Two weeks ago, we helped over 30 people become rockstar presenters with a 4 day workshop. The participants arrived on Thursday, some scared to present in front of people, some a bit shy, others very excited and outgoing and no one knew that they would walk away on Sunday feeling completely confident and competent to speak and present in front of an audience, big or small.

To give the participants more time to apply their new skills, they worked in smaller groups to practise their presentations. After every practice run each of them got feedback on a few key points. Getting feedback was clearly the key ingredient to their success. 12 practices and 12 lots of feedback took their speaking skill to a whole new level.

Feedback is a type of communication and a must in every business. There is a couple of things you might want to consider when giving and getting feedback.

Feedback is a Must: Make sure you implement a feedback process into your business, it will help you take your organisation to a whole new level. Feedback helps you and your team become more effective by knowing how you are perceived and affecting others.

Bite Sized: When giving feedback, only give small chunks, it means that the person getting the feedback doesn’t get overwhelmed and can focus on a couple of key points. If you give them too much feedback at once, they will not know what to focus on and might choose not to do anything about it.

Feedback Sandwich: How we give feedback is important and there are different feedback techniques we can use. One of the best ones is the feedback sandwich. In this model you (1) first say what you liked, then (2) what your constructive feedback is and then (3) you let them know that overall they are doing a great job. So let’s give you an example to illustrate this (in the context of a work situation):

‘(1) I really like how you handle difficult situations, always keeping a solution focussed attitude. (2) Something that you could focus on improving is your time management skills, it would be great if you could meet the agreed deadlines. (3) Overall, you are doing a really great job.’

Thank You: When receiving feedback, just take it on board and don’t dispute it. Getting feedback is a great opportunity to grow, when given in a respectful manner. Being open, accepting and responsive to feedback will encourage your team to keep helping you grow.

Just like our workshop participants, the feedback has allowed them to reach a level of speaking skills they never even thought possible. Feedback is one of the most valuable tools to help you and your team to grow.

In your business do you encourage giving and getting feedback? It might be a good time to implement a feedback process.

To your success,

Franziska Iseli-Hall

'Feedback is the breakfast of champions.'

Ken Blanchard