How to GIVE FEEDBACK to your colleagues at work - Business English lesson

Let's talk today about how to give feedback at work, especially if you use English as a second language in the workplace and are not a native English speaker.

Giving feedback to your colleagues, your staff, and your managers, is an essential part of a great team. However, so few people actually do it! We often think of feedback as a scary thing that is reserved for end of year performance reviews and appraisals. However, the best teams in the world make both negative and positive feedback a key part of their company culture.

Today we’re going to hear some tips and ideas for how to give feedback to your colleagues. We’ll hear some great natural and native sounding vocabulary that we can use to do this, and then we’ll finish off with some challenges for you. Including a speaking challenge and a vocabulary quiz to see what you’ve remembered from today’s podcast. As always, if you find this podcast useful and helpful please feel free to leave a review on Apple podcasts, it really helps me out! OK, with that said let’s get started. 

Transcript

Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast. Helping you to communicate better at work. Hi everyone, my name is Chris and I’m an online business English coach and tutor. Thank you so much for stopping by and for today we’re going to talk about giving feedback at work, for non native English speakers and people who use English as work as a second language.

Giving feedback is not just for managers! If you give useful, constructive feedback to colleagues on the same level as you then you might just be helping them out. However, we need to be careful about the way that we present that feedback. That’s what we’re going to deal with today. We’re going to discuss some key ideas when giving negative feedback. Suggestions that you can add to your feedback to help you to communicate better and make sure that your feedback is welcomed. We’re going to look at some natural, native, and professional ways to communicate your feedback. We’re also going to talk a little about giving positive feedback, which is just as important, but a lot easier to communicate! We’re going to go through some great vocabulary that can help you out, then finally, we’re going to finish with a quiz to see what you remember from today’s podcast. Oh, and I’ll leave you with a speaking challenge too! So let’s get started with our first tip today.

So, right at the beginning of your feedback we’re going to suggest that you ask for permission. Whether you’re a manager, or on the same level as someone, this can be a great way to start your conversation. Especially when giving negative feedback. By telling someone what they’re doing wrong you may make them a little nervous or insecure. By offering control of the situation to them right at the beginning of the conversation we can deal, at least to some extent, with the negative feelings that many people associate with getting feedback. Let’s look at some natural and native ways that we can do this.

“Would you mind if I gave you a little feedback”.

“If it’s OK with you, I think I’ve noticed something that might be able to help you out”.

“Would it be OK if I gave you a couple of pointers on what you’re doing”.

“If you’ve got a moment, I’d love to let you know a couple of things I’ve noticed about the work you’ve been doing”.

You might notice here that we used “some feedback” and “a little feedback”. There is a really important grammar point here and that is that “feedback” is an uncountable noun. Just like information, news, knowledge, water, love, and stuff, we cannot add an “s” to the end of feedback and make it a plural. One of the most common grammar mistakes that I hear when discussing the topic of feedback with people is “I got a feedback from my manager”. This is always a grammar mistake so watch out for this one!

Importantly, I noticed that all of those sentences were positive! If it’s possible, you should try to keep your whole interaction positive. Focusing more on how a situation can be improved, rather than why it’s bad. 

Let’s do one quick piece of vocabulary here and let’s talk about the noun, pointer. This is a slightly more American English word. A pointer is a quick tip, or a little piece of advice. For instance, “let me give you a couple of pointers before you try that again”. If the advice that you want to give will only take a moment, then you can refer to it as a pointer. This is a countable noun, so you might give someone a quick pointer, or a few pointers for instance. 

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Our second tip today may be my personal favourite. This is the thing that I always chose to focus on when I give feedback to colleagues at work. It’s also what I choose to focus on when people give me feedback! This tip is to focus on the future. Focus on next steps, moving forward, and what you’re going to change. It’s easy to spend a lot of time thinking about the past, talking about what went wrong and discussing all of the mistakes that were made. However, what is far more productive is to think about what you’re going to change in order to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. What systems are you going to put in place, how are you going to measure your success going forward, and how often are you going to assess your performance for instance. Let’s take a look at some great ways to keep the focus on the future. 

OK, that’s water under the bridge. let’s see what we can change moving forwards

It’s done now, so let’s not worry about it. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do from now on.

