How to Develop Giving and Receiving Feedback Training for Managers

A manager’s ability to efficiently give and receive feedback bolsters their effectiveness. Implementing structured feedback training programs can lead to improved communication, heightened employee development, and a more robust organizational culture.

Learn how to create an effective training course on giving and receiving feedback for managers. You will also find a sample course outline for additional inspiration.

Key elements to include in a giving and receiving feedback training course

Naturally, your company’s training on giving and receiving feedback will reflect your organization’s unique style, challenges, and skill gaps.

But regardless of how you choose to design your feedback training program, certain elements must feature in it for it to be effective.

Training objectives

Before planning your training efforts and creating courses, you define what you hope to achieve with the training. Knowing how you want the training to impact participants will enable you to design a syllabus that addresses your main concerns and helps you reach those goals.

To determine what training objectives to set, you can send feedback surveys to managers and employees. Ask for their opinions on your organization’s feedback system and personal experience with giving and receiving feedback.

Example of training objectives

By the end of this giving and receiving feedback online training, managers will be able to:

• Understand the importance of giving and receiving feedback
• Learn different models for giving and receiving respectful feedback
• Identify the necessary mindset and attitudes that lead to productive feedback
• Pinpoint common mistakes that can have negative consequences on the feedback process
• Apply context to understand the root cause of performance issues and offer situational feedback
• Develop skills and best practices and implement plans for delivering and receiving constructive criticism
• Reinforce confidence and positive behaviors through feedback

Various models to help in the feedback process

Giving feedback is about more than what you say. How one frames the message is just as important.

You cannot expect all managers to know how to strike a balance between the two effectively. So don’t skip on teaching frameworks and techniques for giving feedback correctly.

The feedback models you teach in your training will guide managers in structuring conversations and providing clear, specific, and actionable evaluations even when uncomfortable.

It will help them deliver candid feedback focused on actions and behaviors, not the individual’s personality.

There are many different types of feedback models that you can use to boost confidence, improve communication, and structure your feedback process:

• DESC feedback model
• STAR feedback model
• GROW feedback model
• SBI feedback model
• IDEA feedback model
• CEDAR feedback model
• EEC feedback model
• BOOST feedback model
• Pendleton feedback model
• Sandwich feedback model

Although each model has its characteristics, no feedback framework is superior. Instead, you’ll have to select one or more that will resonate with participants based on their struggles, experiences, and confidence levels.

General guidelines

This is the part of your training where you will break down the core message you’re trying to convey.

Managers will learn about types of feedback, the psychology of feedback, and different feedback models. Still, it might take them a while to properly execute them.

They still have to do their jobs and find ways to communicate with direct reports.

Sharing general feedback guidelines and suggestions they can implement immediately will allow them to change how they take feedback conversations.

When they implement these little changes and get productive results, they’ll be even more excited about incorporating the larger frameworks into their feedback process.

Guidelines have to be simple and easy to remember. Here are some examples of guidelines for giving feedback that you can recommend to managers:

• Start with a yes/no question to prepare the recipient for the feedback
• State the specific issue or behavior with examples of when it occurred
• Stick to one or two points at a time—too much feedback at once can overwhelm the recipient
• Describe how the behavior affected you, other team members, or the company
• Propose or brainstorm a solution to keep the issue from arising in the future

Helpful guidelines for receiving feedback include:

• Show that you’re actively listening; make eye contact, summarize their point, and ask clarifying questions
• Be mindful of your tone and body language when responding to the speaker’s comment
• Demonstrate your interest in their perspective and ask how you can improve
• Take the time to unpack the information, reflect on your behavior, and decide whether you will use or ignore the feedback
• It’s okay not to agree with the criticism, but don’t take it personally and always seek second opinions before disregarding it

Analyzing good and lousy feedback examples is a great exercise to include in your training. Come prepared with concrete examples and ask managers to reflect on them using the guidelines you previously shared

Here are some good and bad examples you can include for your discussion:

Negative: “Mary’s work is consistently subpar, and working with her is frustrating. She needs to work harder.”

Positive: “While there’s room for improvement, I appreciate the effort Mary puts into her work. I think she could benefit from more training and guidance on prioritizing tasks.”

