If you’re like most people, you’re awful at giving feedback. In fact, you’re lucky if you rise to the level of awful. It’s not your fault; you’re only doing what you’ve been taught. Problem is, conventional wisdom about giving feedback is 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. Some of these rules fly in the face of what is commonly taught by experts, consultants, LMS vendors, and HR practitioners. Perhaps for that reason, these rules work.
Seiden’s Rules to Giving Feedback:
- Never precede negative feedback with positive feedback. (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?
- Never precede negative feedback with positive feedback. (That repeat is not a typo.) 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.”
- Speak sincerely. Don’t just 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.
- 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?” Give feedback as if you two are the only ones in the world, and involve yourself.
- Ignore behavior that should be ignored. Not everything that can be addressed should be.
- 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.
- If things go weird, it’s your fault. If you are at all anxious or nervous about giving feedback, or if you are at all angry or upset when you do so, then your emotional state itself will trigger a response, and you and your feedback-ee will start talking through one another. 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.
- Feedback and catharsis are two different things. The purpose of feedback is to improve things in the future. Venting is emotional release about what’s happened in the past. Venting is very different from, serves a different purpose than, and elicits a different response as feedback.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Negative feedback will tend to get explained away, so as best as possible, discuss trends instead of specifics. 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 sweeps potentially damning aspects under the rug. Your recipient will get mighty frustrated by your refusal to engage, but they’ll also keep thinking about what you’ve said long after the conversation ends… which is precisely what you want.
- 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.
- Give them 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.
- 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.
Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.
I'm the CEO of Ajax Social Media. We're helping 1 million people shine by making their online stories better. 