Delivering feedback is among a manager’s most important tasks, yet many managers struggle to do it fairly and consistently, and—above all—in a way that drives improved performance. In the chapter on people development in his recently published book, Lessons on Leadership: The 7 Fundamental Management Skills for Leaders at All Levels (Kaplan, 2007), Jack Stahl, CEO of Revlon and former president of Coca-Cola, proposes a six-step model to make the feedback process easier and more effective.

I asked Stahl if he would share some of his experiences as a manager to flesh out how the model works in practice. I hope you find his comments as insightful and useful as I did.

1. Value the individual. Start the conversation by affirming what the individual contributes to your team and the organization. Be sincere, and be thorough. This step is crucially important because it frames the entire conversation.

Stahl once managed a talented salesperson who was particularly adept at building strong relationships with her customers. But she didn’t collaborate or communicate with her colleagues very well.

“As we started to talk, I made a very clear point of reinforcing how strong her customer relationships were and that the responsibility of managing so many of them effectively was akin to having a general manager position,” he says. “I built from this in pointing out that if she could be more effective in building relationships with and drawing upon her own colleagues, that would only improve her customer relationships.”

Because so much of the feedback was framed in terms of what the employee already did well, Stahl says, she was able to hear the feedback as “enabling her success, rather than standing in the way of it.”

2. Ask the person to identify his biggest challenges. Invite the employee to assess his own performance, both where his strengths lie and where he sees challenges. This helps you, as his manager, identify areas where you can provide targeted coaching.

Another salesperson Stahl managed earlier in his career was bright, capable and skilled at influencing lower-level contacts at a key customer, a large retailer. When asked to point out his largest challenge, this salesperson said he had had trouble establishing productive relations with the retailer’s CEO.

Stahl asked the employee to walk through a typical sales call with the CEO. What he saw was that the employee did far more talking than listening.

3. Provide targeted feedback. Stahl pointed out that if the CEO did not get much airtime during a sales call, the salesperson had little chance of finding out what those needs were.

“What if you were to flip that mix the next time you see the CEO and spend 80 percent of your time asking and listening?” Stahl asked him. “Before you present anything, ask five or six questions to get at what the CEO sees as his company’s key strategies and challenges.”

The salesperson took Stahl’s advice and “got much better engagement,” Stahl says. “Seeing the company’s needs from the CEO’s perspective positioned our organization to serve those needs much better.”

4. Agree on which areas to develop for the future. The objective of this step is to focus the development of the individual and encourage him to practice specific new skills. You also may want to point him to targeted training as part of his development plan.

5. Agree on the benefits of improving and the consequences of not improving. Of course, it’s one thing for an employee to agree with her boss about an area where she could improve and another to be motivated enough to improve. This step is designed to fuel that motivation.

Stahl pointed out to the HR executive that if he could become a more effective communicator, “his impact and that of his unit would be significantly enhanced across the company.” And if he did not improve, Stahl would end up having to take over some of his communication tasks—clearly, this was an outcome neither wanted. It would effectively mark the end of the individual’s growth within the company.

The HR executive went to the training and learned to be more deliberate in crafting his messages. As he became a more skillful communicator, says Stahl, “he became more effective in his role and had greater impact on the organization.”

6. Commit your support, and reaffirm the person’s value. As hard as it is sometimes to deliver feedback, in most cases, listening to it is even harder. So in this final step, you need to reassure the employee that you value his contributions and will support him fully as he works to improve.

Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay is the editor of Harvard Management Update.

A Ceo’s Six Steps To Effective Feedback

Delivering feedback is among a manager’s most important tasks, yet many managers struggle to do it fairly and consistently, and—above all—in a way that drives improved performance. In the chapter on people development in his recently published book, Lessons on Leadership: The 7 Fundamental Management Skills for Leaders at All Levels (Kaplan, 2007), Jack Stahl, CEO of Revlon and former president of Coca-Cola, proposes a six-step model to make the feedback process easier and more effective.

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