Hi, and welcome to La Vie Attaché, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. I'm Peggy McKnight, and I'm continuing with the communication series. In today's episode, I will be sharing with you how to give good feedback. Feedback is really important.
We all need it as human beings in order to learn and grow. It's basically survive and thrive as well. Feedback really is good for the soul, but it also helps us to really grow and blossom as individuals. It knows that we are on the right path versus the wrong path.
Take, for example, a very simple thing in life. We do get feedback constantly all around us, and it is in many shapes and forms. So outside, for example, in the garden, you plant some flowers, and the feedback that the seeds give you is it develops into beautiful flowers or a beautiful plant or some beautiful fruit and vegetables that you have grown. I mean, what an absolutely fantastic gift to be receiving as a form of feedback if you've done it right, it being the planting.
Now, I know for myself, I planted some, I thought it would be really quite fun to grow something different than your ordinary broccoli. So I got some sort of highfalutin broccoli, something or other, I can't even remember the name. But the feedback that I got was in the form of a lot of moths were attracted to the plant, and therefore they ate the whole thing and left me the stalk that they didn't want. That was pretty bad feedback, but the message was loud and clear and received that I am either A, not a very good gardener, B, I don't have green fingers, C, I need to learn and develop that skill even more because by golly, I really want to learn how to grow these fancy broccolis.
I just absolutely love gardening since I've been doing it now for, we've been moving around for the last 30 years in army quarters, and I've never really had a garden of my own until we bought our own house. Oh gosh, about seven years ago now, it's hard to believe. And in it, it was a bit of a baptism of fire of learning all about the garden that was very mature, and I had to learn pretty quickly. And my gardening technique at the time, and certainly still pretty much today, is if you grow, if I plant you and you grow and you survive, you're a keeper.
However, that's not to say that I just want to give up on gardening for vegetables or vegetable gardening because I really love the idea of being able to grow something that you can reap the benefits from. I mean, that really gets me all fired up and excited. I would absolutely love to do that. I've grown tomatoes with some pretty reasonable success.
It's been okay. Not absolutely fabulous, but I'm happy with it. You know, again, I've learned and I can continue to grow with that aspect of planting and growing tomatoes. But strawberries in our garden were already there, and they continue to give us a bountiful crop.
So much so that the strawberries and the rhubarb that we have in our garden, I would make jam. And I made jam for the very first time. And again, it wasn't absolutely like perfect, but I was happy with it. And again, practice makes permanent, right?
So that's the kinds of things that we get on an external way that doesn't have to be on a human one-to-one basis or several-to-one with human beings. But even the world around us gives us feedback. Take, for example, learning how to drive a car, right? We all go to classes and we learn what the techniques are, what the rules of the roads are and everything, and then we sit the exam.
And the exam takes the form of driving around and showing and acknowledging what our skills are in the various areas the instructor has asked us to do in order to then pass the test. Well, I don't know how many people there have actually failed their first driving test, but I'll put my hands up and say I did. I failed my first driving test and it was awful. I couldn't believe it.
And I just got back in the driver's seat and tried it again and got it the second time. So again, that was in the form of some feedback to me the first time around of failing something. Okay, I'm not going to give up on it because, well, you do kind of need to learn how to drive in order to get around from A to B, or it will take you a very long time to get there if you use another mode of transportation or even just your feet. But with driving, I developed the skills that they gave me the feedback on, and then I basically aced the test the second time around.
So that was a good form of feedback. But when people don't give you feedback, you're either going to carry on with either bad habits or good habits, but you'll have no way of knowing because nobody has ever said anything or could be bothered to say anything to you. And I would encourage you to provide good feedback to people as much as you can, even if it's just in the simple form of, hey, good job. You know, everyone likes to know that, you know, are we on the right track?
Are we doing a good job? Do you even care? Right? So how do you give good feedback?
Good feedback basically is an acknowledgement and a celebration of their good behavior or something that they have done that is really good, not only for themselves, but potentially even the world in general around them. So by acknowledging the good behavior, you're reinforcing those good elements of that individual and what they have done. So for example, let's say, for example, they put a project together and they completed it not on time, but before it's scheduled time. So you want to give them the feedback to say, hey, you did a really good job on this report and you came in under budget and definitely before the deadline, which gave me time to review it so we could go back to the client and deliver the goods to them.
That will really speak volumes because you as a manager, you're acknowledging your staff for doing a good job, but also coming under budget and also coming in before the deadline in order to give your manager time and to review the material and ensure that everything was in place and in order that the customer ultimately had asked for. So it's all a real good win-win situation because you know that you did a really good job of that. You can feel proud about it. And the feedback given to you was a real feel good factor.
Whereas correcting bad behavior is also necessary as well. So for example, you are witnessing some bullying in the office and you witness one individual saying something really bad in front of everyone to humiliate the other person. As a manager, you would come in with everyone together to address the situation and say bullying is not acceptable in this office and I want to hear both sides of the story and basically allow people the time to speak. And if the bully is still blaming and complaining, you stop them and say, I hear what you're saying, but how about coming up with some solutions?
What do you suggest? That then gets them to think in a different way and it corrects their bad behavior. So they will think twice about bullying anyone in the office. And it also signals to the individual that you can't just blame and complain and leave it there and drop it and let somebody else deal with it.
You need to be just as active and engaged in the work of the office as a team. And you better be coming up with some solutions rather than just blaming and complaining and pushing to somebody else. Because instead of which you're pointing fingers back to yourself at how incompetent you are as a bully. So as a manager, just to recap, correcting their bad behavior, you're sending a signal to the rest of the team that bullying is not acceptable in the office environment and you're also acknowledging that they need to come up with solutions.
Not only the bully, but it also sends the message because everyone in the office has heard you say to the bully, what do you suggest? What solutions will you provide? You're then sending an indirect message to everyone else. You better be coming up with solutions as well to problems that may crop up in the office because they will.
You know, it's a fact of life. Problems do happen and it really is not a big issue. If nobody has died, what's the problem? You know, come up with the solutions, don't look to blame and complain and let's move on as a team, not as individuals, trying to point fingers and point, pick fault with each individual.
And I do apologize if I have said something that might make some people really uncomfortable about death in an office environment because that may have happened to you. And if it has, then that really is a big deal. And corporate or the senior managers really do need to know about that kind of thing if they don't already. And they really need to address it and fast because that's just huge feedback for the organization as a whole.
And also, it sends signals to the staff members of how they are going to deal with something like that. So anyway, I don't really want to go down those morbid roads about feedback. But like I say, everywhere and anything and everything, you will get feedback in some shape or form. It will come out.
And I would encourage you to acknowledge and celebrate the good behavior, but don't be shy about correcting bad behavior because you don't need to be aggressive about it. You can be, you know, firm but gentle, but also acknowledge that, you know, there's some bad behavior that they need to correct because if going back to the bullying incident example, you can then pull the person aside on weekly one-on-one's to say, have you, you know, come up with some more solutions and revisit with them so, you know, they can talk it out with someone in order to get some clarity and move forward. Equally, the