It is part of the human DNA to know how we are doing... and as individuals we look for reinforcement... for feedback and this applies both in our personal and work lives.
These days in the fast paced organizational routines managers are so busy and find it extremely difficult to find time to go through elaborate feedback sessions. Even when they do it, the rituals seem like extended yoga sessions.
The managers with larger teams stare at significant time that they would have to invest in providing feedback...often causes anxiety in the subordinates as well as managers. This results in dissonance at the time of the periodic appraisal when people don't see the link between their perceived performance levels and the appraisal rating as they did expect it and may have always thought they were doing well... Also a common concern is that managers don't provide sufficient and timely feedback...leaving individuals dissatisfied with the overall appraisal process.
A very quick and effective way to provide this feedback in our busy work days is an approach we can call as "Performance Boosters" which is a simple 5 minute process which can be very powerful mechanism in absence of elaborate and ritualistic type feedback processes.
In simple words the five minutes spent include focus on pleasantries, what's going well, what can be improved, what needs to be done different in coming days/weeks. Finally a minute to hear out the other person on what he / she feels about the feedback.
This process can be done taking a small walk in the campus or in the cafeteria or anywhere in an informal manner.
Suppose a manager does this three times in a six month period it leaves the employee with fair degree of inputs on how he / she is doing at regular intervals... Imagine a manager with 10 subordinates to appraise... all he would need is a total of 15 minutes in a half year period per feedback recipient and in all it is 150 minutes or 2 to 2.5 hours of time. Give this a efficiency factor of 0.5 and you can still provide feedback to all your reports in total of about 5 hours in a 6 month window which is a small ask for a manager.
What about dreaded documentation.... Don't worry... In this process the individual who received the feedback quickly summarizes in a para and sends a mail back to the manager. That way all your feedback is summarized and stored in your mail box for later reference at the time of EOP appraisal discussion. This process can really help individual to take corrective action and not wait for the appraisal discussion to know something went wrong... Also positive feedback reinforces and motivates... No elaborate setting up of meetings...No rigorous and dreaded planning and implementation.. rather a high impact and quick way but sufficient to cover all individuals.
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