Give Good Tough Feedback

This resource first appeared in issue #62 on 19 Feb 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Feedback, Managing A Team: Other

Tough Love for Managers who Need to Give Feedback - Lara Hogan
Stop Softening Tough Feedback - Dane Jensen and Peggy Baumgartner, HBR

Both Hogan and Jensen & Baumgartner’s article tell us not to soften our critical feedback. If we’re not frankly telling our team member how they’re not meeting expectations, then how can we possibly expect anything to change? And if we’re not trying to change future outcomes - by learning that the expectation wasn’t reasonable, or by having the team member meet the expectation in the future - why are we even having the conversation?

Hogan adds another four points:

Your feelings have no place in feedback for your reports. They are your responsibility, not theirs.
Similarly, you don’t get to assume why someone’s behaving the way they’re behaving. Your beliefs about their internal state are also your responsibility, not theirs.
If you can’t own the feedback, don’t give it. We talked about the dangers of “triangulated feedback” before; take it from me, just say no.
Be honest with yourself about whether or not you think this person can meet these expectations.

Jensen & Baumgartner focus more specifically on “sandwich feedback” - softening critical feedback by surrounding it with positive feedback. There’s actually data on how poorly that works - it’s transparent and frankly a little condescending. You should absolutely be giving lots of positive feedback as well as critical feedback, so that your team members know that you see the times they meet or exceed expectations as well as when they don’t - but you give the positive feedback as it arises, not as a diluent for corrective feedback.

They also recommend, after pointing out the behaviour/observation that’s causing the feedback and the impact the failure to meet expectation is having, you tell them what you’d like them to do next. I’d caution about that - it’s not what they mean, but it sounds like “you should do it this way in the future”, which isn’t what you want. You don’t want to be prescriptive about how your team members do things, you want to be clear about the expected outcomes and let them have the choice about how to get there.