Feedback: A Breakfast for Champions

Posted by Naganagouda S Jakkanagoudar in

 People Policies & Practices

Dec 19, 2011 | Total views: 380

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Naganagouda S Jakkanagoudar
Program Director & Head - Campus Talent Acquisition
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Every soul is potentially divine and all of us are born genius, but some people fail to recognize the genius in them and lead a mediocre life. We live in a competitive world where collective performances drive success, happiness and emotional engagement with organizations. As the world gears up to scale new heights, Human Capital is taking center stage and playing a pivotal role in ensuring greater value to the customers and enabling in creating stickiness.

People will not become great in their career unless they know where they are doing well, so they can keep on doing these things, and where they need to improve to deliver better results. For many employees it can be a case of ‘No news is good news,’ as they only get to hear if things go wrong. Feedback is extremely critical for improving and perfecting performance, but if we do it in a constructive way, it acts as a highly motivational and life changing exercise.

There are many ways of engaging and developing talent in organizations. Performance Management System is one of the most trusted ways an organization can measure and evaluate best performance practices and support future development of its people. Every professional needs to know where he / she stands, with regard to their job performance. While every individual awaits his/her performance feedback on regular intervals, feedback is related to many facets of overall development such as knowledge, skills, abilities, attitude, behavior, value match, etc. It’s extremely challenging to eliminate subjectivity while giving feedback. Often there are differences between the manager and subordinates due to focus on personality rather than performance, competence and capability.

As a recipient of performance feedback, it’s extremely critical to understand feedback in the right perspective. There are a few basic guidelines for performance appraisal which are:

1. It’s an opportunity to present your achievements, development areas in the right perspective (Accurate self- assessment).
2. Evaluating Objectives vs. Measurement Criteria related to a job / project.
3. Measuring Behavioral / Values in a professional environment.
4. It’s an instrument which facilitates to receive both positive and negative feedback and takes corrective action for self-development.
5. Appraisal also focuses on Competence Development and not merely on Performance evaluation.

But more often than not, feedback is not accepted in the right sense by majority in the industry which leads to turbulence in the work environment, disengagement and animosity among the supervisor and subordinates. Feedback can be positive, negative, neutral and development oriented. I believe we need to look at feedback as a PowerBooster which will help us to realize strengths, potential, areas for development and the journey ahead.

It’s extremely important to broaden our heart and mind when we receive negative feedback as it can work completely counterproductive if we do not take it in our stride. I agree that feedback is very subjective and person dependent. But if you look at high achievers in the IT industry, sports, entertainment, etc., they attribute their success to the constant feedback and its impact on their performance. We have a choice of feeling completely dejected and let down by managers / supervisors about the feedback they have given, or absorb the feedback and introspect without any bias. This is to see if the feedback can really help you to up your competence levels and start making a difference to your own life.

I would like to share few tips on how to deal with negative / development oriented feedback:

1. Review complete feedback without reacting to what is being told / written.

• Our first instinct in such situations will be to get defensive and start counting reasons.
• What is he / she concerned about? What are the key issues raised by supervisor?
• Why is he / she reacting this way and what could be the concerns?

2. On receiving feedback, do not look at the person but focus on the role.

• Do not mix your identity with career, instead focus on the role and refer feedback on performance of that role.

3. Be comfortable with criticism and take it in a constructive way, as it is focused on your role and not your personality.

• When criticized, it’s not easy to absorb, but do not take it personally. You need to see things in perspective.

4. In a professional career, there will be many Ups and DOWNs, but treat feedback as a tool for self-transformation. Feedback is the Breakfast of champions.

• It’s extremely critical to know that career is a journey and not a destination. We need to learn and enjoy every experience.

5. Let’s own up mistakes and be willing to learn from every experience.

• It takes a lion’s heart to accept our mistakes and work on improving upon our mistakes. Set a self-discipline of not to repeat any mistakes. This is the journey towards growth.

6. Know that “Man the maker of his destiny”.

• We are the masters of our life, we must take charge, create interventions to transform our future and redefine our destiny.

The above points are purely based on my personal / professional experience in the industry and hope these learning will be helpful in dealing with performance feedback. It’s not easy to handle feedback, but if we learn the art of dealing with it, it’ll go a long way in transforming our lives.