Book Review: The Manager's Guide to Employee Feedback

Effectively giving and receiving feedback is important for any working professional but especially crucial for managers. Aimed at newly hired or promoted managers, Glenn Devey's The Manager's Guide to Employee Feedback is an anecdotal, light-hearted ("being a manager is like running an adult day-care center"), straight-forward and well-written book that offers strategies & feedback skills to deal with people above and below the management chain in both regular and complex interactions at the office. It has tips and tricks to handle typically unpleasant situations like delivering a reprimand and disagreeing with higher-ups.

The author explains how you can put his points to use with example sentences that you can adapt for your own needs. This book had many takeaways but there are a couple that I would like to point out -

* For a reprimand to be effective and not raise a discussion or debate, the last part of the delivery can be a closed question like "Do you understand?" that invites a yes or no answer. It should also include the expected outcome: "From now on, anything less than good time keeping will result in disciplinary proceedings. Do you understand?"

* When you want to present a different viewpoint but perhaps tempers are running high or maybe it's just not appropriate to disagree outright, the author suggests avoiding using "but" and using "and" instead - "Yes that can definitely work, and I think we can also get there quicker by…"

the word "but" has the effect of negating whatever argument was previously stated, making the other person defensive and making them expect an opposing position. The word "and" acknowledges the previous argument and then builds on it gently with an alternative. Both words are grammatically interchangeable, so banish the word "but" for a while and practice using "and" instead. It maintains the rapport of the conversation and allows you to say the complete opposite with less resistance.

This review is based on a complimentary ebook that Packt offered me which included PDF, ePub and Kindle formats. I read the Kindle version of the book.