I believe giving feedback to your staff members is crucial for the development and productivity of your team.

Most leaders come into a feedback conversation with the right intention, but deliver it in an unconstructive manner. The result is, people leave confused, misunderstood and unmotivated.

There are five elements that need to be considered in the overarching feedback model.

1. Person: Some personality types like more direct feedback. Others like to receive more cushioned feedback. Depending on who the person is, they will respond differently to the types of feedback.

2. Positive: When giving feedback, it’s a good thing to kick off initially with positive feedback. This encourages the individual to do more of what they’re already doing. (Pretty simple, right?)

3. Constructive: Most feedback conversations will have some element of constructive or negative feedback. The result of giving contructive feedback is, the individual feels stretched. A good way of doing that is saying to the person, “What I would like you to do more of is…” instead of saying “You’re making a lot of mistakes in these areas.”

4. Intention: If you remember the last newsletter, I spoke about setting an intentional intention. This is crucial to effective feedback.

5. World-class delivery: Ensuring that the delivery of the feedback is consciously planned and elegantly executed.

Understanding these five elements will ensure that the person feels encouraged by the positive, stretched by the constructive, which creates a gap, leaving them motivated.

I’ve designed a model for this below.