Delivering Difficult Feedback
As we manage employees, considering how we communicate difficult feedback is critical to ensuring an ongoing positive work relationship.
Before we provide this feedback, it is important to prepare ourselves and the conversation ahead of the meeting.
Considerations before providing difficult feedback:
- Assume best intention unless otherwise confirmed. Determine if the issue at hand is driven by defiance to do the right thing or due to the staff member’s lack of knowledge, workload, or circumstances beyond them and respond accordingly.
- Be humble. Remember your learning curve. Admit your mistakes/growth steps along the way. Humility from a manager goes a long way in paving the way for open and honest communication.
- Be specific and detailed in examples. Think through enough detail so that the employee can accurately see where the circumstance or situation began to unfold.
- Think through possible solutions ahead of time but start this process off by asking the employee how he or she could do/say/respond in a more beneficial way.
During conversation:
- Keep the focus on the issue at hand and not the person. “John Doe, you handled that meeting very poorly” versus “I noticed in the meeting that your responses to the questions asked created frustration by the attendees”.
- Allow ample opportunity for employee to provide comment/thoughts as to the issue.
- End with action steps agreed upon by both parties.
- Lastly, thank the employee for being open and willing to accept this feedback.
If you have a difficult conversation coming up, your Human Resource Consultant would be happy to role play that conversation with you, allowing you to move into it with confidence and assurance. Another helpful resource that may equip you for these kinds of discussions is the Crucial Conversations training.