Giving and receiving feedback training activities

Practicing the theories they’ve learned about giving and receiving feedback will enable participants to absorb the knowledge and see what it’s like to implement it.

Begin each lesson by having everyone share examples of what they consider good or bad feedback. You can also ask them to talk about the part of the feedback process they struggle with the most.

Not only will you get some interesting answers, but you’ll also push participants to start thinking critically about how they approach feedback.

Roleplaying exercises in training sessions offer managers practical experience in giving and receiving feedback and honing their skills in a controlled environment.

For example, create scenarios and ask some participants to give feedback using the models you covered during the course. Then, another group of participants will receive and react to the feedback.

The final group can take on the role of observers and discuss how well the other participants used the feedback models and guidelines, what they should have avoided, and what they could have done better.

Collecting takeaways from all participants

At the end of each training module or course, invite your managers to write down or explain what information or training activity they found particularly beneficial.

What lessons are they taking with them or excited to use in their feedback interactions?

The responses you get will enable you to refine your training program and spur more managers to rethink preconceived notions around feedback.

Tips for leaders, mentors, and managers

Another essential ingredient in giving and receiving feedback training is practical tips. Think of tips as brief pointers to help participants easily apply what they’ve learned.

Start by considering what other tricks managers can use to elevate how they give and receive feedback. This is a great place to share any helpful advice that may not be in the main training content or courses.

You can place your tips towards the end of each training lesson or the end of the last module.

Quiz to encourage knowledge retention and engagement

How do you ensure that participants retain the information in your training courses? One method is to include quizzes.

Such assessments will allow you to track how well a manager absorbs the materials.

Depending on the scores, you can tell whether your participants are progressing or struggling with the training course. The latter will point to something wrong with your process, such as lousy instructors, poor content delivery, confusing structure, and dull or lengthy courses.

Testing also helps to reinforce old and new knowledge, making them easier to recall in the future.

Consider adding short quizzes at the end of every lesson and, of course, a final quiz at the completion of the entire training course.

Tips:

1. Keep the language for your quiz as simple as possible and opt for short questions to avoid confusing learners
2. Use a mix of questions—matching, multiple choice, fill in the blank, and true or false—in your quiz.
3. Avoid using open-ended questions unless necessary because they require more effort to answer, and the responses are more challenging to analyze and interpret for training reports

Here are some examples of single-answer quiz questions to include in your training:

1. Why is feedback important in leadership?

2. It helps leaders improve their communication skills.

3. It enables employees to feel valued and heard.

4. It promotes continuous growth and development for both leaders and employees.

5. It helps leaders maintain control over their teams.

6. Which of the following is NOT a benefit of providing regular feedback?

7. Increased employee motivation and engagement.

8. Improved team performance and productivity.

9. Prevention of surprises during performance reviews.

10. Encouraging competition and rivalry among team members.

Use a survey to collect feedback and measure training effectiveness

Your work does not end after managers complete the training course. You still need to evaluate the success of your training program.

The most effective way to evaluate effectiveness is to create post-training feedback surveys to send to participants at the end of the training.

If you ask the right questions, your survey will provide quantitative and qualitative feedback from multiple participants. Your learning and development team can then leverage this data to boost training engagement and enhance the quality of your future training activities focused on giving and receiving feedback.

Your post-training evaluation should focus on the following core intents:

• Measuring the extent to which participants found the training engaging and relevant
• Identifying whether the training met managers’ expectations
• Assessing whether participants gained new skills or knowledge from the training
• Discovering what participants think about the training content, structure, delivery, and duration
• Determining how well participants applied or are applying learnings from the training in the workplace
• Gauge whether the training met the target objectives

The questions you include in your survey should touch on these points and help you answer them.

Customize our free training evaluation form template with questions specific to feedback training.

Giving and receiving feedback training course outline

Creating a training course can be time-consuming and effort-intensive. Use this comprehensive training course outline to skip several steps in training planning and weeks of planning and preparing your training materials.

The template covers eight modules with topic breakdowns, engaging learning activities, and impactful feedback exercises for managers.

Why create training for receiving and giving feedback?

