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.