jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #101 on 19 Nov 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Feedback, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals
Don’t Soften Feedback - Lara Hogan
Reader, I’m not proud to say that I’m actually pretty rubbish at this. I tend to very much want to soften negative feedback, which is easier for me but is in the long term worse for the team member and the team as a whole.
What’s worse, people are not uniformly affected by this. Women, Black, Asian, and Hispanic team members tend to get softer and less-actionable feedback, especially but not only from male managers, which holds back their growth - how can they grow effectively if they aren’t being told what to work on?
Hogan here tells us things we’ve talked about before, but we - at least I - need periodic reminders of. Make the feedback easier and more constructive to give by linking it to desirable outcomes for the team, make the feedback succinct and to the point, and distinguish facts from assumptions. There are also cautions here about peer feedback and potential bias.
