I've been a listener since the early days, but I have yet to master the feedback model (primarily because I haven't used it regularly enough, which I am an effort to fix).
A situation came up yesterday through an instant messaging conversation with one of my directs. I didn't want to give feedback via IM, and I have a one on one scheduled with him Monday anyway, so I want to give the feedback then. I'm looking for advice on the actual feedback I should provide.
This person is an eternal pessimist. You all know one, or have one working for you. Whatever the circumstance or issue, he will always bring up what's wrong, what's broken, or what's going to fail.
So here's the issue. We have a monthly employee recongnition program in place that rewards the top 3 "client traveller" consultants (employees that have spent the most overnight stays in a hotel). This is a cash reward (well, Visa check card actually). We have an admin that performs 99% of travel booking, so she has most of the data that is needed to determine who gets the award. However, there are occasionally some unique situations in which she does not book travel (for example, for our larger clients they make book travel for us through their corporate travel dept.) So in these situations we need to poll those employees directly to ask them how many nights they stayed in a hotel that month. It's an honor system, we are not asking them to provide receipts or prove anything - just simply tell us how many overnight stays you had, that's all.
Here is the IM conversation that took place between me and my direct yesterday about this (he was off at a client site; names changed to protect the innocent :) ):
Me [10:44 AM]:
did u happen to respond to [travel admin] re: your feb hotel nights?
DR [10:46 AM]:
not yet...i didn't know i was supposed to put the number of nights in the description of the charge as well...no one ever said anything
Me [10:47 AM]:
you dont need to
DR [10:48 AM]:
she said i do if i want to be considered for the awards...i thought they'd be able to figure that out from my expense report and receipts and time sheet, but i guess they just do a search on the description of the charges...wonder how many people are unaware of that
So...my issue with this conversation is that my direct is being asked to provide data that a) will result in a few hundred dollars of cash money directly into his pocket, and b) will take him all of about 60 seconds to gather (he is only being asked to provide one number - how many nights did you stay in a hotel in feb).
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem spending a minute or two looking at calendar to get data that I knew was going to put money in my pocket. But look at my DR's comments, they seem pessimistic to me. He seems to be suggesting that an admin should pull all of his expense reports and receipts for February to figure this out. Sure, the data is available, but would probably take an admin 5 - 10 minutes of running reports and pulling receipts out of files to match them up (for example, a $400 line item for lodging on an expense report doesn't tell you how many nights were stayed, you'd have to look at the receipt, which means that the admin gathering this data needs to walk across the building to the filing cabinet in HR where receipts are stored, etc. You get the point).
This is terribly inefficient, when the employee can simply look at their calendar and avoid all the hassle.
So first of all, am I reading too much into this? Should I just let this go? Perhaps since this person has a history of negativity, I'm making this into a bigger ordeal than I need to.
But assuming I should provide feedback, here's what I came up with:
"[John], can I give you some feedback?"
"Sure"
"When you question why you are being asked to provide data for the client traveller award, it makes me wonder if you appreciate how much more efficient it is for you to provide the data yourself versus [admin] looking the data up, and it also makes me wonder if you appreciate receiving the reward. What can you do differently?"
Knowing my DR, this feedback is not going to over well and this will turn into a long conversation.
One the one hand I want to control his negativity over everything and try to turn that around, and I feel the way to do so is through regular feedback like this. Also, as I said at the beginning, I'm trying to give more feedback in general.
On the other hand, I continue to wonder if providing feedback on this issue is worth my time and/or will blow up in my face and create a larger issue.
Thoughts?
Looking for feedback on my feedback
Lots of thoughts here:
* IM is the worst possible communication tool - avoid at all costs
* focus on behavior
* focus on effectiveness
* Appreciation for the talents of others
If you use IM to communicate with your directs, you will have problems. When you draw conclusions about their motivations, attitudes, and internal settings, you are not "loving" them as a great manager does, and are picking fights. If you focus on control instead of effectiveness, you will have many arguments and never get what you really need. Lastly, everyone has talents (see [i]First Break All The Rules[/i] by Marcus Buckingham) - they are not weaknesses - they are strengths that must be applied carefully.
[b]* IM is the worst possible communication tool - avoid at all costs[/b]
IM is a terrible tool for communication. F2F is best, phone is next, and everything else just stinks, with IM stinking even more than telegraph, morse code, and smoke signals.
Be aware that when having a text conversation with someone else, you cannot tell what they are thinking, as you are not telepathic, and be careful not to draw conclusions about their intents or motives. When I read your exchange, I see nothing wrong other than you wrote a terribly non-descriptive note that was cryptic and difficult to understand, and a direct rightly pointed out that he did not understand the process and warned you that others might not understand it as well.
