Let’s be honest, giving feedback is tough. Most leaders I work with know that giving feedback is necessary. And they know the theory: to be specific, to give the feedback timeously, to focus on the behaviour rather than the personality, and to sandwich if you like sandwiches.
But it is still difficult to sit across from another human
being and saying the hard things that need to be said.
Why giving feedback is difficult
In my experience, the reasons that leaders hesitate to give feedback cluster around a few things:
Fear of the reaction. Nobody enjoys watching someone’s face fall. Nobody wants to deal with defensiveness, disappointment or pushback. So, the feedback gets softened until the real problem becomes vague.
Fear of damaging the relationship. Many leaders want to be liked and giving feedback feels like it puts the relationships we have with our team at risk. Its easier, then, to postpone the conversation to keep the peace.
Uncertainty.
If the leader hasn’t made expectations clear or has not documented the
patterns of poor performance or behaviour, and hasn’t made the person aware of
one or both of these earlier, the feedback can be seen as arbitrary and has
nothing to support it.
What it takes to create a feedback culture
Having a feedback culture relies on three things:
Psychological safety: To have a feedback culture, people need to fee safe enough to hear something difficult without feeling like their sense of belonging is threatened.
Being clear on expectations: Feedback feels fair when the person already knew what was expected of them. It feels like an attack when the person didn’t know what was expected. And leaders are afraid that feedback will be seen as unfair if they themselves are not sure if they were clear.
Frequency: When feedback is rare, it carries weight and becomes an Event that gets dreaded by both the giver and the receiver. Think about how you feel when you have to sit through an annual performance review without having any other conversations about your performance. When feedback happens often in regular one-on-one’s, it becomes just how people work together, not a verdict on someone.
That leads to the next point. Leaders (and their teams in fact) should stop treating feedback as a verdict and instead treat is as information that the other person is entitled to. A verdict is something you deliver and then brace yourself for impact. Information is something you offer because the other person deserves the opportunity to act on it.
Silence or vague feedback is not being kind. When the person eventually finds out where
they really stand without any previous warning, they tend to feel a sense of
betrayal because “you knew and you let me keep going.” Leadership carries an obligation to tell
people the truth while there is still time to do something about it. You don’t get to opt out of this obligation
because it’s awkward.
The other side of a feedback culture
When we talk about a feedback culture, it’s important to talk about both sides. As a leader, you also need to be comfortable with receiving feedback. We undermine the feedback culture if we focus only on how we give feedback and not on how we receive feedback.
I have worked with leaders whose teams stopped bringing them anything difficult. This is not because the leaders never asked for the feedback. It’s because of how they reacted when they did receive the feedback they asked for. The flash of defensiveness, the quick explanation (without accountability), or the subtle change in tone and body language can indicate if the feedback was truly appreciated. When you ask for feedback and then punish it, even unintentionally, we will only get politeness next time instead of honesty.
To overcome this, separate the receiving from the
responding. You don’t have to respond to
the feedback immediately. Thank the giver
and tell them that you need to think
about the feedback. Pay attention to how
the feedback feels. Reflect on the
feedback and notice if it might be a blind spot. Then do something about it.
Where to start
If your company’s feedback culture needs building (or re-building) don’t start with a training programme on how to have the difficult conversations, start with these three questions instead:
Do your leaders know what “good” looks like and have they communicated this to their teams before performance became an issue?
Is feedback something that only happens once or twice a year, or does it take place daily?
When a leader avoids giving feedback (and in most cases asks HR to do it), is that accepted or is it treated as a gap in their leadership skills?
That last question is one most companies avoid, but it’s one
of the main reasons that a feedback culture is not successful. The good news is that you can help your
leaders to fill that gap through training to get the knowledge, and through
coaching to help them to implement it.