For Good Times and Bad, Feedback is the Tonic You Need for Your Biz

Feedback has life-giving properties. It is the BEST business tonic in good times and bad….

No matter what If your industry environment looks sick or you believe the Great Recession is coming, you can boost your business health with feedback. If you’re crazy with growth, feedback will scale you up faster. If you don’t know if you’re sick or healthy, feedback will bring clarity.

Why? Faster, more honest feedback between you and the people you work with serves up better information to make informed decisions and streamline your workflow. It directs you to problems that need attention faster and helps you move ahead with optimal knowledge. Plus–believe it or not—it makes everyone happier and trust you more.

Hard to believe Seems too good to be true that what’s so good for the business has the most positive effect on happiness, engagement, and loyalty.

Consulting and research in hundreds of companies over more that two decades, I have concluded that free-flowing, fast, and transparent feedback the number one factor that distinguishes successful business cultures from mediocre ones. Especially feedback that is led, given, and welcomed by leaders.

So why don’t people use this great tonic? Because leaders (and others) are NOT forthcoming with feedback. You may recognize some of the reasons for this:

-Beliefs, such as: “I shouldn’t de-motivate anyone,” or: “the other person might have an emotional outburst & that would be unproductive.”

-Fear & avoidance that is generated by a fight-or-flight response in your brain

-Culture: “We haven’t done much feedback in this company” &/or “my boss never gives feedback”

-Lack of experience and skills in giving and receiving feedback

-Seeing feedback as eating up time (rather than saving time)

How to overcome these barriers Jump in and have some feedback conversations with a couple of your team members. Stick to items that are most relevant to your shared goals and be sure to ask for their feedback in return. Follow it up in a week to update the feedback and help each other further. Notice how well it goes. Notice how your fears didn’t turn into reality.

Results from the feedback tonic As you keep these feedback conversations going, you will notice a clear difference in the health of your business and in the quality of your relationships with co-workers. Whether it’s been good times or bad times for your organization, you are definitely moving your team forward through the life-giving qualities of feedback!