Giving Feedback Well

Why the conversation before the ‘conversation’ makes all the difference.

- Douglas Stone

Most of us dislike the task of giving a colleague or employee critical feedback and it is easy to see why. While our organisations spout the virtues of feedback and coaching, few offer actual incentives for taking the time to give feedback well. Offering honest feedback can drain us emotionally and may harm our relationship with the receiver. And most of us would admit that we are not particularly good at it, and in fact we may not even know what ‘good at it’ looks like. Our training is in engineering or marketing or chemistry or finance or maybe even psychology, but we were never trained in how to offer challenging feedback in a way that promises to make things better rather than worse.

There is plenty of data showing that these feelings are common, and not surprisingly, shared by feedback receivers as well:

Only 28 per cent of employees believe their managers focus on more than simply completing forms.

63 per cent of executives surveyed say that their biggest challenge to effective performance management is that their managers lack the courage and ability to have difficult feedback conversations (Study on the State of Performance Management, Fall 2010). The easiest path for any manager is to do the bare minimum to get the box checked, and to stick with positive platitudes. ‘At least’, we tell ourselves, ‘we are doing no harm’.

But in our heart of hearts, we know that is not true. We know our inaction imposes a cost on our colleagues by depriving them of the chance to learn and improve. Feeling guilty, we circle back around: I should really offer this person genuine feedback this time. But then we imagine just how poorly that might go and decide to skip it. Hey, there is always time for honest feedback down the road.

The bind