13

Feedback

When coaching you will often either be giving or receiving feedback. In this chapter we will discuss and explore giving and receiving feedback as part of the coaching and mentoring process. We will review some general guidelines for giving and receiving effective feedback and then move on to the specifics that are important to take account of in a coaching context.

Effective feedback

As a coach you will have to be skilled at providing feedback to your coachees and you should also be receptive to, and ask for, feedback from the people you are coaching. If you are taking part in coaching supervision (see Chapter 27) you may also receive feedback from the supervisor or others in the supervision group. Any feedback you either give or receive requires you to be sensitive, tactful and diplomatic. Here are some general rules that apply in any effective feedback situation:

• Focus on behaviour you have experienced or observed, not on personality traits they cannot change. The aim of behavioural feedback is to raise self-awareness of how the person’s behaviour is perceived by you and how it might be perceived by others.
  
• Be precise and detailed in your description of the behaviour. Make sure it is not judgemental; it should simply be descriptive – even restating the coachee’s own words if necessary. This is required to ensure the recipient has a good understanding of how you experienced their behaviour to encourage them to reflect about the impact it is having both on you and potentially others. For instance, rather than saying something like, ‘You keep interrupting people’, be more specific and say something like, ‘I noticed in the meeting this morning you interrupted Susan four times and each time she was not able to finish her point.’
  
• The feedback is owned by you. It should therefore describe how it affects you. You must always remember that when giving feedback it is how you have perceived the individual and should not imply that others will have the same opinions, feelings or perspective. So always talk in the first person – use ‘I’ statements and try to avoid saying things like, ‘People might think …’ or ‘Others seem to …’
  
• Skilful feedback should be given at an appropriate moment. This should be when you believe the recipient is at their most receptive. You should try to give any feedback about behaviour as quickly as possible after the behaviour has been experienced. However, coaching can sometimes involve emotional reactions to the issue being discussed – in such a situation you may have to time your feedback accordingly; you may, for instance, decide to leave your feedback until your next meeting.
  
• Feedback should be constructive. It should focus on encouraging reflection and improvement. You must always give careful consideration to what you are planning to say and how you will say it, ensuring your language and presentation is descriptive yet neutral and is non-evaluative and non-judgemental. So, for instance you could say something like: ‘I like your focus on … and I’d like to hear how you think you could do even better?’
  
• Demonstrate sensitivity to the emotional impact of your feedback on your coachee. We all have different responses to receiving feedback, so watch, listen and stop speaking. Give people time to assimilate, reflect about, respond to and deal with their emotional reactions to any feedback you give them. Be aware that you may have to elaborate on your initial feedback to help people understand. This may also mean that you have to modify your feedback or even stop giving feedback at that moment. Remember, it is supposed to be helpful to the coachee, not an opportunity for you to vent your feelings.
  
• Be open to receiving feedback. As a coach, manager or leader you should also be open to receiving feedback from others. This means that you should actively encourage and ask for feedback from your coachees and when it is given listen, test understanding and clarify to be sure you understand the feedback. Demonstrating that you are open to and actively learning from any feedback that you receive will have a positive effect on your credibility and reputation as a coach. It will also help towards building an open, trusting and respectful coaching relationship.
  

How people use any feedback they receive is, of course, up to them. All you can do is continue to observe their behaviour and perhaps offer feedback when you see any new behaviour being implemented – this reinforcement will help the coachee to recognise the importance of feedback for their development.

Coaching and feedback

As a coach you are in a privileged position in that you will be involved in working with coachees on issues that are challenging them in some way. This will often give you access to much more information about how people behave, think and work than other colleagues or their manager may have. Consequently this will lead to them sharing confidences, expressing themselves emotionally and generally disclosing information that they would not normally reveal to others. So, giving feedback under these circumstances can be a delicate affair. You may find that you have to be extremely observant and have all your emotional antennae on full alert in order to determine when feedback might be appropriate.

Feedback is one of the topics you should discuss during the early phases of the coaching relationship, during the ‘contracting’ and ‘rapport building’ phase. Both parties need to be clear about both giving and receiving feedback. So, for instance, you may agree with your coachee that you will offer feedback to them based on your reactions to and feelings about:

• Their behaviour towards you during the session.
  
• The behaviour they have described in relation to what they did in any situation or issue they have been working on with you.
  
• Ideas they are sharing with you about how they might deal with situations in the future.
  

You may also suggest that it would be good to receive feedback from them about how they are receiving you as a coach. This could be a regular part of your session where towards the end of each session you ask them for feedback. The important thing is to set it up beforehand as part of the process so that neither party is caught unaware. Good-quality feedback requires a lot of thought, so prior warning that it will be part of your session is beneficial. One easy way of getting the process off to a good start is to frame the feedback you would like. For instance, towards the end of the first session you could ask the coachee to ‘Share with me one thing I did that you feel was of benefit’, and likewise to ‘Share with me one thing I could do that would make the session even more useful.’ These are useful questions to make people feel more comfortable giving feedback.

You should also be aware that in any coaching meeting people will ‘let off steam’ and during these times their behaviour may be out of character. As this sort of behaviour is probably not indicative of the way they normally behave it is perhaps not fitting to give feedback about it. Allow them to vent their emotions and then move on to discussing the issues.

If, however, the behaviour is testing boundaries or trying out ideas that are new ways of dealing with the challenges, then these are the opportunities you are looking for. Feedback from you about your reactions to, and feelings about, how a piece of behaviour affected you may just help the coachee to determine a future course of action or ideas they may try out.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

Bill Gates

Tips for success

• Be prepared to both give and receive feedback.
  
• Feedback requires you to use diplomacy and tact.
  
• Focus your feedback on behaviour you observe or experience and be constructive.
  
• Be detailed and precise when giving feedback.
  
• Use ‘I’ statements – own the feedback.
  
• Be aware of the emotional impact of your feedback.
  
• Actively encourage feedback from your coachees.