For the last years, I’ve received multiple negative feedbacks about colleagues whom I’ve planned to involve or already involved in my projects.
Feedbacks were provided by experienced managers and it was logically to trust them, but I’ve made another decision:
To build my own opinion I’ve decided to work with people at first. Even more, I gave them an area for creativity and decision making. I gave them my trust.
After some time it demonstrated that people I’ve selected made a great work!
Yes – they made mistakes.
Yes – they have weaknesses.
But when I’ve found the right work for them, their positive qualities became apparent and weaknesses became uncritical. Finally, having freedom for creativity they achieved a wonderful result. Their interest in the work and the desire to do it well surpassed the shortcomings.
I learned them from this very important lesson:
Right work for the right people. It’s the task of a manager to make it possible.
Unfortunately, some managers forget about it. Impressed by the mistakes and shortcomings of people, they decide to select a simples way: abandon further work with them and give them negative feedback. Such a decision looks sad since can broke the career path of an employee. From my current perspective, it speaks about the lack of management skills and should be improved.
Before providing negative feedback a manager should:
- Ask yourself if the employee has the right work?
- Do I need to give him a chance with another task?
Additionally, I remember a good note of a successful sports coach:
Excelent coach should be able to win the game even with a team that he did not choose.
That means that even without selection you need to find the way how to win.
In addition to the previous point, it includes improving each team member.
As a manager you need to invest in your employees to make them better.
Yeah, it’s hardest part of management work. You need to make deeper investigations instead of simple rotation.
As a summary, please note:
Each negative feedback you provide is a minus in your own karma and professionalism.
Open questions:
- If you have tried some people for different activities, but the right place was not found: how many times you need to try?
SB's 