Last year, I posted my rules for giving feedback. I did this because I noticed that most people are awful at giving feedback. The rules are back. Why? Because I just looked around and noticed that people are still awful at it. C’mon, folks, let’s pull it together here!
You know what to do. I know that’s not the problem. You’re not stupid. You can imagine the conversation, you know you have to do it, but something doesn’t compute and you just. can’t. get. it. done. You’re too nice. Too mean. Too squishy. Too hard. Too intense. Too distracted. Too worried about what happens next. Too focused on the moment and not at all attuned to what happens next. Whatever.
And when you read conventional wisdom on how to give feedback, you find it it sounds good but is strangely not helpful. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but I find most advice about giving feedback to be… dead wrong.)
If conventional wisdom were right, performance reviews wouldn’t be so notoriously useless, and you wouldn’t constantly face the problem of people’s behavior getting a little better for awhile before reverting right back to the bad behavior of old. A few of these rules fly in the face of what is taught by some experts, consultants, LMS vendors, and HR practitioners.
Don’t let that dissuade you; these rules work.
If you’ve got an employee, coworker, or boss who needs to hear a tough message, get your CNTRL+P fingers ready, you’re gonna want this handy when dropping the hammer.
Seiden’s Rules for Giving Feedback:
1. Give the feedback. Don’t talk yourself out of doing what you need to do. Risk botching the situation—I can help you clean up a mess and can help you improve for next time, provided you engage. If you don’t engage, don’t risk, and cop out, then all I can do is whump you upside the head and remind you, “You’re being tested right now. Not stepping up is an automatic fail. You have to engage to have a chance at passing.”
2. Never precede negative feedback with positive feedback. (Yeah, you read that right.) Why not? Because the implication is that Bill or Jim or Lisa or Monica or whoever you’re talking to is a delicate flower who will be devastated by your feedback if you don’t build up his or her self-esteem before delivering the tough news. Wonderful. Now you’re patronizing, and you haven’t even gotten to the meat of the conversation yet. No wonder they don’t listen to you–would you listen to someone who underestimates your ability to act like a grown up in the face of tough news?
3. Never precede negative feedback with positive feedback. (Yeah, you re-read that right.) If you do precede bad news with good news, you train your listener to expect bad news to follow good news. Congratulations, you just diminished your ability to deliver positive feedback. The next time you have something nice to say, Bill or Jim or Lisa or Monica won’t hear it… the entire time you’re talking, they’ll be thinking, “Oh boy, here it comes… I wonder what I did this time–wow, this is effusive praise, I must have really screwed up big time, I wish the other shoe would drop already.”
4. Speak sincerely. Don’t say, “I don’t care who’s to blame” unless you mean it. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. I’ve given a lot of people a lot of feedback, I’ve watched people give each other feedback in team settings, and one thing I can say is, our BS-o-meters are darn good. If you think you can fool someone by saying the “right” things insincerely, rest assured that all you are doing is training them to guess what your real motives are.
5. Look ‘em in the eye and use the words “you” and “me” and “I.” As in, “I’m struggling with you right now,” or, “I get the sense that you would rather…” Don’t talk about what others say, or what you’ve heard. Don’t start off by asking, “You know what your problem is?” Don’t say, “I hear from others that you’re a pain in the butt.” Give feedback as if you two are the only ones in the world, and involve yourself.
6. Ignore behavior that should be ignored. Not everything that can be addressed should be.
7. Avoid extremes. Stay away from words like always, never, severely, crippling, devastating, terrible, sucky, horrible, God-awful, crappy, deplorable, and anything that ends in -est. Dave didn’t look in the morning and think, “I’m looking at the most obnoxious person in the office!” So when you tell Dave that he’s the most obnoxious person in the office, his reaction is to show you why you’re wrong rather than listen to you.
8. If things go weird, it’s the feedback-giver’s fault. If you are at all anxious or nervous about giving feedback, or if you are at all angry or upset, then expect that your emotional state will complicate the feedback. Don’t assume that you can hide your emotions from the feedback-ee! Seriously, you’re not that clever. I heard a business owner once say, “How could she possibly think I would fire her for that!” I replied, “Maybe it was the way you yelled for her across the entire office? Just a guess…” Now, are some people incorrigible? Yes. Is it still your fault if you are dealing with one of them when things go bad? Yes. (“What?! Why!”) Because you weren’t smart enough to avoid engaging said incorrigible person in a debate.
9. Feedback and catharsis are two different things. The purpose of feedback is to improve things in the future. Venting is the release of emotions left over from what happened in the past. Venting is very different from, serves a different purpose than, and elicits a different response as feedback.
10. Match the environment to the severity of the feedback. There is a reason people throw big gala events for their 60th birthdays but not their 37ths. Similarly, big celebrations or big talking-to’s should go along with big events. Not every crime should be a capital offense or even require a trip to the principal’s office.
11. Anticipate resistance. Have you ever received tough feedback? How did you feel? Don’t try to guess what the recipient is thinking. Instead, remember a time when you yourself were on the other side of the coin and get in touch with what you’d be feeling. We connect with others on an emotional level, not an analytical one, so now’s the time to show your empathic side. They’ll be hurt, maybe a little angry, so don’t plan on moving straight into another conversation. Build in time—like, a day—to work through emotional residue. And don’t buy it when they say, “I’m OK, let’s keep going.” They’re not OK, you’re not OK, the situation’s not OK. Don’t pretend it’s OK. This isn’t like running into a casual acquaintance on the subway; you work with this person. Respect the space.
12. Give positive feedback in the moment and use specific examples. Positively received behaviors will continue, so be very specific about what you are “rewarding” with your feedback.
13. Negative feedback will tend to get explained away, so as best as possible, discuss trends instead of specifics, and the first time you give critical feedback, do it away from actual events. Discussing specifics turns the conversation into a debate: “Oh, I only did that because Rob was baiting me.” “I know I did it that time, but I’m not usually like that.” People are governed by some pretty simple laws of human dynamics… one of which is that we have a strong, strong tendency to overestimate ourselves and underestimate others. In other words, we’re inclined to believe a version of events that makes us look good and while sweeping potentially damning aspects under the rug. Your recipient will get mighty frustrated by your refusal to engage in specifics, but they’ll also keep thinking about what you’ve said long after the conversation ends… which is precisely what you want.
14. Take your time. Don’t insist that your full message get delivered and received in one sitting. Especially when emotions run high, this is probably impossible anyway. Give the other side time to digest what you’ve said and come back to you. Don’t deliver more than 2 negative messages per encounter. Got more to say? Sit down again later, or build a case that shows how these 2 problems manifest in a variety of ways… this way, you can keep coming back to two things, rather than hand someone a huge list of reasons why you think they suck.
15. Give the feedback-ee a path to goodness. Telling Becky she’s bad at her job without showing her how to get better is petty and mean. Show her what she needs to do better, get her the tools, or fire her. Otherwise, you’re wasting everyone’s time.
16. Follow up. If it was important enough to point out once, it’s important enough to follow up on. When you see Rachel making an effort to improve, take notice.
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Great! No nonsense. Straightforward. Respectful. Really good points, Jason.
Seiden speaks the truth. Some days I think if everyone just sucked it up and stated the truth – simply, without baggage and angst- and had honest conversations, all would be right with the world. Funny thing is that the conversations themselves aren’t so hard, it’s thinking about them and worry before hand that is hard.