Give Feedback- A Leadership Skill
Power up your Team (5 Step Exercise).
Giving feedback involves providing constructive criticism and praise to your teammates to help them improve.
If you want to excel as a sports captain, a director, a founder, a leader, then you need to help your teammates grow as players and individuals. By giving feedback, you foster a culture of continuous improvement and support within your team. By the end of the 5 Step Exercise, you will have identified who you want to give feedback to, what feedback you want to deliver, and when you can share it.
Why give feedback?
You want to be on a consistently excellent team. It is a given that there are ways that your team - your teammates - can improve. Giving feedback is a tool you can use to share those steps of improvement. It is a key method to help your team get better.
Red Flags:
Before you take action, watch out for these red flags; delivering feedback in a harsh or insensitive way, giving feedback while you feel overly stressed, not being specific, focusing only on negatives, and avoiding giving feedback altogether due to the discomfort.
Here’s five steps you can lean into to give effective feedback:
Step 1- Identify:
Identify who you want to give feedback to; perhaps a teammate, a coach, another person connected to your team.
Step 2 - Be Specific:
Think through the details of the event you want to give feedback on. What happened? What was the lead up to the event? Who was involved? Where did it happen?
Examples: Maybe the way that person talked to a teammate was hurtful. Or someone on the team could communicate more effectively. Or someone was not paying attention at a crucial time of the game or meeting.
The more specific you can be in the stage of thinking through the event, the better.
Step 3 - Suggestion:
Make a note of the change you want to see. For example, if you were in that situation again, what do you think would be most helpful?
Step 4 - Rehearse:
Practice your feedback a few times to yourself to ensure that it will come across in as positive and authentic way as you can.
Step 5 - Deliver:
Send a message to set up a time when you can share the feedback. When that time comes, deliver the feedback with kindness.
I encourage you to consistently make time to give kind and appropriate feedback to your teammates, coaches, staff and so on. My challenge to you is to build this skill into a habit, giving feedback as and when needed - aiming for a minimum of once per week.
Tools:
Leadership
Emotional Intelligence