Holidays, baking, and feedback

Gearing up for a Thanksgiving weekend, many of us are already thinking about food, and all the great treats we’ll get to enjoy with friends and family over the coming days. And in that spirit, let’s explore one of those great moments when work and life cross paths. Today my wife baked a Thanksgiving treat for my second daughter’s first grade class, and posted a status update to her Facebook page about the event, showcasing an important lesson about feedback:

Today I brought a treat into school for Leah’s class. One of her classmates saw me walk by with a Tupperware container and started flagging me down in the lunchroom, mouthing words to me across two tables. I finally deduced that he was asking if I brought something for the class. I nodded,  and he grinned really big. On his way past me to the trash can he leaned over and said, “I love it when you bake!”

My wife, as you can tell, felt GREAT to get this kind of feedback.  As a mother of four wonderful kids, she invests tremendous efforts into being a Supermom – frequently baking, volunteering, and helping any way she can.  She spends many of those efforts outside our immediate family, providing value (baked goods, in this case) to an entire community (the class of eager first graders).

And though her job isn’t paid (trust me, I couldn’t afford 10% of what she’s worth), she does all this for moments like the one today in the cafeteria.  The simple act of an enthusiastic “Thanks!” from a first-grader provided all the compensation she needed to keep on working as hard as she does.

As a professional service provider, your sense that what you do is worthwhile is a huge part of your compensation, and it comes down to feeling appreciated. And yet so many of the people we encounter in the industry are, quite simply, afraid to ask for feedback. There’s no need for that fear!   Helping firms like yours we’ve seen that 96% of feedback is positive, 84% overwhelmingly so.  If you manage a design or engineering staff and you aren’t currently loading them up with real, tangible, feedback (especially from clients), you are missing a huge opportunity to build a powerful sense of purpose in their work.

Your clients, busy professionals, aren’t always positioned to see your people carrying the metaphorical bin of cookies down the school hall.  Sometimes, they simply get distracted and forget to acknowledge your people and the great work they’ve done.

There’s no shame in asking!  Though the purpose of a feedback system is almost always primarily about finding problems, the outcome is predominantly a resounding validation of successes.  With no sense of shameless self-promotion, your staff can seek genuine opportunities to improve, and instead be rewarded with constant doses of appreciation.

As you take a moment this week to pause and reflect on those things of which you are thankful, consider sending some feedback to the professionals around you, that serve you every day.  Even if they don’t ask for it, give them a call (or, better, call their boss) and say thanks for the great work.  Then, as you plan for 2012, find a way to make asking for feedback from your clients a part of your daily processes.  You won’t find an easier, more fun, and more healthy way to engage your staff and let them feel appreciated.