A recipe for mediocre performance: Give no feedback
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Have you ever been in a situation where you honestly don’t know if you’re doing what you’re expected to do or not? You don’t have a clear picture about what you boss wants you to do, or what are the criteria he’s using to track your successes and failures. Chances are that they are a mystery for him as well.
Or maybe you are a boss thinking about whether you dare give honest feedback to your developers. Maybe they’ll get mad and quit? Let me reassure you (although this is a subjective opinion from just one developer - it would be nice to hear about other people’s experiences in the comments too), giving feedback will make your people feel more relaxed and more interested in their work. And they will appreciate you more.
- Clear expectations: One of the biggest demotivators related to feedback is that people don’t know what is expected from them. Or they know it on a superficial level, but when it comes to real everyday decisions, it becomes much fuzzier. If the developer knows the expectations, and they fit into her own career goals, she’ll work hard to meet them and make you happy. If the expectations don’t make sense, she might be more motivated if you kept the expectations secret. But then again, only a fool would set expectations that don’t make sense. Right?
- Positive feedback: I think that positive feedback is important for two main reasons. I’m sure that psychologists would come up with many more, but here are my reasons: First, positive feedback creates a sense of security. It assures that you’re doing pretty well, and therefore you can take some risks and it makes you better prepared for negative feedback. And secondly, when correctly used, it improves the status of the leader. When the leader gives positive feedback at the right time he shows to the developers that he actually understands something about the nature of the work that is being done.
- Constructive criticism: If the foundations are in a good shape (clear expectations and plenty of well-timed positive feedback) constructive criticism is the single most effective tool for either making or breaking the motivation of a talented software developer. Imagine a top notch software engineer called Lisa. Every day she gets to work, does pretty good work - maybe even outperforming some of her work mates. She gets lots of positive feedback, but deep inside she knows that she could be so much better, that she’s actually only giving 70% of her performance to the job. Because no one gives her negative feedback, slowly a moral dilemma grows in her mind: “why should I try to do my best when this much is already enough?” And once she decides that she actually shouldn’t, she starts to get demotivated.
So, if you are a boss in charge of software developers (or other creative workers) make sure you make your developers feel that in general they are doing a great job. Then whenever you notice that someone is not using her full potential, let her know that. Don’t just accept it thinking that she’s already doing as well or better than her colleagues. She will appreciate you for noticing.
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