5 Ways to Give Feedback that Elicits Real Change

How to use feedback to
drive organizational success

Rusty Lindquist
V P O F H C M S T R A T E G Y & I P
B A M B O O H R
Jacob Shriar
D I R E C T O R O F C O N T E N T
O F F I C E V I B E

Feedback as key to
organizational progress

The most competitive
economy in history

– Ram Charan
Best-selling Author,
World-renowned Business Advisor

Feedback and
Employee Engagement

Employee Feedback Statistics
• 14.9% lower turnover rates in companies that
implement regular employee feedback.
• 2X as likely to be actively disengaged if employees
are ignored by their manager.
• 65% of employees said they wanted more feedback
• 58% of managers think they give enough.
• These statistics show that there is clearly something
wrong with the way feedback is done in most
companies.
(source: https://www.officevibe.com/blog/infographic-employee-
feedback)

According to research,
employees crave feedback.

What they found was that by roughly a three
to one margin, employees believe that
constructive feedback does more to improve
their performance than positive feedback.

Frequent Feedback
is the Key
Annual performance review is way too long
to wait for feedback. Feedback needs to be
frequent and sincere.

Examples Of Companies
Switching From Annual To
More Frequent Feedback

Expedia
“The hope was to create a performance culture that would help to improve
both individual and team performance and ultimately drive business results.
The emphasis would now be on frequent feedback and coaching and to
evaluate the here and now, not just the results.”
- Karen Crandall, Former Director of Compensation

Twilio
“We don’t wait until the annual performance review to give feedback. You
never want to have a surprise. This is especially important with millennial
workers, who really want feedback. They want to always be learning,
always be growing, and they’re looking for that constant feedback. It’s not
that they’re looking for constant praise, but rather they want to keep score.
They want to know how they’re doing.”
- Jeff Lawson, CEO

Adobe
”The check-in is far more informal. While the check-in process is regular
and on-going, it starts at the beginning of the year, since it’s tied to people
having yearly expectations.”
- Donna Morris, SVP

Deloitte, Accenture, and even GE are
now starting to move away from annual
reviews to more frequent feedback.

Instead of annual reviews,
have regular one-on-one’s
(most people do it monthly)

OneOnOneMeetings
• 1 hour meeting once a month to discuss informally anything
on an employee’s mind.
• This is NOT a performance update. This is a conversation
that is about making the employee happier and more
productive at work.

Companies Swear By ThisProcess
“…if Tim doesn’t meet with each one of his employees in the
next 24 hours, I will have no choice but to fire him and to fire
you. Are we clear?”
– Ben Horowitz, The Hard Things About Hard Things, pg. 102
Many well known companies including HubSpot, Moz, and
Atlassian, use them, too.

HowTo RunYour One-On-One
• 10-minutes: Informal catch up
• 20-minutes: Employee’s agenda items
• 20-minutes: Manager’s notes and questions
• 10-minutes: Action plan and next steps
Action Plan IsMostImportant
• What can I hold you accountable for next time we talk?
• What can I be accountable to you for the next time we talk?

Culture is the story we tell ourselves,
and each other, about where we work.

- Corporate Culture and Performance
John Kotter & James Heskett
• Increased revenues four times faster
• Had 7 times higher job creation rates
• Increased stock prices 12 times faster
• Had 750 percent higher profits
• Grew net income by 700 percent
• Doubled customer satisfaction
• Reduced turnover
Organizations that made culture an
integral part of their strategy…

Feedback: part of your narrative
How welcome is it?
How is it received?
How often is it acted on? How often is it solicited?
How often is it given?
How is it given?

1. Partner with managers
2. To create a feedback culture, create a culture for feedback
3. Ask, ask some more, then keep asking
4. Reward and recognize feedback
5. Cultivate trust
6. Architect feedback opportunities
Tips for getting started

“Like any habit, implementing an employee feedback
system may take a bit of time to get used to. But the
payoff is big—empowered employees, increased
productivity and extraordinary innovation.”
-David Hassell, CEO

Collecting Feedback
with Surveys

Avoid Leading Words
• Consider this example:
• “We recently updated our intranet to be easier to navigate
and more user-friendly. What do you think of it?”
• Instead, keep your question neutral and simply ask “What
are your thoughts on the new intranet?”

The more questions you ask, the less time
your respondents spend, on average,
answering each question.
- SurveyMonkey Research https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/2011/02/14/survey_completion_times/

Ask Open Ended Questions
The easiest thing to do is to ask closed questions like
multiple choice and opinion scales, but you’ll get the most
value from open-ended questions that let employees speak
their minds freely.

Only Ask What’s Necessary
• Be relentless in removing questions from your survey.
Only ask what’s absolutely necessary.
• Any distractions or other noise will only dilute the quality
of what you’re really looking for.
• Always start with the goal in mind.

Anonymity
Unfortunately, there’s so much fear in most cultures
that we need to give employees an anonymous voice
to express what’s on their mind.

