Ken Tung Nguyen

A.Why Bother to give Feedback?

Different aspects of communication lay claim to being the most important: listening effectively or building trust, for example. Though these are important, the critical skill for me is feedback, both giving and getting. Effective feedback has benefits for the giver, the receiver and the wider organisation.  Five reasons why feedback is perhaps the most important communication skill.

1 Feedback is there all the time

Feedback is a good mechanism to continuously improve yourself, your team, and your organization. It is really impossible to avoid giving or getting feedback if you work in a team, or manage a team, or serve your clients.

2 Feedback is just another word for effective listening

In order to give feedback, you must actively listen. In order to give effective feedback, you must understand what the other person is trying to communicate or do, and only then provide your feedback.

Giving feedback effectively means in one sense simply providing both aspects; for example, showing understanding – ‘I see.’ or ‘OK. I have the same issue.’ – and expressing appreciation – ‘That’s important because …’ or ‘That’s very interesting because …’.

3 Feedback is an opportunity to motivate

Positive feedback is another word for praise, and is all about taking the opportunity to express appreciation of a job well done, in the hope of inspiring an individual to do many more jobs even better. Too few leaders, managers and colleagues find time to express thanks to others for something well done, missing the opportunity to inspire greater positive feeling and commitment in those already performing well.

4 Feedback is essential to develop performance

For many, feedback is something akin to criticism or attack. Perhaps this is why it is seldom practised with any enthusiasm, and certainly anticipated with less. Yet feedback is not criticism, it is a supportive act intended to deal with under-performance in a constructive way and to develop performance to a higher level. The language which we use is important here; not, ‘You didn’t do …’ but rather ‘If you had done xxx, it would have …’ or ‘The customer wasn’t very happy. What else do you think you could have done?’

5 Feedback is a way to keep learning

Working internationally, which often entails working with high levels of cultural diversity, business complexity and within virtual teams, means we are likely to get things wrong from time to time. We will assume things incorrectly. We will communicate in ways which are confusing and possibly impolite for others. The only way to make sure we don’t continue making the same mistakes is to get feedback. Invest time in asking and learning about how others experience working with you – ‘What do you like about the way I work and what don’t you like?’ You might find it tough to listen to others’ sometimes ill-founded opinions about your behaviour. But it is what it is; an opinion and not a fact.

B. Giving Quality Feedback

Quality feed back should be :

• Timely: Feedback should be given as soon as possible. Feedback is less useful if it is given too late, where the receiver might forget what he did, or what was the exact context. Our perceptions of the past might differ from reality by having distorted memories.
• Specific: A feedback should be very specific to a certain aspect, whether it is the tone of voice or body language, it should be said with concrete and detailed examples.
• Observable: Feedback should be objective instead of subjective. It means that it should contain at least one observable behavior and the perceived impact on you or others.

Example of my favorite structure:

I observed that the body was stiff at the beginning of the talk and was more natural towards the end. That made me feel uncomfortable at the beginning, and normal towards the end. The implication for this is: the speaker was nervous at the beginning and was more confident at the end. The learning point is: to try to use hand gestures to express your thoughts, even when you are nervous.