When your company’s recognition of your technical skills is what propelled you into a manager role, it can be extremely difficult to learn how to give effective feedback to your team members without micromanaging them.
You have held yourself to a high standard. You do excellent work because, well, that’s just what you do. It can be easy to believe that the reason you’re now in management is so that you can bring everyone else on your team up to your personal standard of excellence.
But don’t fall for that trap.
Remember that your two most important tasks are delivering the results your team is expected to deliver, and retaining your team members. Trying to pressure everyone into your way of doing the work can get in the way of both of those responsibilities.
At the same time, both of those responsibilities also require you to foster growth in your team’s skills.
How do you strike the balance?
Here are a few ideas:
1️⃣ Let any standards of quality or excellence be developed jointly, not imposed from your personal perspective.
2️⃣ Give regular feedback based on the observable outcome of their work, and less on the process or details of it. Give more supportive feedback than corrective feedback.
3️⃣ Use questions more than statements to invite team members to self-reflect and discover their own opportunities to improve. Direct their attention to outcomes and values more than implementation details.
Your team members want feedback to know how they’re doing. That’s part of what creates a psychologically safe workplace, as long as your feedback is fair and helpful.
If you’d like to explore how you can encourage growth in your own team, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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