Providing feedback is an important part of leadership. Feedback aligns the actions and behaviors of team members with the vision for the organization. Team members long for feedback. Affirmation and appreciation are good but people welcome corrective feedback when it is presented well. People want to know how they are doing.

Feedback is more than a leadership skill; it is a life skill. Feedback is an important part of any relationship. Feedback is an especially important tool for parenting.

We should be providing feedback many times each day to all of the people with whom we interact. But here is the first problem: we are in such a hurry, moving from one project to another, running from one meeting to another, or just focused on all of the things that we need or want to accomplish, that we do not take the time to notice the actions or behaviors around us. There are constantly actions or behaviors happening right in front of us, but we are moving on to the next thing. So often we are too busy to notice the actions and behaviors that are taking place around us. We don’t take the time to notice and give feedback.

Another human weakness is the general behavior of not noticing all of the things going right; only when things go wrong (and often only when badly wrong) do we pay attention.

Take a moment to think about some of the many recent things that deserved feedback, but none was given. Maybe you just came from a meeting where someone gave a great presentation. Did you give some feedback that identified the best specific parts of the presentation? Or maybe the presentation lacked something. Did you identify the shortfalls, so that the presenter can do better next time? How many reports did you read today or this week? Did you provide some specific feedback to the authors? As you walk around the organization you see people doing work, some well and some not so well. How many times have you given them feedback? Are you noticing what is happening in your organization?

Let’s think now about feedback outside of work. How often do we see parents who only complain about or criticize the behavior of their children? Often it is not even what we would call feedback, but just general criticism. How much better would the parent – child relationship be if the parent gave feedback, both for the things done well and for the specific actions and behaviors that they wish to see improved. But they aren’t noticing much of the behavior.

Personally, one of the things that I try to do is to provide feedback or express my appreciation to those attendants or custodians who keep the roadside rest stops clean. I appreciate clean restrooms and there seem to be two alternatives for keeping them clean. One is to clean them myself (a task that I would certainly not prefer), the other is to encourage those attendants to continue doing the job well. So I make it a point to notice and express my appreciation for cleanliness in order to encourage him or her to keep it going.

As mentioned earlier, people crave feedback. They want to know how their performance is perceived. They want to know that they are valued, and they want to grow and improve. Feedback guides actions and behaviors towards a longer-term vision. Perhaps most importantly, feedback, when done well, can build the relationship of trust and respect that is the foundation of leadership.

Providing effective feedback is more than a quick “Great job” or “Keep it up.” Feedback involves identifying specific action or behaviors, describing the impact both to you personally and to the organization or at a higher level, and set the expectations for the future in terms of more of, less of, or keep it up. See the articles “Three Steps of Effective Feedback” and “Ten Tips for Effective Feedback” to learn more about giving feedback that makes a difference and builds your relationships.

But the first thing we must do is to open our eyes and to build the habit of noticing.

Do you have the habit of noticing, both of the positive and the negative? How many times have you given effective feedback today?