Evaluative and Developmental Feedback
Since we spend so much time talking about feedback, it can be useful to provide a focus for such a broad term. According to Linda Richardson, author of Sales Coaching: Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, there are two different languages in feedback.
Evaluative feedback is what most people think of when they hear the word “feedback.” It’s the kind of feedback managers used to get in a performance review–a focus upon previous performance.
Evaluative feedback is focused on the past. You need to understand your previous performance to improve. However, alone, it’s not enough. You’ll get a broad picture of your strengths and weaknesses, but you won’t get the specific steps (actions) you should take to improve them. That’s what really matters, knowing how to move forward.
Developmental feedback is very different. Rather than looking retroactively, it looks to the future. It emphasizes what “we” (the coach and the person being coached) can do to improve on the past and build needed skills and competencies for the organization as well as for the receiver’s career.
Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s best executive coaches and one of our fantastic partners here at Rypple, calls this feedforward. The problem is that you often don’t know how to act on the feedback you’ve received. Evaluative feedback could be “You need to improve your listening skills.” Great, thanks for the insight! But how? Development feedback focuses on the “we” (you and your mentor(s)) which makes it much more valuable. Your mentor will help you overcome the big “how?” stumbling block. Knowing what to improve is important, knowing how is crucial.
I first came across these definitions on Brainware, Dan Erwin’s excellent blog about career development, neuroscience, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Dan often writes on the topic of feedback and is an excellent source for really insightful articles and posts. This particular post, Gen-Y Feedback: Evaluative or Developmental, ties the notion of the two feedback languages into the world of Gen Ys. Give it a read if you’re challenged with managing people in that cohort (or are in that cohort and challenged by your manager!).
