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Submitted by markwalsh99 on
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Should you provide feedback to employees in other organisations that you deal with?

This week, I attended a meeting with a major OEM for which we're a channel. One presentation was given by a guy who was clearly inexperienced and very nervous. On more than one instance he read out the slides word-for-word. This made me cringe and I could see others had a similar reaction.

I met with the OEM's Channel Manager later and he alluded to this presentation. I suggested that perhaps somebody should provide him some feedback or he'd never improve. I had benefited from similar feedback myself.

The question is, should I have taken aside this individual myself? I'm not very experienced at giving feedback and was concerned with how they might receive it. This was the 1st time I'd met them in person, and had previously only been on a couple of conference calls, er I mean Effective Teleconference Meetings, with them.

What should I have done?

Mark

WillDuke's picture
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M&M have a peer feedback podcast, you should check that out.

What's your commitment to the OEM? What's your commitment to the person needing the feedback? Can you guess at the presenter's personality type?

I suppose it's all in how you present it. You definitely want to address their personality type. I'd also say to mix in some positive reaffirming feedback along with your observations for improvement.

I think if you can convey your good intentions they'll appreciate the advice.

Mark's picture
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I try to avoid "should" as it relates to management, but my thoughts are to have a bias towards yes.

In other words, I would think, yes, I would...unless I got the sense that either the politics or the power or the relationships wouldn's support it.

I suspect most folks would err the other way, and that's okay...though it is why none of us grow as fast as we could.

I wouldn't use the peer model, though, in this case...I'd think about the profesional model, which is just steps 1-3. And I'd do it politlely, and tentatively, and briefly. If you get a strong response, offer perhaps one more bit of feedback.

BUT...you're still new to this...there's no NEED to do so.

Mark