Feedback is the single most important skill that any manager can use for developing their people. It's also, for many managers, a process with which they are very unfamiliar, and often uncomfortable.

Sue Bishop's The Complete Feedback Skills Training Book provides - as the title suggests - a complete range of training and development materials to help managers understand and practise the skills of giving and receiving feedback. It can be used as a resource by trainers, who are developing managers and staff, or as a self-development book for developers themselves.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I, 'Feedback Principles', looks at the generic skills involved, such as learning how to listen, question, understand, accept or reject feedback; how to learn from role models, and how to build and maintain rapport.

Part II, entitled 'Applications', explores how to apply these skills in a variety of management contexts. As feedback is such a universally relevant skill, the author covers all of the most common situations where feedback skills are most useful. These range from the formal, appraisal or selection interviewing, to less formal situations such as coaching or counselling. Whilst most of the advice and exercises focus on one-to-one feedback, there's also a chapter on the manager and teams that explores feedback in a group.

The 20 chapters contain a variety of exercises and activities that include individual and group work, discussion topics, questionnaires, case studies, skills practice and role plays. Each section has a narrative introduction which can be used as an aide memoire for anyone using the manual for self-development.

Sue Bishop's authoritative and highly practical guide will help raise the awareness and 'status' of feedback skills amongst managers as well as providing them with the means and opportunity to reflect on and practise their skills in almost any context.

 

(Publisher: Gower)

 

(Normally delivered within 5-7 days).