How to Give Difficult Feedback to Your Boss (Even When You’re Scared)

This resource first appeared in issue #87 on 14 Aug 2021 and has tags Strategy: Managing Up

How to Give Difficult Feedback to Your Boss (Even When You’re Scared) - Karen Hurt, Let’s Grow Leaders

Giving negative feedback to your team members takes some courage the first times you do it as a new manager; when you’re providing feedback to your own manager that’s a whole other level. Here Hurt provides some steps for how to proceed (paraphrased)

Be clear up-front about your intent and goal, and how you’ll communicate
Set up a time to talk in a private place
Be objective and specific - this is a place where it’s especially important to focus on behaviour and impact
Ask for their perspective (and really listen.)
Look for opportunities to help
Follow up

The biggest difference is that, as with your peers, you can’t simply ask your manager to change their behaviours - all you can really do is point out an impact.

A prerequisite to any of this of course is that you trust your manager; if you haven’t felt comfortable raising issues in the past, this probably isn’t the way to start.

And for you as a manager or lead, keep in mind for your team members - you want them to bring you their feedback, and they’ll agonize over doing so in the same way you would with your manager! You can help them by routinely asking for feedback in your one-on-one sessions and in retrospectives, and taking the feedback seriously when it is given.