Six little pointers on giving feedback

I’ve made my fair share of mistakes when passing on feedback to someone for something they’ve stuffed up in the workplace. Each one of the below steps is pretty much based on an epic fail of my own.

In chatting with a new leader in our organisation this past week about how she addresses feedback with her team, I found that all my failures had actually mapped out a nice roadmap that works for me when giving feedback.

• Address things when they happen, don’t stockpile them.
• Address things with the person in private as opposed to in front of others in the office.
• Bring up the issue and have the person you’re addressing it with come up with the solution.
• Agree on the solution, giving suggested revisions if needed, and then confirm with them that they can do what they’ve said and that they think it’s fair.
• Stress to them that everyone makes mistakes, but that you just don’t want to see these mistakes repeated.
• End with praise for something they are doing well at the moment and that you want them to continue or build upon.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27: If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21.

Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell and ReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.