Be honest. When you get close with a management team, sometimes it can be difficult to communicate honestly to make corrections and give people negative feedback or positive feedback to turn around a negative situation.
The important thing with giving feedback is to remember that everybody wants to achieve. Everybody wants to feel like they are contributing to the organization. In addition to getting a paycheck, they want to feel like they are making a contribution. Constructive criticism is a part of helping them make that positive contribution.
The more graceful way to give criticism is to link it to the desire to be productive. The goal is not to make somebody feel bad; the goal is to help somebody achieve their objectives and feel good about what they do.
I don’t know anybody who would rather continue performing poorly rather than getting the feedback to feel like they are excelling. That should be the first topic of the conversation: To get that staff member or that manager on the same page with you, get agreement that their goal is to contribute at a certain level and confirm that is what they are trying to do and that they want to advance their career.
Get buy-in on their willingness to accept constructive criticism to achieve that. Then you’ve got the stage set for having a frank discussion that may not be all that comfortable but will be accepted in the spirit of productivity — not negativity.
Give your employees a voice. People like to participate in the creative process. So if people feel like they have a voice in the collaboration or creative process of creating this vision, while it could start with the CEO, if people have the ability to help shape it, and if they feel heard in that process, they are usually going to support the vision.
Even if it’s not what they would have created themselves, they’ll feel like they have had the opportunity to shape it; they’ll be bought in. They’ll want to help achieve it, because now it’s their offspring and not just the CEO’s.
To shape a vision with management or staff, it’s important for a CEO to be very clear and carefully articulate with how they first present an idea, so they set a foundation that any creativity that comes from staff or management will come from that initial intent.
If the ultimate goal is very specific, then it will be easy for people at the farthest reaches of the organization to exercise good judgment to achieve that goal.
Part of the job of the CEO is to articulate what success means, then encourage contribution and collaboration on how to get to that goal. That’s when you can see your entire organization light up when they realize they’re not just being told what to do but being asked how to do it.
No one performs better than an employee who feels like they’ve got the respect of management to be able to contribute productively. That’s when you get the best out of people.
HOW TO REACH: Beachbody/Product Partners LLC, (800) 207-0420 or www.beachbody.com
