guiding leaders of volunteers to feed the passion of those who choose to serve

 

The R-B-I/B-I-F Feedback Model is a helpful guide for offering thorough, descriptive feedback that will meet the goals of reinforcing or redirecting performance and behavior.

When sharing feedback for recognition, the R-B-I combination of the model
is followed—Recognition-Behavior-Impact.  For baseball fans, this acronym is easy to recall, representing runs batted in as a statistic of the national pastime.  RBIs are a good thing, much as feedback for recognition is.  The desire is to see them repeated in baseball, scoring more runs to win games, just like repetition is encouraged for recognition-worthy performance.  Clear, concise and comprehensive comments that recognize exemplary performance include these elements:

Recognition

Capture the attention of the feedback recipient with a superlative word such as “awesome,” “outstanding” or “amazing.”  Choose exclamatory words that sound natural coming from the leader and vary them to avoid appearing trite and repetitive.         

“Joanne, you did a stellar job checking in our guests today!” 

Behavior

Describe the behavior in concise yet descriptive terms.  Behaviors are defined as actions that are able to be seen or heard.     

“I saw how you greeted people upon their arrival, gathered their information and kept them moving through our check-in process in such an efficient way.” 
 
Impact

Explain the impact of the behavior.  Every behavior has an impact.  Consider the impact to the volunteer, fellow volunteers on a team, the leader, the organization, the cause and/or the beneficiary.       

“Our guests know that somebody cares about them, and they feel welcomed here when you greet them in such a caring and enthusiastic way.  Also, the advisors can serve more of our guests when they are processed so quickly at check-in.” 
 
By following the R-B-I combination of the model, the leader has left no doubt in Joanne’s mind as to what her leader desires for her to continue to do.  This versatile, easy-to-follow guideline for feedback deserving recognition is useful for verbal and written feedback.

The B-I-F—Behavior-Impact-Future—combination of the model is equally useful when offering feedback for improvement.  The acronym is reminiscent of an unsavory character from the Back to the Future motion picture trilogy, Biff Tannen.  Biff was a bully.  Others desired for Biff to improve his behavior.  Therein is the pneumonic for leaders when using the B-I-F combination of The R-B-I/B-I-F Feedback Model.        

Behavior

Describe the behavior in concise yet descriptive terms.  Behaviors are defined as actions that are able to be seen or heard.     

“I noticed that you included the lids with the boxes in the box storage area.” 

Impact

Explain the impact of the behavior.  Every behavior has an impact.  Consider the impact to the volunteer, fellow volunteers on a team, the leader, the organization, the cause and/or the beneficiary.       

“When our teachers arrive to shop at the Free Store, they use these boxes to pack their school supplies.  Most will not use the box lids—they just leave them behind.  As a result, at the end of the day we have to clean up a bunch of box lids.” 

Future

Provide guidance or a recommendation for what the volunteer may do differently in the future.  Including phrases such as “Next time . . .” or “In the future . . .” reinforce that the redirective suggestions will be followed with continued opportunities to perform the behavior to expectation.             

“You may want to consider breaking down the box lids with the other recyclable materials and just stacking the boxes in the storage area without the lids for our teachers to use.”

The B and I are constant in both combinations of this communication model, representing the important roles behavior and impact play when providing quality feedback on performance.  The R and F, recognition and future, are the differentiators in the two combinations of the model.  Their presence denotes the difference in how these supportive messages are received and heeded by volunteers—either to repeat or redirect the behaviors to sustain or change their impact.

rethinking feedback:  the r-b-I/b-I-f feedback model