There’s no use crying over spilt milk, let’s put together some concrete next steps.

There were a couple of great idioms in our example there so let’s take a look at both of them. They mean very similar things. We can call something water under the bridge if it’s something that has passed and are therefore not important anymore. If you’ve had an argument with a colleague for instance and you finally shake hands and make up then you might say that the problems that you’ve had are all water under the bridge. Similarly we heard, “there’s no use crying over spilt milk”. If you spill some milk then there’s nothing that can be done. It’s on the floor, you can’t use it anymore. Crying over it or worrying about it isn’t going to improve the situation. You just need to clean it up and move on. For instance, “my boss decided not to promote me, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk. I’m just going to keep doing the best work I can”.

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The third idea I have for you today is to be timely with your feedback. By this I mean, the closer to the event that you address the issue, the better. Feedback isn’t about catching people by surprise, and the sooner that you deliver the feedback, the more likely your colleague is to be expecting it. Let’s face it, if we’ve made a mistake we often already know it, but having a colleague point it out to you can often be the thing that pushes you to change something. If you think you’ve made a mistake or done a bad job but nobody noticed, then maybe you don’t need to worry about it. However, as soon as you know it’s affected your colleagues or your team, then you know that you really do need to take action. People often think of feedback as this big scary thing. They often save feedback for the end of the year, or until they’ve forgotten the details. Let’s face it, not many of us can remember a project that we did 6 months ago, and advice on how you could have improved your work on that project is not especially useful! If we learn to give feedback more often then it feels far more like a normal part of our working day. Let’s look at some ways we can mention or talk about time when giving feedback

I wanted to talk to you about this while it’s still fresh in my mind

I thought I should mention this before it slips my mind

This shouldn’t take a moment, it’s just a quick thing I want to get off my chest.

There were a couple of great phrases there. For something to be fresh in your mind means that you’re still thinking about it. It’s something that you are thinking about for the first time and you want to talk about it while you still know all the details. If you say that something has “slipped your mind” then you mean that you’ve forgotten it. For instance, “I’m sorry I’m late. This meeting just slipped my mind!” Finally there we heard, “to get something off your chest”. This means that you have been worrying about something, but you’ll feel better if you tell someone. We can also use this when we feel guilty about something, maybe a mistake we’ve made that no one has noticed. However, if you are worried about something that a colleague has done. Maybe a mistake they make frequently or the way that they do something, you might get it off your chest by talking to them, or maybe even by talking to your manager. 

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Next, let’s talk about letting your colleague take the lead. Getting negative feedback is stressful. Even with the best will in the world, when we know that we’re going to take that feedback and use it to improve, when we know we’re going to treat the feedback in a positive way, it’s still really stressful to have someone stand in front of you and tell you what you’re doing wrong. For this reason, it can be great to open the door for your colleague and allow them to discover the mistake on their own. By choosing our words carefully and inviting them to talk about the issue then we can often find that our colleague comes to the same conclusion we did. This makes the process of finding a solution a lot easier and makes it feel more like collaboration than criticism. Let’s take a look at a few ways that we might do this.

I was thinking about what you’re doing and it looks like hard work. Have you considered any other ways to go about it?

I’m not sure we’re communicating on this project in the best way possible. What do you think?

I’ve noticed that you’re having some trouble with the deadlines on this project. Is there anything the team can do to help?

I know our targets are quite tough right now. Is there anything in particular that you think is making it difficult for you to hit them?

That second one contains one of my favourite tips for great professional communication. Notice how instead of making the feedback about the colleague, I made it about us, about the team, and about collaboration. If there’s a way to phrase your feedback so that it doesn’t feel like you’re singling out your colleague, but still communicate the ideas that you’re trying to get across then this can be a great way to build a safe environment to discuss the problem together. You can see this in those other suggestions with “is there anything the team can do to help?” and “our targets”.

Let’s have a quick chat about the phrase in the first example, “Have you considered any other ways to go about it?” The way that you go about something is the way that you do something. For instance, “I think I’m going about this all wrong” or maybe, “how do you think we can go about telling him the bad news?”

