piles up.
And delivering too much feedback at once can make things even worse: http://rypp.ly/bgEoa3
Great advice! These are great points to remember. We all get caught up in the "oh well, at least you tried" mentality sometimes. Letting a person know what they didn't do right and how they can improve will help them. You're not doing anyone any favors by not keeping it real. Thanks for the tips!
Kirk Baumann
Campus To Career: http://campustocareer.wordpress.com
I concur, excellent post.
Margo Rose, Founder & CEO of HireFriday http://linkedin.com/margorose http://hrmargo.com
[...] Site: http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2010/09/20/the-art-and-science-of-giving-good-feedback [...]
Loved the article Mary Ellen, but when attempting to share your link to my Facebook page, the initial blurb it pulled from your article was code, rather than content as per:
The art (and science) of giving good feedback http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2010/09/...
TweetShare(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); Email TweetShare(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); Email Print Friendly Related posts:How do you give feedback? “Up in the Air” and the science [...]
Ended up instead cancelling the link share and embedding within the status update, so much less friendly a process than expected, this may be preventing others from making the decision to share your article.
You can see how I embedded at http://www.facebook.com/onlineautocoach
Have a great day!! Barry
We're working on fixing this Barry. It's an issue that we're having across all of our blogs– and ease of sharing is incredibly important to us, so we hope to get it rectified sooner than later. Thanks so much for reading as well as the heads up!
Good advice. The "be specific" point applies just as strongly to positive feedback as well. The advice in this article aligns with the best practices we encourage our customers to follow in their strategic recognition programs — to give specific praise, as soon after the action being praised as possible, and based on values demonstrated and company objectives contributed to. This gives employees a very strong sense of the importance of the company values, what these look like in their day to day work, and how they contribute in a powerfully meaningful way by helping achieve the company's overall objectives.
This post also aligns with Gallup research that employees with managers who at least acknowledge employees (even if only for negative feedback) are far more engaged than employees who are ignored. That research is referenced in detail here: http://www.globoforce.com/blog/?p=313
[...] Heidi Grant Halvorson, motivational psychologist and author of “Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals,” wrote a great post on SmartBlog on Workforce about giving feedback. [...]
This reminds me of some rules we had in my house growing up. We were not allowed to use labels (i.e. calling someone an idiot) and were instead encouraged to cite specific behavior (i.e. that was a stupid thing to do). This applied on positive feedback as well. My mother hated the idea of labels because they imply that a person is only good or bad. This article jives with that idea to focus on what we can control, behavior.
Good article. I would add that there are times when it is appropriate to praise effort, so I would be cautious about taking the "avoid praising effort" suggestion as a hard and fast rule. A good manager should be skilled at conveying feedback on all aspects of an employee's performance, including how they ran the race, not just whether they crossed the finish line. If there were positive aspects shown during the race (including effort, persistence, time spent, etc.) they should be noted and communicated, just as the negative aspects are. But, as the article points out, using feedback that is real and specific would be important in these kinds of comments too, otherwise it does just come across as a feeble attempt at comfort.
Nice post. Evaluations often fail to achieve the purpose because evaluators 'praise' instead of 'motivate'. Rule #3 is really very difficult to follow.
I believe the advice to "avoid praising effort" also goes to that empty phrase that clueless bosses sometimes toss out: "Good job, everyone!" If you can't make a specific comment about what when right (or what went wrong, for that matter), you're better off not making any comments at all.
3 rules for giving feedback without making things worse…
Giving feedback to both successful and failing employees is part and parcel of being a leader — but many people give feedback in ways that are deeply counterproductive, writes psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson. Try to avoid praising people for either…
[...] You could read the entire post on SmartBlog [...]
[...] Rule #3: When things go right, avoid praising ability. I know we all like to hear how smart and talented we are, and so naturally we assume that it’s what our employees want to hear too. Of course they do. But it’s not what they need to hear to stay motivated. Studies show that when we are praised for having high ability, it leaves us vulnerable to self-doubt when we encounter difficulty. If being successful means you are “a natural,” then it’s easy to conclude when you’re having a hard time that you just don’t have what it takes. Instead, praise aspects of your employee’s performance that were under his control. Talk about his creative approach, his careful planning, his persistence and effort, his collaborative attitude. Praise the actions, not the person. That way, when he runs into trouble later on, he’ll remember what helped him to succeed in the past and put that knowledge to good use. via smartblogs.com [...]
A number of interesting points made, and one thing that struck me was the link to the work of Carol Dweck, who talks about fixed and growth mindsets – A person who is praised for the effort they made is more likely to try something harder, rather than being afraid to fail
Failure is part of life, and the winners are those that get up and keep on running regardless…
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