Welcome to Giving Helpful Feedback. This video continues our discussion of controllable feedback. In our last video we made the point that employees must feel that feedback is controllable. However, sometimes managers don't realize that they're the ones that may be part of the problem. So let's take a look at how that can happen. It seems pretty obvious when changing a behavior is controllable by the employee or not. Let's say an employee is supposed to sell 40 tomatoes an hour at a vegetable stand. If they employee's texting friends and fails to make their sales goal, it is controllable by the employee and they should stop texting. If your tomato supplier misses their shipment, this is not under the control of the employee. But what if you, the manager, forgot to tell the employee about your new sales goal, of 40 tomatoes? And the employee thought 30 was the goal. Is that controllable by the employee? I think we can agree that it isn't. While this example is obvious, there are multiple ways that managers control an employees success or failure. Bottom line is that when a manager does their job, employees are usually in control of outcome. And when they don't do their job correctly, they employees may not be in control of their job performance. Here are some of the ways managers impact employee success. They do it by providing specific coaching. They do it by providing clear goals. They also provide adequate resources and by encouraging peer support. Of course, the opposite can also be true. When a manager does not provide these things, employees may not succeed. Let's go through a set of examples that will show how employees are impacted by management activities. The first thing a manager should do is to provide some coaching, especially during training. Here's a case of a machinist. A new machinist goes through extensive on the job training and picks up incorrect information from the trainer about reading engineering blueprints. Several months into the job the supervisor gives the employee a written warning for not following the blueprints correctly. Is this the employee's fault? Well, why didn't the manager know the training was done incorrectly? And why didn't the manager check the employee's performance earlier, when the problem could have been solved easily? The problem really is not in the employee's control in this case. They didn't receive coaching from their manager. So they couldn't perform their job. Let's take another example and this one's about performance goals. Let's look at an incident at a fast food restaurant. An employee under cooks a bunch of hamburgers in a few minutes in an attempt to make sure that customers get their food on time. Previously, the manager had insisted the customers should not wait for their food. However, the manager never clarified that trade offs should never be made with cooking burgers fully. Was this the employee's fault? In this case, performance goals were unclear or the trade offs between cooking time and getting the food to customers quickly were unclear. And as a result, the employee failed to do their job correctly. Let's look at another example of management responsibility. Typically, it's the manager's job to make sure that employees have the resources they need to do the job like computers. Here's an example that they were not provided. Suppose a new cook is in charge of catering a dinner at a fancy hotel in Chani, India They are told they simply need to show up and cook. They arrive and find that the knives are not sharp. This slows down vegetable preparation and delays the dinner by ten minutes. The new cook gets reprimanded for the delay. Is this the employee's fault? You can ask, why weren't the necessary tools provided to the new cook? Why didn't the manager ensure that the employee had the resources that they needed to do the job properly? So again this dinner delay wasn't really in the employee's control, and the employee would probably feel resentment about the reprimand. And finally one more situation where the problem may not be in the employee. This happens a lot, peers don't give you support on the job. Take the case of a new barista at a coffee shop who's having problems operating the coffee making machine. None of the other employees help out and the employee continues to struggle. Is this the employee's fault? Why weren't the peers supportive of her problem? Why didn't the managers recognize the lack of peer support could impact the employee, and then encourage everyone to help each other out? This problem again, is not really in the control of the new barista. As a manager, when you're thinking of giving an employee negative feedback, you should first reflect on your contribution to their performance problem. Did you coach them? Especially during training. Did you clarify important performance goals? Did you provide all the resources that they need? And did you ensure that employees have peer support? If you're not doing these things, the performance problem is not in the control of the employee and won't be solved by your feedback. If you do have a role in an employee's performance problem, acknowledge it in the feedback session and then move on to your feedback. Why is it so important to look carefully at whether feedback is controllable by employees? Simply put, there's a good chance the supervisor is part of the problem. And that would be you. When a performance problem is not in the control of the employee, they will feel resentment when receiving negative feedback. In summary, make sure your feedback is controllable by the employee. You'll be perceived as more fair if it is controllable. And employees will be more willing to follow your lead if you do. This is Tracy Jennings and thanks for watching Giving Helpful Feedback. [MUSIC]
