Tough Love: How to Give Critical Performance Feedback

When asked who likes to give critical feedback, no hand is ever raised. We may know it’s helpful and powerful, yet most shy away from doing so.

The anticipated disappointment, hurt, or surprise on an employee’s face makes even tough managers step away from the “Zone of Uncomfortable Debate.”

What if it were easier to dispense criticism? What if we could reframe the critical-feedback conversation, for managers and employees, normalizing it as part of the job? We can, however, thanks to our natural discomfort or inexperience with critical feedback, we tend to give flawed information that is:

    1. Overly vague and general.
    2. Sandwiched between a myriad of good traits or accomplishments (often referred to as the “sandwich technique,” which we recommend against).

In an effort to avoid hurt feelings, we give vague feedback like, “you could improve” or “you’d benefit from developing.” We overemphasize positive accomplishment to “soften the blow.” These mistakes are disastrous. They leave the employee confused, or worse, confident everything is fine. In one case, an employee was so buoyed by false-positive feedback, they refused to believe their manager had terminated them – and returned to work the next day.

The key to giving challenging feedback is to be clear and direct. This is different from being “brutally honest.” Why would you ever want to be brutal? We recommend what Kim Scott terms “radical candor.” In her book and TedTalk, she tells the powerful story of getting radically candid feedback from her boss, Sheryl Sandberg, then a senior executive at Google.

In an attempt to give Kim feedback on the fatal flaw (using a distracting number of “ums” while presenting to senior executives), Sheryl suggested Kim get a speech coach. When that suggestion was brushed off by Kim with ”yeah, that would be nice.” Sheryl became radically candid. She said, “When you say ‘um’ every three words, it makes you sound stupid and insecure.” That’s pretty much as clear and direct as you can be. Instead of being defensive, Kim realized that what she considered a “minor tick” was an issue that greatly affected her career success. She decided to move into action immediately.

While you may not yet be comfortable with this level of candor, chances are you can make challenging feedback clearer and more direct.

Janice, one of our Navigator participants, sought coaching to offer more clear and direct performance feedback to her employee. Ahmed wanted to be promoted from individual contributor to team lead, but he lacked essential active-listening skills. As a result, clients felt he didn’t care about them and often asked to work with someone other than Ahmed. Despite several coaching sessions on the topic – and specially agreed-upon action steps for change – Ahmed continued to rush through conversations, not actively listening to clients’ needs. Instead, he spent time building relationships with internal stakeholders to increase his chances of being promoted.

Janice called Ahmed’s former boss to get her take on the issue. She confirmed that she’d struggled with the same behavior from Ahmed and was at a loss on how to guide Janice.

Undeterred, Janice decided to see if some “radical candor” would help Ahmed move into action.

Recognizing the need to be more clear, direct, and candid, she set up a meeting and told Ahmed, ”I know we’ve discussed the need to develop and prioritize your listening skills in previous coaching meetings, but I haven’t seen a significant change. I also know you want to be promoted, and I see that as a possibility for you. To get there, however, you’ll need to drastically improve your active listening skills, making it a daily priority. Without this effort and shift, you will not be considered for promotion. This skill is a baseline requirement for all senior roles. What are your thoughts?  Would you like the two of us to map out a coaching plan to get you there?”

Janice’s radical candor woke Ahmed up. His desire to advance, and her unequivocal clarity about what it would take for him to get there, put him on a powerful new path. He committed to asking open-ended questions during each client call. He practiced using “tell me more,” even when he thought he had the answer. The more he saw clients’ attitudes shift, the more he worked on it.

Janice realized by being unequivocally clear and candid, she’d helped Ahmed succeed. Her comfort with giving all her employees critical feedback increased significantly.

Giving continuous critical feedback should be part of your ongoing performance- feedback process. If you have not already read them, you’ll find these posts “must reads”: Performance-Feedback Conversations Employees Love; The 3+1 Performance Feedback Formula; and Let’s Talk About Your Performance.

Let’s take a look at the steps that help managers and employees more effectively conduct unique, specific, and challenging performance conversations.

Before diving into the steps, make sure you’ve revisited your upfront agreement for having challenging new performance-feedback conversations.

If you already set an upfront agreement on how you’ll address unique and specific challenging feedback, revisit it and state that this is one of those conversations. If you haven’t already done so, share that you’d like to offer feedback on how they can improve and ask to set up a specific time to do so. Avoid springing challenging feedback on someone as that tends to build discomfort and defensiveness.

    1. Invitation and introduction:
      • Mention that you have important and valuable feedback to share. Start by declaring your intention for the process and creating a welcoming vibe. Maybe your intention is to help the employee grow or to ensure you offer continuous feedback. It’s always good to start with a welcoming and engaging intention.
      • Ask the team member for their intentions and desired outcomes. Remember, these sessions are for both of you. Facilitate a comfortable conversation in which you provide structure but keep the conversation open.
    1. Conversation:
      • Be clear and direct in delivering feedback. Avoid “sandwiching” the message. While many experts encourage you to offer “a little bit of good, a little bit of bad, and a little bit of good” (essentially creating a “feedback sandwich”), we recommend being clear and direct. Most people prefer to hear the message clearly, so they can take specific action steps to improve. When we sandwich, we lose important parts of the message, leaving the employee confused about what they need to do to improve.
      • To help the employee digest feedback, you may offer an “open-faced sandwich,” starting with a few things the employee is doing well and one thing they can focus on improving between now and the next session (avoid adding other positive comments to prevent a full-fledged sandwich). Most people can process no more than three challenging things at a time (and that may even be too much). By focusing on one thing, they can target it more effectively.
    1. Ending:
      • Always ask for SMART action steps as a follow-up, focusing on small steps the employee can take between now and the next meeting. Avoid overwhelming the person and the process with too many action steps. Set a check-in date between the initial meeting and the next one to follow-up on the actions and measurable changes you wish to see.
      • Thank the person for their time and openness to feedback. It’s important to create a positive experience, so you and the employee will look forward to having future performance conversations (coaching or feedback).

There is no one process that ensures a positive outcome to a challenging conversation. The “secret ingredient” is love (or, in business-lingo, “care”). You have to care about the person or genuinely believe in their ability and desire to change. If you suspect, no matter how much feedback or coaching you give, they aren’t able to change, you’ll need to have a different conversation. We call this a “capacity issue,” which means they may have reached their level of capacity, and no matter how much they want to grow, they may not be able to do so.

 

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