Don’t Overwhelm Your Employees

Summary

• Giving feedback often is helpful, but keep it small and focused.
• It's better to give feedback one thing at a time, rather than overwhelming someone with too many areas to improve at once.
• In a quarterly review, focus on the most important feedback that will help the person improve most.
• Even if you have several feedback points, prioritize which one will make the biggest impact.
• Overloading someone with feedback can be counterproductive if they haven't had a chance to improve on the initial feedback yet.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing small and frequent feedback sessions. Start by giving feedback on just one thing at a time. This keeps it easy to manage and doesn't overload the person you're helping—whether that's a team member or even yourself if you're working on personal growth.

A good way of doing this is during a quarterly review or regular check-in. Focus on the most critical feedback that will have the best impact. For instance, if there are three things you notice someone needs to improve, pick the one that will really make a difference. Work on that first before moving on to the next.

To be most effective, make sure the feedback is actionable. Instead of saying "be better at communication," try something more specific like "try summarizing key points at the end of each meeting." This helps the person understand what they need to do and how they can improve.

Remember, even if there are several areas to work on, tackling them all at once can backfire if the first issue isn’t resolved yet. By focusing on one thing at a time, you'll see better progress and less frustration.

Full Transcript

if you give more feedback make it smaller if you give less feedback it would need to be bigger what's more effective is small frequent feedback there's nothing wrong with that it doesn't feel like too much if it's one thing at a time so for example if somebody gives me something like on a quarterly review I don't go through and talk about the six things that someone needs to do differently I talk about the one thing that's going to move the needle for that person does that not mean that there's like three other things that I would like them to work on no there's definitely three others but I know that this is the one we have to focus on so when it starts to feel like too much is when you're overwhelming them they haven't even improved the first skill and you're already telling them here's the next two that you've got to work on and they haven't even fixed that first one