As a manager, you do more than coordinate. You are like a football coach (disregard the pot-belly.) Your job is to motivate the troops, keep conflicts moderated, and keep life organized. Many managers are simply overwhelmed and have too much to do. They don’t have time to give feedback and are not masterful in doing so.
Many employees are sensitive. You can’t just criticize them or tear them apart. You have to be very diplomatic and cautious. You have to understand which types of mistakes are small ones and which indicate character flaws and a bad attitude. There is a lot of skill involved in being a manager.
As a manager, you need to first of all build up a foundation of trust and good vibes. You need to give realistic positive feedback on a regular basis (don’t over-do this.) Also, you need to establish a social rapport. This is not always possible with anti-social types, but some relationship building is a lot better than none. People will do better work for you and stick around longer if you are personally connected to them in a small (or large) way. The minute that relationship goes sour, so does the work in almost all cases.
Part of the reason you need that individual connection is to gauge their work based on how they interact with you. Even if you rarely check their work, you can quickly know there is a problem if they are evasive, unfriendly, or just plain hostile. Interaction is a measuring stick you can use to quickly know how a work relationship will go. In my experience it is 95% reliable although results can vary widely depending on the individual.
Knowing how much to dwell on the nit-picky positive or negative aspects of the employees work is a skill. Overdoing it can make people get a headache fast, and not giving any input can allow people to go on costly tangents. Balance is the key in business feedback!
Negative feedback is tough. Sometimes it is smart to disguise a criticism as a request.
“Could you do it this way next time? I prefer it that way. The way you did it is not bad, I just prefer it this way.”
Smart, you got the employee to do it right without hurting their feelings. Hurt a person’s feelings one too many times and you might have a huge bill to pay to HR to find you another when they quit prematurely.
How often to give negative feedback.
If someone really did something bad and you need to harp on them, make sure you have built up trust enough so they will be able to absorb your negativity and work with it positively. Relationships that last are those where 80%+ of assessments are positive and less than 20% are negative. That includes work and personal relationships. If you are a girl who always harps on every little thing your boyfriend does, you should just break up — it won’t last! Save your harping for when you need to harp because it does relationship damage. Look for good things to comment on when you are not thinking about positive commentary. You need a bank account of past positive comments to merit a negative poking session!
In any case. Your work is terrible!
You’re fired!
Just kidding!
Tweets:
(1) As a manager, you do more than coordinate. You are like a football coach (disregard the pot-belly.)
(2) As a manager, you do more than coordinate. Your job is to motivate the troops, keep conflicts moderated, and keep life organized.
(3) Many employees are sensitive. You can’t just criticize them or tear them apart. You have to be very diplomatic and cautious.
(4) How often do you give negative feedback? Do it too much & ur looking at a divorce!
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