Why We Need a New Approach to "Giving Feedback"

Original Version published in HR.com (Employee Learning & Development Excellence, April 2022

At its core the success of all of an organization’s coaching, mentoring, and performance management initiatives, regardless of whether they involve informal just-in-time chats or more formal discussions, is reliant on one fundamental factor. And that is the individual manager’s ability to be able to honestly and accurately assess an employee’s performance and/or potential and then discuss it with him or her in an effective and successful way.  

Because this is recognized as such a critically important supervisory skill that has a huge, perhaps even disproportionate influence on employee performance, motivation, and engagement, HR departments have invested heavily in helping managers to become proficient in it.

Why then, after having provided a plethora of related information, training, systems, and resources, are organizations still grappling with the reality that their coaching and performance management initiatives are not working as well as designed because so many managers continue to struggle with giving good performance-related feedback, particularly for “tough” situations?

While communicating positive conclusions is easy:

“Jennifer handles difficult customers well.”

“Peter is very proactive.”

And communicating negative aspects about straightforward or independently measurable performance is not particularly problematic:

“Jeremy looks at his phone too much during meetings.”

“Giselle did not meet her quarterly objective.”

When it comes to the hardest part of managing performance and coaching it is a completely different story. Everyone can relate to the stress and anxiety associated with having to talk to an employee about sensitive or uncomfortable issues. For example:

“Tim lacks leadership ability and isn’t a team player. Because he’s a control freak he has to micro-manage constantly - he’s often upset with his employees because they don’t do something the way he would do it. And then he blames them for this if anything goes wrong. They don’t like it and it’s definitely affecting productivity. I don’t think he’ll get the promotion he wants because the last thing the organization needs is a manager who’s controlling and overly critical all the time.”

Or ...

"Jane is fairly new here.  She’s a pretty good worker for the most part, has some good ideas actually, but she rubs people the wrong way because she’s way too defensive about her ideas. She won’t listen, and she attacks people if they question her. She actually got angry with James the other day and told him that “he just didn’t understand”. I think she thought he was stupid - at least that’s what it sounded like, and she does it often. I mean, we’re supposed to be a team here …. but she’s definitely not acting like it. Honestly, I’m starting to regret hiring her."

Why can’t managers give effective feedback for tough performance problems?

Tough performance problems like the ones above are tough primarily because they are complex, nuanced, and contain subjective opinions and conclusions about:

• What someone does or doesn’t do.  

• How they do or don’t do it.

• Why they do or don’t do it.

• And the negative impact the whole situation is having.

This means that the feedback has to be explained and validated. And because negative opinions and conclusions often imply judgements the information is much more emotionally charged - which tends to increase its potential to create negative reactions.

These factors make giving the feedback in a way that successfully improves performance for the organization, removes the problem for the people affected by it, and increases productivity, engagement and motivation in the employee himself (all while trying not to make the situation worse) a very tall order.

So tall in fact that most managers find it practically impossible. How do we know that on more than an intuitive level?

Since 2004 we’ve tested many many managers in a classroom setting to get a baseline assessment of how they approach a similar tough corrective coaching feedback situation. These managers come from different organizations, are at different levels with different degrees of managerial experience, and have different amounts of previous training. 

The results are revealing. The vast majority of them take a very similar approach to giving such feedback. And, in all that time, and despite the best of intentions, this approach almost always results in them failing to effectively communicate the message and often makes the situation even worse.

The most remarkable thing about this exercise though is that everyone else watching the role plays can see when and why the discussion goes off the rails. However, no one can articulate what should be done differently to get a different outcome.

What this illustrates is the approach that the vast majority of managers believe is the best way to “give feedback” is clearly not effective when it comes to successfully handling tough poor performance situations. And more importantly, they don’t know what to do instead.

The Typical Approach Most Managers Take When Giving Feedback and Why it Works in Theory but Fails in Practice

So what is this approach that they all tend to take? It involves some variation of the following:

• Put the employee at ease.

• Describe the performance problem as specifically and nicely as possible and justify it with examples.

• Explain the negative impact it is having on everyone. 

• Find out why the problem performance is happening and discuss how to solve it.

You probably recognize the advice behind this approach as it’s been around for decades. It’s so ubiquitous that managers have either seen it used before or have been taught something similar in previous training or read about it from other sources. Moreover, they buy into it readily because it also seems to make intuitive sense.

The problem though is that, while such general advice works in theory, when you actually try to apply it to really tough situations it tends to fail miserably. In practice it leads to the kind of pitfalls that (albeit inadvertently) cause the feedback to backfire, which actually creates the kind of problems that managers are actively trying to avoid. For example:

• Putting the employee at ease usually involves taking an indirect approach to getting to the “bad” bit in order to try to soften the blow. This is a huge mistake because it not only makes everyone more anxious and stressed, it is one of the main reasons why the conversation can go south almost from the beginning.

• Describing the performance problem necessitates a focus on the negative because how can you tell someone they are doing something wrong if you don’t tell them what that something is? As counterintuitive as it sounds, explaining the performance problem specifically and then justifying it with observed negative examples only tends to create a fight or flight response in the employee.

• Focussing on the need to remove the negative impact for others as the primary reason for holding the feedback discussion is not the best way to motivate employees to want to make a change or be engaged in it.

• Assuming that it’s necessary to understand why the poor performance is happening so that the manager can help solve the problem is not only unnecessary but misguided. Focussing on “getting to the bottom of it” just confuses the situation.

But perhaps the worst aspect of this typical approach is that it is a conversation before it needs to be. Delivering the information in bits means that managers constantly have to react to everything the employee says or does as they hear it. This constant back and forth can easily lead them to become flustered or get sidetracked.

Any one of these pitfalls can be enough to make the feedback ineffective. In reality we see that almost all of them happen in a cumulative way that almost guarantees an unsuccessful outcome. For a more in-depth explanation you can read the Research Report. The course itself also includes a representative sample of these classroom videos so that participants can see exactly what these pitfalls look like.

The Individual Manager is Not to Blame

While none of this is the individual manager’s fault, the tragedy of the situation is that they don’t know that. They blame themselves when they can’t get results and, because they don’t know what to do differently is it any wonder that so many of them feel that the easiest and safest option is to avoid the situation altogether and hope it goes away on its own? 

They make this choice even though they realize the negative impact the continued poor performance will have not just on the organization and those directly affected by it but also for employees - who are denied the chance to correct something that is holding them back from doing well in the current job and perhaps also from achieving their potential, or even advancing in their career. 

However, in their eyes, the trade off between such possible future negative impacts and the immediate risks associated with holding a potentially anxiety ridden, unproductive discussion with uncertain outcomes is worth it. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t right?

OK, So What’s the Answer? What do we have to do instead?

In order to make feedback work for tough corrective situations we have to understand the three difficulties that make up the root cause of the problem with the dilemma that managers face when having to give tough feedback. Namely, how do you:

1. Justify and prove that your beliefs, conclusions, and opinions about an employee's performance and potential are correct and free from bias.

2. Find the right words to convey the information to the employee in a totally honest yet totally kind way in order to avoid negative reactions and achieve desired outcomes. More specifically, WHAT to say, and exactly HOW to say it - and we mean the EXACT words - in a comfortable way that the employee can understand, accept as valid, and act upon while increasing their motivation and keeping your relationship intact.

3. Manage the discussion to deal effectively with anything the employee says or does.

PAF Feedback is designed to do exactly that. For more details about how PAF accomplishes this, see the information about the course on Udemy.