Nervous? 3 Ways to Ask for Feedback

Tweet Pin It  

• June 15, 2010
• By Team Brazen
• No Comments

It’s excruciating to wait until a performance review to find out how you’re doing at work, especially for young workers who crave feedback. Here are three strategies you can use to get the accolades and constructive criticism you need:

1) Manage Up. “Managing up is about you caring for your boss, and the result will be your boss caring for you,” Penelope Trunk says. To manage up successfully, be interested in your boss – know what matters to him or her and speak in the same language. Check in often.  When you haven’t heard from your manager in awhile, feel free to ask how you’re doing. It’s not about brown-nosing, but rather humanizing the workplace.

Don’t just wait around for your manager to come to you, but be as proactive with your relationship as you are with your work. And don’t forget to tell them when they do a good job as well – managers are often not told enough!

2) Make it Easier With a Tool. Rypple is a fantastic new online app for managers to offer feedback to their employees and vice versa. The way it works is that teams – or even just you and your manager – can stay on track, easily recognize each other’s achievements, and talk about what’s going on in your company. No need to wait on approval – the app is free. You can try it out whether you’re an employee or manger and jump right in. Rypple allows you to:

- Give and get public recognition. Rypple calls it kudos – you can even choose the graphics.

- Ask for and receive feedback. You can learn and improve with insights from your manager and colleagues, as well as anonymously (honestly) post your feedback.

- Stay in sync. Have bi-weekly 1:1 meetings with your team to encourage frequent, ongoing conversations about your performance.

By introducing a tool like this to your manager or your team, you’ll be recognized as an innovator, gain points for initiative and be able to get some great feedback. Great employees manage up by making their bosses look good and their jobs easier – you can do this and save time with Rypple because it helps you track everything in one place.

3) Send Weekly Updates –A good employee-boss relationship has great communication. It’s up to you to initiate and control that communication to show your boss that not only are you prioritizing well, but also executing successfully. A weekly update every Monday morning is a good way to show everything you’re doing and have a written record for when review time finally does roll around. Include what you accomplished the previous week and a list of priorities for the current week.

Your boss will naturally chime in with feedback and weigh in on your priorities. And if you want to take it a step further, use the weekly update as a jumping off point for a weekly meeting.

What are the ways you’ve used to successfully ask for feedback? Do you have suggestions on how to manage up?

Brazen powers real-time, online events for leading organizations around the world. Our lifestyle and career blog, Brazen Life, offers fun and edgy ideas for ambitious professionals navigating the changing world of work.