Don’t Give Feedback at all if You Aren’t Doing This

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We’ve talked a lot this month about how to build a culture of feedback, the three simple questions to use in feedback, and the fear of saying the wrong thing, but this week I want to emphasize one of the most important aspects that we haven’t touched on which is to give plenty of positive feedback.

“If you have ten conversations with someone around their performance, nine of them should be positive.”

It’s harmful for teams to have a culture where the only time performance is addressed is when there’s something wrong. Sure, poor performance should be addressed, but ignoring great performance and only focusing on what’s negative is a pretty shitty environment to work in. In fact, Gallup has twelve questions that measure employee engagement and number four is, “In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?”

The bottom line: Employees answering yes to that question is a huge indicator of how engaged they are and how they feel about their work, which has an obvious connection to their individual performance.

We all want to be acknowledged and recognized - not all in the same way - but this is a key ingredient for building a team of engaged employees and kickass team culture. Lift people up, y’all.

This content was created by Galen Emanuele for the #shiftyestribe. Free leadership and team culture content centered on a new focus every month. Subscribe to the Shift Yes Tribe at shiftyes.com