Successful feedback is usually associated with improving employee productivity, but feedback is not just for supervisor-employee relationships. Being able to deliver honest, constructive feedback is also vital to healthy relationships at home.You give feedback to your children, spouse, friends, doctor, and even your hair stylist.
If you run a home based business, you also need to be able to give effective messages to suppliers, customers, marketers, and web-site designers, just to name a few.
Being unable to give feedback successfully could set you up for feeling taken advantage of, frustrated, under- appreciated, and overwhelmed.
Putting these methods into practice will help you provide honest communication that will protect your time and needs, yet even improve your relationships.
1. Successful communication requires that you get
other person's full attention. Plan your discussion at a time when both parties can focus on situation. Asking your teenager to rethink way she's spending her money while she's got a rented movie and friends in other room is guaranteed to be ignored. Telling an employee to redo a report as you rush out to a meeting is almost always going to generate hurt feelings. Choose a quiet time, and schedule enough time so that you don't feel obliged to rush through conversation.
2. Successful communication is on-going, not an out of left-field ambush. When someone does something great, don't assume they know how you feel. Tell them! The same is true for when you need to correct a behavior. "May I make a suggestion" are very valuable words for an on-going dialogue of behavior.
3. Successful communication focuses on behavior, not personalities. People will always respond more readily to facts than fault-finding. Don't make it personal. Always avoid sarcasm or insults. Whether it's negative or positive feedback, connect it to specific examples, which will help take focus off individual and highlight behavior instead. Tell him exactly what he did that was not acceptable, or in reverse help him to continue appropriate behavior by praising his accomplishments.
4. Successful communication will motivate, not discourage individuals. We all feel need to hear from others how we are doing. It's a basis for communication and trust. A discussion resulting in an exchange of ideas and information is always a powerful motivator. Knowing what actions you want, what your goals are, and having a method to give them to you will motivate people to please you. Motivated people have specific goals and look for ways to achieve them, and efficiency is a natural result of that.