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Let’s take some time to discuss positive feedback, or compliments that you might want to give. As you can imagine, you don’t really need to go through this whole process to give a good compliment or positive feedback. However, having some natural and native sounding vocabulary for this can be great to get you started. One thing that I’ve learned from working in various teams across various industries is that most people are really bad at giving compliments and positive feedback. Often it’s not until your team has been working together for a long time and really feel like friends that they start to share this kind of feedback. However, something that can help to get you to that stage is to talk to your colleagues about the great work that they’re already doing. So let’s take a look at a couple of great phrases that we can use to express this.

I just wanted to tell you that I noticed what a great job you did the other day.

I hope you don’t mind me saying this but your work is really impressive.

You’re really been pulling your weight recently and I just want to let you know that I think the team really appreciates it.

There was a really great idiom in that third example there and that was “pulling your weight”. This idiom comes from the sport of rowing. If you’re rowing a boat then you and your teammates have to move a lot of weight. If you’re doing your share of the work, and working as hard as you should be then you’ll be doing a lot of pulling. In fact, you’ll be pulling your weight. So of course, if someone is not doing their share of the work then we can say that they’re not pulling their weight. There’s another interesting idiom here that we use when everyone is working toward the same goal. When everyone is working hard to move the project forward and is focussed on completing the work then we can say that they are all “pulling in the same direction”. For instance, “We asked our customers what they want us to change about the product and we got some great feedback. Now it feels like all of our teams are really pulling in the same direction”.

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OK, let’s take a look back at some of the vocabulary that we’ve discussed today and see what you can remember. Let’s start with this one. Which idiom can we use to talk about events that are in the past, to explain that they are not important, they’re not relevant to what’s happening right now. Especially when they’re bad or negative things. The idiom I’m thinking of is about crossing a river. Well, when we walk across rivers we often use a bridge and this idiom is “water under the bridge”. For instance, “my colleague forgot to pass on a message from the client and they got really upset when I didn’t call them back. But that was last week, it’s water under the bridge, there’s no point being upset with them”.

How about this one. Which word, beginning with P is an informal way to talk about advice or tips. This word, mainly used in American English, is used when we want to give quick pieces of feedback that could perhaps help someone to immediately improve the way that they’re doing something. We can call these quick tips “pointers”. As in, “I noticed that you spend a lot of time formatting your emails every time you need to send one. Can I give you a quick pointer that will speed up the process for you?”

Another idiom now and, which idiom can I use to talk about something that I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while. Especially something I’ve been worrying about, something that has been concerning me. This idiom includes a part of your body. That part of your body is your chest and if I want to tell you something that has been on my mind and causing me to worry then I can say that I’m “getting something off my chest”. As in, “do you have a couple of minutes to talk? There’s something I really need to get off my chest”.

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Alright, let’s jump into a speaking challenge. The way this works is that I’m going to give you a question related to today’s topic. My challenge for you is to answer that question using as much of today’s vocabulary and as many of the ideas from today’s podcast as possible. If you feel like you can answer today’s question in a few seconds or a couple of sentences then set a stopwatch and see how long you can speak for. I would love it if you could spend 2 minutes or more speaking on the topic. On the other hand, if you find that you speak for too long then maybe you can try to limit yourself to 2 minutes! Either way, speaking is a really important part of improving your English. Even if it’s on your own, it’s still an important component of remembering this vocabulary and these ideas. So, how about this for today’s question. 

What can managers do to encourage their teams to give more feedback to each other at work? How can they build an environment where feedback, both negative and positive, is a regular thing that colleagues share with each other every day.

So there’s our question for today. At the end of today’s podcast I invite you to spend a couple of minutes speaking on this topic. Maybe you’ve got some thoughts that you’d like to get off your chest!

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That is about all we have time for today, thank you so much for listening. I really hope you found today’s podcast useful. Feedback is something that a lot of non native English speakers worry about so I’m glad we could discuss it a little today. Don’t forget that if you’d like to work with me to improve the way that you communicate at work then go to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com, that’s www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com. If you’re listening to this on Apple podcasts then please feel free to leave a review, it really helps me out. So until next time, my name is Chris, this is the Breakout Business English podcast, and I’ll see you next time.