Many of you are finishing up year-end performance reviews and working with your team members to set goals for the coming year. But have you thought about how you’re going to help your staff keep working on target toward those goals? The key is to provide consistent feedback on their performance along the way.

I first heard the phrase feedback is the breakfast of champions from a former colleague, Rick Tate. He explained it in sports terms. Can you imagine training for the Olympics with no one telling you how fast you ran or how high you jumped? That idea seems ludicrous, yet many people operate in a vacuum in organizations, not knowing how well they are doing on any given task.

Too often managers save up negative feedback and unload it all at once over a minor incident or during a performance review. Even worse, others misrepresent the performance review and act as if everything is okay when it really isn’t. Both situations are dangerous. When people are attacked or not dealt with truthfully, they lose respect for their manager and their organization as well as pride in their own work.

Truthful, timely feedback is important to people. We all want to know how well we are doing whether that comes in the form of praise for a job well done, coaching to improve performance, or even redirection if necessary. I firmly believe that providing clear feedback on a regular basis is the most cost-effective strategy for improving performance and instilling satisfaction. It can be done quickly, it costs nothing, and it can turn performance around fast.