Performance Reviews
of performance reviews end up
decreasing employee performance
-– Psychological Bulletin
of executives believe their current
program doesn’t result in performance
or engagement. – Deloitte
30%
58%
of companies are now reconsidering
their performance strategy. – Bersin70%
of companies surveyed think
performance reviews are worth their
time – Deloitte
of HR executives say yearly
evaluations are useful. – Deloitte
6%
2%
of workers are dissatisfied with their
performance reviews. – Deloitte80%
of employees with highest performance
scores aren’t actually the highest
performers – CEB
2/3 -5% improvement in performance is
all managers believe will be
generated in the process. – CEB
3%

“You rate me on ‘Marcus makes decisions quickly’ and
your rating reveals simply whether I make decisions
more quickly than you do.
If you rate me on ‘Marcus is a good listener’ and we
learn only whether I am a better listener than you.
All of these questions are akin to you rating me on
height. Whether you perceive me as short or tall,
depends on how short or tall you are."
Idiosyncratic Rater Effect
- Marcus Buckingham
Harvard Business Review

Performance Reviews
• Overgeneralization
• Random measurement error
• Interpretation error
• Idiosyncratic rater effect
• Recency Bias
• Confirmation Bias
• Faulty memory syndrome
• Quantification of past behaviors
is ineffective
• We tend to let it stand for more
than it should
• Negative psychological impact
(defensive and demotivating)
• Too many variables
• Too often rater is unqualified
(doesn’t understand job)
• Shown to decrease morale
• Found to create infighting
• Leads to “gaming” and politics
• Too subjective
• Too infrequent
• Too much focus on past, not
enough on future
• Too costly
• Takes too much time
• Too despised

“Performance appraisals are perhaps the most
reviled standard practice in all of management.”
Performance Appraisals
- Peter Cappelli
Wharton School of Management
“Why we love to hate HR” HBR

“98%percent of human resources executives say
yearly evaluations aren’tuseful. So why are
companies still doing them?”
Performance Appraisals
- Anne Fisher
Fortune

70% of companies are now reconsidering
their performance strategy - Bersin

Frequent Feedback
Increase communication touch points

Increase Cycle Time
Intended Direction Actual Direction
Don’t wait till here
Catch them here
And here
Organizational
Waste

Ask Simple Questions
1. Given what I know of this person’s performance, and if it were my
money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation
increase and bonus [measures overall performance and unique value
to the organization on a five-point scale from “Strongly agree” to
“strongly disagree”].
2. Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always
want him or her on my team [measures ability to work well with
others on the five-point scale].
3. This person is at risk for low performance [identifies problems that
might harm the customer or the team on a yes-or-no basis].
4. This person is ready for promotion today [measures potential on a
yes-or-no basis].
Performance Questions Now Asked By Deloitte

The secret to having employees listen
to your feedback is whether or not
they respect you.
Respect is earned, incredibly hard to
get, and requires authenticity.

You could have the exact same thing
said by two different people with two
completely different effects.

Focus On The Issue, Not
The Person
Example of what not to do:
“I really don’t like your writing style. Your posts are too short and
they add little value to our readers.”
This isn’t constructive feedback, it’s a personal attack.

What you should say instead:
“Based on research I’ve seen,blog posts with more than 2,500
words tend to perform better. Maybe we could try to make our
posts a little bit longer?
You can use that extra length to go way deeper into detail, which
should add more value to our readers. That would be awesome!”

Make Your Feedback Specific
Example of what not to do:
“Overall, good job on the presentation but I think it could have been
better.
This is so vague. What was wrong with it? Plus, just because you
didn’t like it, does it necessarily mean it was bad? How could it have
been better?”

What you should say instead:
“Honestly, great job on the presentation! I really liked how you used
animations to make your point about our Facebook marketing.
One small comment, maybe for next time, would be to put a few more
statistics in there. Try and make it a bit more visual, I think it will have
more of an effect.”

Make Feedback A
Positive Thing
• The word “feedback” usually has a negative association.
• The reason for this is because most of our experience with
feedback has been about criticism instead of improvement.

• When an employee hears their manager say “I have some
feedback for you” the first thought in their mind is “Oh boy.”
• As a manager, you should approach the feedback process
from an angle of coaching and genuinely trying to make an
employee better.

Don’t Do The Feedback
Sandwich
• It doesn't work.
• Usually, the negative feedback is buried and not specific
• Employees only hear what they want. So if you say “You’ve been
doing a great job, but one thing I’d change is…”, they stop
listening after “you’ve been doing a great job.”
• (source - A research paper, “Tell Me What I did Wrong: Experts
Seek and Respond to Negative Feedback,”)

"A new market has emerged: Employee feedback
apps for the corporate marketplace. These tools
are powerful and disruptive, and they have the
potential to redefine how we manage our
organizations."
-Bersin, by Deloitte

• Our environments are in a constant state of change
• Organizations that evolve, survive
• Feedback loops are the key to evolution
3 Fundamental Truths

Thank you!
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Manager's Guide To Giving
Employee Feedback"
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Questions?
Rusty Lindquist
W W W . B A M B O O H R . C O M
Jacob Shriar
W W W . O F F I C E V I B E . C O M
@rustylindquist
linkedin.com/in/rustylindquist
@jacobshriar
linkedin.com/in/jacob-shriar-56199324

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