|
Tell me a STORY
INSPIRE
YOUR TEAMS BY TURNING FEEDBACK INTO
FEED
FORWARD THROUGH STORYTELLING
Quality
communication between and among people at all levels and
every
department and division-is the glue that holds organisations together.
One of
the ways of doing that is to move away from standardisation
(standard
HR templates) to customisation so as to provide more
personalised
feedback aligned to the individual's career objectives.
During
appraisal discussions, one can create a free flowing note and
give
it to their reports. This inculcates trust with direct reports and
they started realising that, as a manager,
you are genuinely interested
in their career progression.
One of
the expectations from leaders is to raise the performance bar
and
inspire their teams to achieve higher goals. Inspiration can only
happen
if the focus is on the future as past cannot be undone.
Whilst
history gives us a perspective, it is how we leverage that past
learning
to build a strong future. This matters very significantly in the
overall evolution of the individual's as
well as the organisation.
While
there are many ways to inspire, storytelling is a very powerful
tool
to help achieve this objective the great visionary and innovator
Steve
Jobs was acclaimed for inspirational leadership through storytelling.
Aligned
with this thought process, one can add a section called
'crystal ball gazing' to the above
free-flowing template where you can
tell
your direct reports that you want to write the following feedback
for
them next year. By visualising the future, one can leverage the
feedback
process to create a feed forward experience. By using
feed
forward-and by encouraging others to use it-leaders can dramatically
improve the quality of communication in
their organisations, ensuring
that
the right message is conveyed, and that those who receive it are
receptive
of its content. The result is a much more dynamic, much
more
open organisationone whose employees focus on the promise
of the
future rather than dwelling on the mistakes of the past.
Another
benefit is that people do not take feed forward as personally
as
feedback. Feed forward cannot involve a personal critique, since it
is
discussing something that has not yet happened! Many leaders across
organisations
are starting to adopt this approach to motivate teams
to
raise their levels of performance.
--The
author is senior VP , product solutions management, Max Life Insurance
|
TAS 18NOV15
No comments:
Post a Comment