Title: Giving effective feedback
Course: Health Management, Ethics and Research - Ethiopia (Full)

Giving effective feedback

Using your monitoring and control mechanisms you have determined the success or failure of your groups' performance. Your feedback to individuals must be based on the evidence you have gathered from the monitoring and controlling process. Feedback must also be timely – it is no good giving the feedback after the opportunity for improvement has already passed.

Once expectations have been established that feedback will be a routine part of your management function, it should be given regularly, whether good or bad. A summary of key principles is given in Box 5.2.

Box 5.2 Giving effective feedback

Effective feedback should be:

- based on previously established performance goals/standards
- timely
- regularly given
- specific
- constructive
- motivating
- a routine part of your management function.

Look at the features of effective feedback in Box 5.2. Which of these do you think it is most difficult for managers to deliver?

Show answer

If this type of feedback is a routine part of management it should become easier, with experience, to deliver feedback. Corrective, constructive criticism is harder to provide than positive, reinforcing feedback. It needs to be handled sensitively.