Feedback is undeniably a vital part of managing working relationships. I spoke in my last blog about how both informal and formal feedback can be used to support the learning and development individuals within an organisation. I also discussed how difficult it can be not only to receive feedback, but also to ensure when giving it that it lands with the recipient in a supportive, helpful and constructive manner. Following on from this, I’d like to share some thoughts about how we, as leaders, can develop and enhance our skills in delivering feedback.
Giving feedback requires an enhanced level of self-awareness and specific interpersonal skills. Traditionally, leaders have used psychological models for improving self-awareness in interpersonal communication — for example, the Johari Window model. Developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955, this model helps support a better understanding of your relationship with yourself and others, while improving the trust and insight of a group as whole. Through highlighting issues which are known or unknown by us or by others around us, feedback can be used to gain unknown, potentially enlightening insights into one other.
A more recent model I like to use when I’m training leaders in how to give feedback is Kim Scott’s Radical Candor. Originally published in 2017, the book describes a four-box model which helps leaders create good working relationships through feedback.