Delivering or responding to feedback incorrectly can breed adverse outcomes such as conflicts, distrust, job dissatisfaction, decreased productivity, and employee attrition. Let’s explore the value of providing your managers with training on giving and receiving feedback.

Giving and receiving feedback is a competency like any other that needs developing

You cannot expect people to be great at giving and receiving feedback just because they’re managers.

You have to help them figure out what’s wrong with their current process and how they can optimize it to reduce anxiety and turn each feedback scenario into an opportunity for learning.

It is a must-have for enabling a growth-oriented culture

Proper training on giving and receiving feedback can transform how people in your organization communicate.

If you’re serious about cultivating an environment where workers trust, respect, and support each other, feedback training should be a part of a leadership development plan.

When people fall short of expectations and receive understanding, empathy, and constructive advice, it will only deepen the bond in the workplace, leading to increased job happiness and motivation to achieve team goals.

Many find giving and receiving feedback uncomfortable

It’s human nature to avoid uncomfortable situations and get defensive when given less-than-positive feedback. It takes conscious practice to override these settings and embrace discomfort and external assessment.

Giving and receiving feedback training lays the groundwork for this by providing the right tools and knowledge resources to help managers lean into the uncomfortable with compassion, empathy, and honesty.

It will allow team leaders to cultivate a culture that prioritizes providing regular effective feedback to employees and demands and welcomes it from them.

It can be a sensitive topic that can make or break someone’s morale

Feedback training helps to develop your managers’ emotional intelligence and leadership qualities. People respect leaders who can admit to their mistakes and openly take pointers to improve their performance.

The goal is to empower leaders to receive productive feedback with an open mind instead of letting it bruise their egos. Conversely, you’ll also give them the tools to provide actionable feedback that nurtures development and doesn’t alienate employees.

The importance of giving and receiving feedback in a company

When done thoughtfully, giving and receiving feedback creates opportunities for team members to see beyond their blind spots.

It allows for open discussion and evaluation of behaviors and performance across different levels of the organization to foster trust, collaboration, and productivity.

Below are other advantages that mastering the art of feedback can unlock for your company.

Enables managers to act as coaches

Giving and receiving feedback meaningfully is an essential leadership competency, regardless of your company’s management system or style.

Without it, your managers will not know how to support your employees and will not have a sense of how their actions and decisions affect those they manage.

Learning to remain objective and navigate difficult conversations—whether they are on the giving or receiving end of it—will help your managers become effective coaches, guiding their team to success.

Motivates people to change and do their best work

Employees crave feedback. They want to see their contributions get noticed and be valued. They also want to know they will be heard and respected if they share their opinions and feedback with their supervisors or managers.

When they receive positive acknowledgment and appreciation for their work, they will become more confident in their skills and work to improve.

The key here is having your people treat all feedback, even criticism, as an improvement exercise, not a trial for which they must defend themselves.

But all this only happens if feedback is given and received the right way.

Suppose employees are belittled and scolded abusively every time they make a mistake. In that case, they will disengage, and team morale will plummet.

Creates a growth-oriented and high-performance culture

You can’t build a learning culture without creating an environment where people are free to give and receive positive and negative feedback without incident.

Effective feedback is how managers build top-notch employee experiences and ensure their workers stay happy and engaged. Plus, it helps them resolve office tensions before they escalate into something toxic.

It’s also how managers learn what their direct reports think of their leadership style and skills and what areas they need to work on.

The result is a workplace with a high-performance culture, where everyone feels like they belong and are open to developing themselves to achieve greater team and personal career success.

Create a feedback and performance culture with Deel Engage

Deel Engage’s all-in-one suite of tools helps you speed up your training process. Zavvy makes it easy for you to:

• Create and launch fully automated training courses in captivating formats using our learning management system
• Use the AI assistant to accelerate training content creation
• Deliver targeted learning experiences to managers and employees at the right point in their journey
• Equip managers with coaching skills to effectively lead their teams and model positive behaviors
• Assess the effectiveness of your training programs with feedback surveys
• Evaluate your manager’s giving and receiving feedback competencies

Additionally, Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free.

Book a demo to see how our solutions will help you build a high-performance workforce.