Have you been asked to provide feedback on anything? I think everyone from time to time has provided feedback in some form or another. It could be the simplest of responding to a survey. Up to providing performance feedback on a co-worker or manager. For me, I take all feedback situation seriously. If I am asked to provide my feedback, I want to make sure the feedback is meaningful and real-time. It has to be to be effective. Right?
What happens when you have been asked to provide feedback that requires you to do some real work (not just your opinion) and once you provided the feedback – it seemed to go to black hole? I have had a few of these lately. Gone off and done quite a bit of work reviewing and providing thoughts and potential solutions. Lots of work and nothing back. What do you do? For me, I have tried these…
- Go back and look to see if anything was done after the feedback was sent. It is always eye opening to see for yourself what has or hasn’t been done. If nothing has been done, you really have an empty feeling.
- Ask directly the person that you provided the feedback to and see what are the plans. It is the easiest of approaches, but can be a bit dodging on the responses. Just have to be prepared for anything.
- Ask some of the staff, “how things are going now or is anything different?” Getting a different perspective on what is really going on now, can help.
If you are going to ask for feedback… Whatever it is… You better be prepared and ready to get back to the folks that are providing you the feedback. You never want to give the impression that you asked for feedback as an exercise or really don’t care. When you provide no acknowledgement, you are basically giving the impression you don’t really care.
A simple answer back. Thanks so much for you feedback. I am (or have) reviewed it. This feedback is going to help me do a better job in the future. My plans are to change (update or improve on) xxxx by xxxx (the date of you will see xxxx). If you can share at the very least that – then do you really want feedback?
how do we need to give feedback
Walter – Not overly sure of which part of feedback from the post. I will try and answer a couple of ways.
Providing feedback request: I like to give and receive my feedback in writing. Giving the requester a documented copy and the opportunity to discuss anything further.
Once sent: I would like to hear back from the requester – any form of communication (writing a small post-it note, email or just a simple spoken thanks). Let’s me know that they received the feedback.
I hope this answered your question.