Professional Management

Today was a day of giving and receiving feedback. As those who know me or work with me will know, I usually use a Plus / Delta method of giving feedback. This is a simple way of emphasising the positive:

• You state what works and what you'd like to see again
• You state what and how you'd like to see things work differently

This differs from the normal way of giving feedback, which often skips over what works and communicates the changes by saying what not to do. Telling people what to do next time is a lot more effective but slightly harder for you.

A similar method is the 10/10 approach. Here, the person giving feedback gives a number out of 10 as the 'score' and explains why the receiver of the feedback got that high a number (this is the Plus). Next, he explains what they would have to do next time to get a 10 (this is the Delta). This is a simple and powerful method of communicating exactly what you want. For instance, this blog gets a 6/10 from me. I give it a 6 because it covers pluses and deltas, includes examples and gives different options. I would give a 10 if it discussed 'the meaning of your communication is the response you get' and had some more humourous examples.