The most important part of performance feedback is to provide the employee with effective recommendations. As a manager, you should provide a specific direction to support the employee in improving their performance.  In order for you to grow your business, you should help your employee identify one area of their performance to improve.  Providing practical recommendations is a tool that you can utilize to promote your business. 

How To Be Specific?

Your recommendations should be precise and measurable, reflecting your expertise as a manager. By contrast, offering vague suggestions will make the employee question your credibility. For example, encourage your employees to ask clarifying questions to guide the complaining customer towards a resolution.  However, asking the employee to listen more effectively to customer complaints is not measurable.  Even though listening more effectively is crucial to addressing the customer’s concerns, it is vague in terms of what actions needed from the employee to demonstrate that they were attentive. On the other hand, asking clarifying questions shows that the employee is listening and taking action to resolve the issue.

At this stage, you need to act like a coach who is interested in training or mentoring a team member. Therefore, involve the employee in creating a plan or an outline on how to implement these recommendations.

Tips for Managers

• Give practical examples of what you want the employee to do.
• Allow the employee to ask questions and seek guidance.  
• Provide handouts or a short written summary for the employee to examine.
• Give the employee a couple of minutes to read the handout or guide them to the essential points of it.  
• Follow up with an email or a short conversation to check progress.
• Allow and accept variations in performance. Each employee uses an individual style of performance to implement the recommendation. Allow them to figure out a technique that works best for them.

Actions to Avoid

• Offering recommendations for the sake of making a suggestion. 
• Asking for something you know the employee can’t do.
• Acting on your biases and being jealous of good performance.
• Imposing personal preferences on your employee.
•  Fault finding and going after every single misstep the employee did.