Writing Effective Co-worker Comments

Don't make accusatory, hurtful, or "personal" comments.

At Synygy, Inc., a Philadelphia-based company which provides incentive compensation plan management software and services for major corporations such as DuPont, Sun Microsystems, and Eli Lilly, co-worker feedback is part of a quarterly performance management system that encourages open communication and growth. The company uses these summaries of the characteristics of effective coworker comments, and also provides specific examples:

Characteristics of effective coworker comments

• Make comments that support your scores.

• Don't make accusatory, hurtful, or "personal" comments. Address behaviors and the impact of these behaviors on coworkers, the project, etc.-comments should not address personalities or motives.

• Point out positive as well as problematic behaviors. Remember that the purpose of the evaluations is to provide feedback on things a person does well (and to encourage continuing these behaviors) and on areas that need improvement (and to provide suggestions for improvement).

• Be as specific as possible; avoid generalities. Try to give examples of behaviors you are criticizing. A person who receives a vague comment may have no idea what they are doing that is causing your perception. That means they certainly won't know what to do to change their behavior.

• When pointing out a problem, try to suggest a possible solution.

• When commenting on someone's progress in correcting a problematic behavior, recognize intermediate steps in improvement (many behaviors take time to improve).

• Be aware of the overall tone of your comments. Again, be as factual as possible. Don't convey blame. Think about how the person receiving your comments will feel when they read them.

• To the extent possible, your comments should summarize issues that you've already discussed with the person during the past quarter. Don't make comments "out of the blue." This is especially true for mentors.

Examples of effective coworker comments

• You are driven and motivated in your work. You are very clear about what you own within the department. It would benefit the entire department if you paid more attention to the delivery and tone of some of your comments. Assigning a duty or responsibility sometimes comes across as a harsh directive instead of a transition of duties or responsibilities.

  When offering feedback after being presented with a new idea, it would be helpful if you recognized the possibility of a new process before immediately negating the idea. For example, when it was suggested that we rebuild the field templates for ProjX, you immediately resisted because of the time involved in implementation without considering the benefits of the change.

• You are a great asset to the team. You are very professional and focused on your work. Despite the difficult deadlines for the ProjX implementation, you maintain a positive attitude. You respond to problems without getting angry or frustrated. You often stay late working and are very conscientious of timelines and resources. Your most outstanding "value" from what I have seen is your attitude towards continuous improvement. Whenever you have free time I see you studying VBA or looking over someone's shoulder trying to troubleshoot a problem.

• You seem to have lost your focus, which is essential to being successful on ProjX. This is evident in that you have signed your initials to checklist items without fully performing the checks for the project, which resulted in poor quality and client questions.

  You seem to take constructive criticism as a personal attack, rather than assistance from people who are trying to help. Your attitude over the past quarter, though it has improved somewhat recently, has been harmful to your relationship with your co-workers and your work quality because people on your team to not feel comfortable communicating with you. You have the ability to do your job extremely well, but haven't taken the initiative to do so.

• You have worked very hard to improve your technical skills by increasing your work with the ProjX field and verification templates and the data model documentation. You continuously work on improving your relationship with the client and your co-workers, you try very hard to resolve inter-office problems quietly and maturely.

  My only criticism is that you tend to just ask for solutions to problems without completely understanding what the problem is -- for example, the rounding problem on the field template from last week. Upon understanding the issue you usually can arrive at the solution.

• You clearly have the desire to run projects but you have to be willing to put in the time on the details and become more thorough before you will have the ability to do so. Areas to improve: attention to detail, ability to communicate plan concepts and system specifics quickly and clearly, Integrator, timeliness.

• You do what is necessary to make the client happy and are willing to work extra if things are behind. You have an excellent knowledge of the software tools and understand how your projects work. You could focus more on training your coworkers, which would benefit them and ease your burden. You have a lot to offer, don't keep it to yourself. Good client management skills and client focus. You are a lot of fun to work with.

• Your job skills and initiative are very good. You are always willing to help others solve problems even if it inconveniences you and you are very willing to work above and beyond the call of duty.

  One thing to possibly improve is your skills in managing others and in training others in your group about their projects. You have an intimate knowledge of your projects and since you designed them, sometimes you take for granted that others on the team may have more knowledge than they actually possess.

  Sometimes when fixing a problem, you do not readily explain how you are fixing it because you often work quickly. This is fine for solving problems, but if you explained the issues a little more clearly, it could be of great service to your team members.

Thanks to Synygy / Crain Communications Inc. / Work Force