Feedback is a gift and real time feedback is Breakfast for Champions! One of the greatest gifts a leader can give is immediate feedback. If you’re in a leadership position and have a team, you’re a Coach. Imagine a sports coach not providing real time feedback during a 40 minute basketball game or four quarters in a football game or 9 innings of a baseball game. That would never happen in the world of sports. Translate this into the business world and providing real time feedback is expected and responsibility of leaders as a coach.
It’s a disservice to your employees and business in not providing feedback, the responsibility lies on true leaders developing a leadership pipeline in their own organizations. We are not creating more followers, we are creating more leaders and talent within our own organizations.
Would you like your boss to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear? I have coached many elite athletes who are hungry for immediate feedback. They were all pleasers and didn’t want to disappoint me. They didn’t want to let me down. Athletes wanting feedback and areas to improve isn’t any different than adults in Corporate America. Many would say why they are supposed to give feedback – it’s part of their job, required to do a performance review, and an end of the year evaluation is required.
Ask yourself, what is the reason I should give real time feedback? People love getting actionable feedback, they want to get better. You’re also developing talent and seeing quicker growth and development within your people and team. Real time feedback builds a culture of trust.
As an executive coach, my clients are starving for real time feedback. I work with them to build a leadership pipeline within their business and teams. Leaders are seen as Coach. My clients have been very successful in the C-suite and senior level leadership positions for decades. They’re in these positions for a reason, they are highly skilled, knowledgeable and successful at what they do.
Professionals are also working longer and harder than ever before. People are retiring later in their careers and the workplace now consists of five generations. All leaders and managers must be flexible, adaptable, and nimble in understanding others and developing a high performing team across generations.
I had a client who is a very successful Chief Operating Officer, of course very driven, results oriented and wanted to get better. Over the course their career, they never received a performance evaluation or feedback on their strengths or areas to continue growing as a leader. Another client in a directors role, did not receive a performance evaluation for three years. Their supervisor said, “you’re doing good,” I’m too busy to meet with you. Both clients were starving for feedback and driven to grow and develop.
As a young coach and leader, I didn’t provide the real time feedback as much as I needed to, especially to players who didn’t play a lot and also the star on the team. There’s a reason the star is a star, they want feedback to grow to reach their full potential. The players who didn’t play a lot were not as skilled or talented but they deserved feedback as well. It’s the leaders responsibility to develop, train and mentor their people and teams.
6% of managers and leaders are good at giving feedback, which means the other 94% are not. Before one can provide the necessary real time feedback, expectations should be communicated clear and concise to your people and team. After expectations are communicated and understood, real time feedback can be given and delivered.
Tom Landry said, “An ON Point leader is someone who tells you what you want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you always knew you could be.”
