Providing honest feedback to employees is not only critical in the success of your employee’s career and success, but also for the success of your business.
I so often meet people in management / leadership roles and even many business owners who are having all sort of troubles with their staff, however when you ask them, ‘have you sat down with this person and discussed your concern’s, often the answer is no.
Often, they find themselves talking to anyone that will listen about the ‘person in questions’ issues, but not talk direct with the ‘person in question’.
We would all agree, that giving someone a ‘pat on the back’ for doing a good job and rewarding people for good work is far easier than having a difficult conversation about performance, attitude, reliability, etc.
Giving honest feedback is a skill when delivered well.
In many cases, when people find the courage to have an honest one on one sit down with an employee and effectively communicate the concerns they have and show the employee that they are there to assist, quite often what seemed like a battle not worth fighting for, all of a sudden seems a whole lot more manageable.
Without honest discussion, you may not find out that your employee is going through a divorce, is having troubles with another employee, is feeling disillusioned with their role or needs additional support in another area. Often, you don’t find these things out until it is too late and the person has already gone too far down the track to the point where you have terminated their employment, or they have resigned. Finding these things out at Exit Interview stage is too late to go down a different path.
The cost of staff turnover for businesses is astounding, and too often overlooked. Stop, manage and respond. It’s the only way forward to build strong relationships within your team.
Take a look at the following interesting Forbes article which shows some great statistics.