FEEDBACK
Feedback is reporting on the development or progress of work flow, decisions, requests, problems, deliveries, meetings, answers, queries, outstanding work, movements of people or products, and so on.
There is, in general, a serious lack of communication between individuals, departments, management and staff, service providers and their clients, organisations, governments, etc. People simply don’t keep each other informed. We are all guilty of not giving enough or appropriate feedback.
For feedback to be appropriate and useful it has to be:
- True: Giving false information can be detrimental to both you and your organisation. Your image will be tarnished and the organisation may lose face, money, time or even their client. And you may end up losing your job!
- Correct: Incorrect information has no value whatsoever. The person who receives incorrect information will probably feel hostile to the person who was its source. Reliability is a prerequisite of good feedback.
- Objective: The information given has to be free of any bias or prejudice caused by personal feelings.
- Complete: By not supplying complete information, your job is certainly not done and the wrong decisions may result.
- On time: The information given should be given on time otherwise it may be too late for action to be taken.
- Easily understood: The information given should be clear and concise. Clarification of unnecessarily complicated information may easily cause delays.
by ELSABÉ MANNING