Tips for Group Practice Owners Giving Employee Feedback

Running a group practice can be simultaneously invigorating, challenging, and rewarding for many business owners.

One piece to the management puzzle that many owners initially overlook is the development of their employees, which is essential for a flourishing business.

Many group private practice owners may not have experience in managing employees, which means feedback conversations about their performance can often feel uncomfortable or even intimidating.

However, as a business owner and manager, leading these interactions is one of the most important components of the success of your practice.

4 strategies for giving employee feedback

Here’s the good news: you can help turn these conversations into growth experiences that give your employees the chance to learn and develop—which will, ultimately, lead to both their personal success and the success of your practice.

Below are four helpful strategies to implement next time you have a constructive conversation with an employee.

1. Meet in person one-on-one 

This may sound like a no-brainer, but this is the first imperative step to setting up your conversation for success.

Meeting in-person shows that you as the supervisor are invested in the development of your employee, and it also helps to ensure the intention of your message gets across.

Sending a text or email invites more room for confusion, misunderstanding, and missing nuance.

Consequently, I recommend meeting face-to-face whenever giving employee feedback.

An important note to remember when meeting in person is to be conscious of your nonverbal expression, especially during any type of feedback conversation.

Your body language, position in the room, facial expressions, and tone of voice help to communicate your message, so be sure all of these components align with your intention of the exchange.

I also suggest sitting at eye level with your employee, and keeping your facial expressions relaxed and softened. These simple steps can help communicate in an accessible way that you are approachable and open to input during this face-to-face conversation.

2. Keep the conversation constructive, focusing on a growth mindset

Most often, the point of giving employee feedback is to resolve an ongoing issue at hand, and it’s a great opportunity to come to a constructive resolution in a way that ultimately aids the growth of your employee.

An important point to keep in mind is to always steer the conversation back to the improvement you’d like to see your employee accomplish.

As a business owner, it’s essential that you genuinely care about the success of your employees in order for your business to also succeed, and so communicating your true investment in an employee’s growth in reaching new goals is key.

When providing feedback, keeping a growth mindset at the forefront of your messaging is a great way to keep the conversation constructive and developmental. A growth mindset means keeping feedback related to the employee’s behavior at work—not any personal traits that they may not be able to change.

This will communicate to them that this behavior is something that can improve and will ultimately help boost their job performance.

It’s important to focus on rewarding improvement and the process of growth rather than a specific result. This will allow your employee to feel motivated to improve, even if the desired result is not achieved right away.

3. Be direct, clear, and concise

The ultimate goal of a feedback conversation, aside from positive change and growth by an employee, is to ensure little to no room for misunderstanding or nuance.

By communicating clearly and concisely, and simply stating the issue at hand, you leave little room for gray area. If even a small part of your message is misconstrued or misunderstood by your employee, it can negate the entire conversation and potentially leave your employee feeling confused and disgruntled.

An important component of giving employee feedback is to be direct, and that’s why I don’t recommend the popular “sandwich” method in which a manager provides positive comments, followed by the main message, and then ends with some final positive comments.

This method allows too much room for the employee to only hear the positive comments and not take to heart the constructive feedback sandwiched between compliments.

As their manager, you have to be hyper-aware of the language you use so that you find a happy medium between harsh and sugarcoating.

The goal is to have any feedback conversation viewed by employees as developmental and an opportunity for growth, not as a threat or punishment.

4. Invite input and questions

It’s important to remember that any type of feedback conversation is meant to be an exchange, not just a one-way conversation. After all, the most basic definition of communication involves the sending and receiving of a message between at least two people. In other words, communication is fundamentally meant to be an exchange—a giving and a receiving.

A great way to encourage input is to develop a solution and a forward-moving plan together with your employee. Ask how you as their employer or manager can help them achieve their specific goals.

And, lastly, I recommend ending the conversation by circling back to the key points that you want to ensure are properly understood and allow your employee the opportunity to ask questions.

All of these steps communicate your genuine investment in their success and comprehension which is essential for resolution and growth.

The implementation of the above strategies during your next feedback conversation provides an excellent opportunity for growth, development, and the ultimate success of your employees.

Keeping these tips in your back pocket will help you as a manager to overcome mental barriers surrounding giving employee feedback, allowing you to create and sustain a thriving business.

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