Suggestions for increasing amount of feedback?

Easy: spend more time with your directs.

I actually think you're probably OK, and I'll tell you my reasoning in a minute. But first: is there [i]any[/i] possibility that you're not spending enough time with your directs? Are you "off doing other things" (like maybe admin stuff or attending meetings) that's really giving you less value than spending time with your directs? Just something to look at/think about while you're in the formative stages of your new role...

Here's a great rule-of-thumb, from the Gallup Organization (read Marcus Buckingham's books, especially [i]First, Break All the Rules [/i]if you haven't already). As I remember, one of the key questions is whether an employee has received praise/feedback "within the last week."

So if you're going to make a concerted effort, pmoriarty, try providing praise/feedback to each of your directs at least once a week.

Now here's why you might be OK "only" giving one bit of positive feedback a day at this stage. Your posts says that you're now making an effort to introduce positive feedback. Great! But don't let the effort become forced, or appear to be a "technique" - it's got to be genuine, or it looks like another example of "my manager got some training and came back with a new fad."

I'm not suggesting ANY of your feedback has been less-than-genuine. I'm just suggesting that you be careful not to let your desire to give positive feedback to undercut it's credibility...

Good luck!

-Hugh

There are other things you can observe without direct interaction with your directs. For example...

"When I get an email from you summarizing the status of the project..."

"When you give Bob the completed assignment on time, HWH, Bob comes to me and complements you on the work you are doing..."

I was in the same situation when I took my last position, a position managing a team of people scattered around the world. Although my situation may not be similar, I found that I could provide feedback through email and even by phone. When I would visit the sites I even found that people placed copies of my feedback at their desks (positive and negative) and I would just reinforce it by asking how they were doing in relation to the feedback. I would make it an effort to call each site at least once a week and talk individually with each person once every two weeks (O3 I suppose) and I would find ways to continue the feedback. When I left my team told me that their feedback was one of the most positive things I did with them. So, I guess I want to say that even though you are not with your team members all of the time you may still be able to find alternative ways to continue feedback.

I would confess that this is probably not as good as direct person-to-person feedback but it seemed to work well with me. As everyone else said, focus on ways to spend more time with your directs and I believe that the opportunities for feedback will appear.

I would not encourage feedback by e-mail. The priority with feedback should be as much personal contact as possible. If it is not possible to walk up to them in person, then the phone is the next best option. E-mail just doesn't work within this model in my experience.

Mike and Mark reinforced this, by the way, at the Chicago conference. With a room full of primarily techies, this question came up very quickly when we were practicing and discussing feedback. Mark emphatically said "no" to feedback by e-mail.