Effective Communication & Employee Feedback

Why deBa?

Effective communication is much more than just talking. We all know those leaders that talk incessantly without any appreciable content. Then we also know the other leaders who struggle to string two words together. Becoming an effective communicator, like anything, requires dedicated practice and focus.

deBa enables leaders to hold themselves to account on frequency and content, ensuring that the important element of balance in communication with employees is achieved. Finally, deBa supports a leaders’ leader to help them improve their communication by providing specific, realistic and real-time examples to coach on.

deBa guides leaders on the types of conversations that they should be having with their employees via a simple prompt within the app. The three types of conversations that should be engaged in are coaching, supporting and recognition conversations.

Coaching Conversations

As the name suggests, a coaching conversation is deliberately focussed on providing information and sharing opinions on how to improve specific behaviours or achieve stated goals. In its simplest definition, the leader’s knowledge, experience, and expertise is being utilised to impart improvement/guidance to their team member. A coaching conversation doesn’t necessarily have to be long-winded or negative; however, it does need to provide some specific actions and guidance and it must include a portion of clarification to ensure the message is well understood.

Supporting Conversations

A supporting conversation is one that is more two-way than a coaching conversation and is designed to engage with your team members at a deeper level on the specific behaviour or goal that is the focus.

The idea of a supporting conversation is to keep improvement at the forefront of everyone’s mind and to maintain the focus on specific behaviours. Additionally, a supporting conversation opens the opportunity for leaders to provide more in-depth and customised support and guidance on their team members improvement journey, therefore empowering their staff.

Recognition Conversations

Recognising effort and positive results is a leader’s most effective, and arguably, easiest conversation. Confirmation and recognition that a positive result, stemming from deliberate effort and action and linked to workplace success, is a basic human desire and one that has been proven to create a greater sense of devotion and dedication to a team and organisation and improve employee engagement.

Regular Feedback

In most cases, these three types of conversations should be equally distributed over time. Being too focused or neglecting either one of these is usually an indication that the leader is not comfortable in giving specific employee feedback, or alternatively, the relationship is strained for some reason. If, for example, all conversations are geared towards coaching, it may suggest that either the employee is struggling to perform in the role, or the leader is biased or unable to influence the individual growth and improvement. On the flip-side, if all conversations are just of recognition, it may indicate that the leader is ill-equipped or unwilling to have conversations related to improvement.