Establishing a feedback loop

By Lora Benson | Mar 09, 2017
Effective leaders give and receive feedback. It’s not an easy thing to do whether you are giving or receiving it. In a recent blog Beth Comstock, Vice Chairman at General Electric (GE), provides three great tips for improving your feedback loops.

Tips From The Coalface, March 2017

Effective leaders give and receive feedback. It’s not an easy thing to do whether you are giving or receiving it.  

In a recent blog Beth Comstock, Vice Chairman at General Electric (GE), provides three great tips for improving your feedback loops.

1. They’ve ditched employee performance reviews - Now, anyone in the organisation can give anyone else feedback. If this sounds like a step too far see the next point.

Staff members are crying out for quality feedback so they can know where they stand. However, sometimes formal performance reviews don’t get done regularly by small businesses.

2. Simplify feedback - GE stick to a simple feedback mechanism: Continue or Consider. The feedback tells the team member to either, “Continue doing X”, or “Consider changing X to make it better.” This keeps it simple, fast and actionable.

3. Seek feedback for yourself as a leader - Ask your team, “What is the one thing that is true, that you think I don’t want to hear?” You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn. Improving your leadership skills can only come from honest, quality feedback. This question might just help you get it.

Adopting these three simple ideas will simplify and improve the feedback loops within your business.