Feedback Should Be A Daily Practice

Leaders should be providing feedback to their direct reports every day. Often leaders want to save their feedback for the weekly one-on-one meetings or, worse, performance review sessions.

Don't overlook the importance of positive feedback – leaders should be giving much more positive feedback than course corrections. Some effective positive feedback examples are:

• "I like the poise you demonstrated on that phone call.
• "Thanks for coming in early to print the sales reports."
• "Your contributions and ideas in the meeting were helpful to the team."
• "Great job assisting Sue with her presentation."

One way for leaders to remind themselves of the importance of daily feedback is to put some coins (start with 3-5) in their left pocket and whenever they give positive, on-the-spot feedback, move a coin to their right pocket. At the end of the day, add the coins in the right pocket to a fund to use as a reward for being a great leader.

Giving frequent, immediate feedback empowers direct reports to be more productive and teams to be more successful.