Great supervision starts with great feedback

  • Published
  • By Chief Master Sgt. Mark Bronson
  • 60th Diagnostics & Therapeutics Squadron
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  As I thought about what I feel can hinder our mission effectiveness, every time I kept coming back to one topic: Feedback. It is one of the most important things we do as leaders and supervisors, yet when you ask many of our Airmen, they are either not getting it or it is not as candid as it needs to be.

Talk with the Inspector General office and it will tell you the root cause of many complaints is the lack of feedback and the results of not getting that feedback. I, personally, have had too many conversations with Airmen who tell me they have never received adequate feedback. Why is that? We all know it is mandatory to give an initial and midterm feedback, so where is the breakdown?

There are several reasons I think we are not as effective as we can be when it relates to feedback. One is that it takes a significant amount of time to give thorough feedback. Each feedback session we conduct should be specific about our expectations for those we rate. We should spell out our expectations for every task we expect our Airmen to perform and give them a bar to gauge their progress against. The more specific we can be, the more effective it will be.

We should spell out what meeting expectations looks like so they know when they don't meet, exceed or greatly exceed those standards. We are all extremely busy, but we must take the time to provide great feedback.

As a result of the first issue, it leads to supervisors who never were given proper feedback so they are unsure how to perform a good feedback session themselves. It's unfortunate, but I have heard Airmen say they haven't had a proper feedback in several years, if ever. While conducting enlisted performance reports and bullet writing professional development seminars I heard this time and time again.

My advice if you fall in this category is to seek out advice and help from your mentors and trusted advisors to guide you in the right direction.

Finally, and more importantly, what I think is the biggest hurdle we face when it comes to feedback is giving honest, candid and specific feedback. Feedbacks are easy to give when your Airman is doing great, but when they are deficient in some areas, I feel many supervisors struggle to "call the baby ugly."

It's never an easy conversation to tell someone they are not up to standard in their job or not meeting the standard when it comes to presenting a professional military image. As difficult as this feedback is, it must be done. If we care about those we rate and want them to succeed we need to point out not only their strengths but areas for improvement, regardless of the difficulty of the topic. Leaders are not afraid to do the right thing regardless of how difficult it may be.

I challenge each of you to demand great feedback if you are not getting it. Great feedback enhances mission effectiveness and makes us stronger leaders. We must provide honest and candid feedback - our Airmen deserve it.