Part of Vitorelo's job is to enhance Patelco's culture of improvement by sharing feedback. Employees meet formally with managers twice a year, but the dialogue is ongoing.

"A culture that is more feedback rich, where employees meet with their managers weekly or monthly, those annual and mid-year conversations aren't anything to be worried about. You're getting feedback and coaching throughout the year," Vitorelo said.

Feedback needs to be integrated into the organization so that it is part of an ongoing cultural process, she said.

One of its tools is the Quantum Workplace survey, which contains 34 questions about the workplace that employees rate on a six-point scale. Employees are also encouraged to provide comments, and usually employees submit 700 to 900 comments each year.

Patelco ($5.7 billion in assets, 311,832 members) made a concerted effort starting in 2014 to act on 10 areas where it saw it needed the most improvement. Managers systematically posted quotes from the comments, or referred to them in meetings, while also saying what they were doing to respond to the concerns.

In January, Patelco received the Quantum Workplace award recognizing it for having the largest improvement in employee engagement from 2015 to 2016 for mid-sized organizations with 500 to 1,000 employees.

"Providing feedback early and often is part of Patelco's culture," Vitorelo said. "Feedback drives organizational engagement which ultimately drives member experience and the organization's success.

"As a leader in the organization, your primary role is to ensure that your team is set up for success. The only way to do that is to provide them feedback and coaching on how they can continue to do better."

Managers at Redwood Credit Union ($3.5 billion in assets, 231,656 members) are trained to use balanced feedback, said Lee Alderman, assistant vice president of training and financial literacy for the credit union based in Santa Rosa, Calif., about 55 miles north of San Francisco. For example:

• A manager asks an employee to give an example of something that he or she thought went well.

• Then the manager offers something he or she thought went well.

• Then the manager asks the employee what would they do differently next time.

• Then the manager suggests something the employee could do differently next time.

Alderman said the key is to turn the focus to the "next time" — "instead of dwelling on what went wrong."

This, in turn, ties in with Redwood's culture of constantly trying to get better. The conversation becomes an opportunity to find a way to improve as an individual employee and contribute to the credit union's improvement.

"It's a forward-looking process," Alderman said. "We want them to be part of the process."

Some managers at Patelco use a program called "integrity coaching" introduced in 2011. It emphasizes five steps: Ask, listen, coach, praise and challenge. More recently, Patelco has been training managers using a model called "Situation-Action-Results." It is based on the manager assessing:

• What was the situation?

• What was the action the employee took?

• What was the result, and how do you need the employee to do it differently?

"There are multiple ways managers can have a performance feedback conversation," Vitorelo said. "But at the end of the day, what we want is our managers having those conversations, and making sure the feedback is given to reiterate the type of behavior we want in the future."

There are, however, ways not to have performance conversations: In front of peers and after the moment is past, she said.

Jill Weaver, director of learning and development for Wright-Patt Credit Union ($3.6 billion in assets, 337,932 members) in Dayton, Ohio, encourages others to have conversations directly, but tactfully. Having difficult conversations as issues arise can prevent problems from festering.

"We spend time dancing around things. We're very nice. We respect others. That level of respect is important, but we have trouble having difficult conversations early on," Weaver said.

Before offering criticism, managers should try to first check in with an employee to find out what's going well or badly for them, and what the manager could do that might make their daily worklife go better, said Paul White, a workplace consultant and author of "The Vibrant Workplace: Overcoming the Obstacles to Building a Culture of Appreciation."

Sometimes it's something simple. An employee who seems grumpy in the afternoon might not be getting a lunch break until 2 p.m.

Listening skills are crucial, White said. Managers need to restate what they've heard, to be sure they understand the main points. "A lot of times we get the details right but we miss the main point."

Managers should be sure to ask employees for ideas or suggestions for improvement. The employee is more likely to accept a solution if they feel they helped create it. "Don't always try to solve it yourself," White said.

The supervisor should also keep in mind his or her main point. "Conversations can wander. Sometimes it doesn't go the direction you were thinking it was going. If you have a main point in mind, at least at the end you can say, 'One thing I wanted to make sure I communicated with you is …' and then you share your main point."

Then, the supervisor needs to make sure the employee heard the main point. The supervisor can ask, 'What do you think I'm saying in that?'

"Sometimes they'll read into it something that you're not saying," White said.