Before providing feedback training to a 16-person management team with an average age of 38, we examined what comes to mind when feedback is mentioned, how they receive feedback, and how they give feedback. The result was as follows:

• The management team defined feedback as expressing what is useful, essential, and disturbing.
• The feedback they received before was not behavior-oriented, but was generally destructive. The emotions they felt after receiving feedback were shame, guilt, sadness, and anxiety.
• The feedback they gave was feedback given “for the sake of giving feedback.” They were giving feedback with methods and words similar to the feedback they received.

 

I have a habit of getting to know the participants before my trainings, listening to their experiences, ideas, traumas if any, about the topics I will touch on - reading between the lines. In this way, I can design my trainings more specifically for the team and more to the point.

I think the best GIFT that a manager can give to an employee, an employee to his/her other colleagues, a subordinate to his/her superior, in short, all employees in an organization can give to each other is feedback. But real and effective feedback. If it is given with a few fancy words, offends one of the parties, is created as a result of gossip or rumor, it is far from feedback, it is noise.

However, effective feedback is really a gift. It serves the development of the relationship and communication between the receiver and the giver, the increase in the receiver's performance, and the acceleration of his/her adaptation to the organization. Well, is there a good feedback recipe? Yes, there is. I explain it in my trainings:)

Feedforward has also entered our lives with feedback. Its English is "feedforward". Some people think it is no different from feedback, but they are wrong.

While feedback, as its name suggests, is about "back", that is, the past, feedforward is "forward, future". While feedback focuses on past behaviors, in feedforward we focus on the expected behavior or output that can be realized in the future. We ask questions such as what I do for X behavior will be effective, what should I change, who can support me, which resources should I use. There is no evaluation or measurement of the past in feedforward.

With feedforward, managers can change the way they direct their teams and develop their coaching skills. It would be great to give and receive feedforward not only among managers but also among all employees. Think of an organization where everyone gives feedforward to each other... How would the speed of development and transformation be? It is quite fast and enjoyable. Of course, psychological safety is also a must for this. That is another topic.

For now, let's ask ourselves this: Is the feedback I give a gift or a noise? Am I ready to step out of the past and give feedback for the future?