Dude - let it go. You chose a poor communication tool and are probably, like most busy people, were overly brief and did not inform everyone of something. Your direct informed you of that. That's not insubordination. That's helpful.
[b]* focus on behavior[/b]
I'm alarmed when I read that you think your direct is pessimistic and negative. Those are your conclusions you have drawn - not his qualities. He may be skeptical and questioning, but you are the one putting the negative spin on it. When you do that, your directs will appear "bad" to you, and I do not recommend you morally judge them.
Focus on his behavior:
* Quote what he says
* his facial expressions
* his body language
* The volume of his voice
* The speed of his speech
IM doesn't give much behavior to give feedback on - just a quote of some typing. Not really great communication.
Give feedback on behavior and make most of positive. Learn to differentiate between conclusions and behavior before you go into negative feedback - currently you appear to be mixing them up very badly and are likely to end up wondering where you went wrong if you start giving negative feedback at this point all of a sudden.
[b]* focus on effectiveness[/b]
Focus on what is effective for his job and interactions with others. In this conversations, I see nothing ineffective, personally. I would have responded "Thanks - I will send out a clarification to everyone and try to be more informative next time. Can you get your info submitted by 5pm today for me?"
Some managers focus on control instead of effectiveness. Don't bother giving feedback on behaviors that won't matter later trying to craft up someone just like you. You will fail.
[b]* Appreciation for the talents of others[/b]
Being questioning and skeptical is a TALENT, not a dysfunction. It is something that I personally seek out in my employees, as enthusiastic and optimistic people rarely ensure that all of my bases are covered, and in the industry I am in, I am more concerned with customer dissatisfaction being prevented than I am with customer satisfaction.
Accept your direct's gift for what it is, and take advantage of it. In sales, there are probably a lot of high I folks who are enthusiastic cheerleader types who are very warm and accepting. Your direct is not - but surprise surprise - the folks at inscape and other DISC modeling companies suggest that a high D with a little i is the ultimate salesman.
That skeptical, questioning, high-action results-oriented attitude might turn you off, but most decision makers really don't want a highly enthusiastic person who has drunk the kool-aid to sell to them. They find a cynic more real, more honest, more believable, and high C and high D people will buy from them if that person knows how to connect and play the game well.
If I were you - I would do nothing regarding his behavior and instead take the entire experience as feedback on my own.
Looking for feedback on my feedback
Thank you for the detailed reply US41!
Regarding IM as the worst possible communications tool, I cannot agree with this as a blanket statement.
I received an email from our travel admin saying "I sent [John] an email yesterday asking for his overnight stay count in February. He hasn't responded yet. Can you follow up with him?"
I evaluated my options:
* Call my DR. He is working in a data center deep inside a university and has told me previously that he gets no signal there
* Email him
* Send an instant message
So...Emailing him to ask him to respond to an email doesn't seem effective...perhaps he's having email problems? I didn't like that choice. I can see via his IM status that he's online, and I know that if I called him I'll get his voicemail and who knows, he may not listen to it until the end of the day. Since I only needed to ask him a quick question and I knew that I would get an immediate response if I chose IM compared with potentially not even receiving a response AT ALL that day if I chose to email him or call, I feel that I made the best choice.
I generally agree with you that IM should be at the bottom of the list of communication mechanisms, but that doesn't mean that you can't still arrive at IM being the best choice via process of elimination of the other methods higher on the list. And that's what I did - evaluated what I needed versus the communication mechanism options available to me at the time versus the response time that I needed, and I chose IM as the communication tool that most appropriately suited my needs.
That bit aside, this is an excellent response and I value your insights. I completely agree with your comments about the limitations of any form of text communication around not being able to read facial gestures, etc.
I have had customer sat issues with this person in the past (comments from customers about this person being argumentative, etc) that I have had numerous and lengthy conversations with him about. See my recent post in the general forum titled "Coaching technologists to be consultants"; THIS is actually the same person that I'm referring to in that post. So when I saw this IM from him I think I defaulted to a negative perception of his response; your response has helped me to see this as well as to take an altogether different approach than I hadn't originally thought of. Instead of viewing this as a feedback opportunity, I've already sent him an email thanking him for letting me see that I haven't provided all of the details around the expectations upon him for submitting the data, which I then went into further detail on.
Thanks for great insights US41, I think I'm actually going to print this out!
Looking for feedback on my feedback
IM is among the worst forms of communication. It's fine for raw data transmission but is INCREDIBLY low bandwidth (ie, no nuance at all). You can use IM judiciously, for people with whom you already have an excellent FTF relationship, and only for basic quick info ("what was that web site that you suggested I check out?")
You used IM. It was a problem. Regardless of how flawless your logic was, the result was ineffective.
Data says: IM was a problem.
My suggestion: IM him, and tell him to call you. I use that technique all the time, and it works very well.
John