Episode 5 - Say What You Need to Say: How to Improve the Feedback Conversation

Listen to Episode 5 - Say What You Need to Say: How to Improve the Feedback Conversation

Today, I’m going to get really deep into something that can give even the most confident woman a pit in her stomach, and that something is called giving feedback.

I've coached women who do amazing things in their day-to-day work. I've coached women who can stand up and speak to a room full of board members without batting an eye. Yet, when it comes to telling a direct report that their work isn't meeting expectations, that's when the pit of dread starts, and the confidence they had on display in front of that room of executives is now seemingly nowhere to be found. Based on my experience, I think there's a reason that this type of conversation is a little more challenging for women. I already covered the pressure to be liked in Episode 4, and giving feedback (especially critical feedback) can feel like it puts our likability on the line. So, instead of saying what we really should be saying, we'll soften it, delay it, or we'll just avoid it altogether.

Here's the problem with that ,though. The avoidance of giving feedback doesn't really protect anyone from hurt feelings or a bruised ego. What it does, is delay an important conversation and makes it even more difficult when it finally happens. So to quote a John Mayer song that I honestly cannot stand, “say what you need to say.”

I'm going to walk you through five tips for giving valuable feedback, and I'm also going to get into something that I've been asked about quite a few times in my coaching practice, which is whether (and if so, how) the feedback process should look different when you're giving feedback to a man versus a woman.

According to leadership researchers James Kouzes and Barry Posner (they're huge in the leadership community, by the way), feedback is hard because it puts two basic human needs in direct conflict with one another. Those needs are:

1. our need to grow

2. our need to feel accepted exactly as we are.

The tension between the two needs is real for both the person giving the feedback and the person receiving it.

Any suggestion (even a gentle one) can come across as a criticism, or even worse, it can come across as a threat. Because giving and receiving feedback can be a fairly emotionally charged exchange, it helps to follow a few guidelines so you're not just winging it and hoping for the best.

Tip #1: Don't wait too long to give feedback.

We tend to want to put off conversations about performance, especially if we have something negative to say, but avoiding these conversations usually causes more harm than good. Every day that you sit on feedback is another day that the other person doesn't get the chance to correct course. This can lead to small issues becoming bigger problems.

Also, we all know that memories fade over time. So, the longer you wait to give feedback, the more vague and less useful your feedback actually becomes. Receiving feedback on something that happened well in the past can feel more like a surprise attack as opposed to an, ‘oh, okay, thanks for letting me know,’ kind of situation. I mean, think about how you'd feel if someone brought up something you did three months ago and told you now, for the first time, that it was a problem. Your first reaction would probably be something along the lines of, ‘well, why didn't you say something back then?!’ If you wouldn't want that done to you, don't do it to the people on your team. Golden rule and all that. Timely feedback sets everyone up for success. You, your team, your friends, your family, your community, the whole shebang, whoever your feedback audience is.

So, tip number one - don't wait too long to give the feedback.

Tip #2: Be prepared for the conversation.

One of the worst things you can do is walk into a feedback conversation and try to wing it, especially if you're saying something critical. Specific examples can do a lot of the heavy lift here when it comes to being prepared.

Telling someone specifically, ‘we've had three team meetings this month where we noticed your absence’ gives someone something to actually respond to: Those three absences in the team meeting. Saying ‘you're not meeting expectations’ doesn't have the same effect because…Not meeting expectations how? They don't know because you didn't tell them. The specificity in the feedback is what gives the receiver the opportunity to truly understand where they're missing the mark, and it provides them with a chance to respond to the feedback. If they disagree with your assessment, they have to know what they're disagreeing with.

If you're giving critical feedback, you really need to come prepared with guidance for improvement too. Hitting them with a criticism and then leaving them to figure it out on their own is a surefire way to make an employee feel like they're floundering.

Feedback conversations should also include things that are going well because you shouldn't only be giving feedback when things are bad. People need to hear what they're excelling at. There's an old piece of feedback advice called the sandwich method, where they recommend that you stick negative feedback between two compliments. It's outdated, and if that's your current habit when giving feedback, I'd really encourage you to break that habit. What the sandwich method does, especially once your team picks up on it, is it puts them on edge anytime you give them a compliment. Why? Two reasons.

Number one, they'll start to expect that the initial compliment you give is going to be followed by a criticism, and number two, it cheapens the compliment that follows the criticism. We're more likely to focus on negative than positive. So that second compliment that you're following up with, is essentially useless because the person is not going to truly hear that compliment. They'll have stopped listening as soon as you gave them the criticism.

Also, when you give positive feedback, you need to be just as specific with examples as you are with the critical stuff. Saying something like (and it's always so awkward to use these example phrases because they sound so forced, but you understand the idea, and you go ahead and word things the way that you would word them), ‘I was impressed with your presentation last Tuesday, the data you pulled together was thorough and easy to follow.’ That carries a lot more weight and value than a generic, ‘hey, keep up the good work’ because what good work are you referring to?

Coming into a feedback discussion with guidance and specific examples helps to ensure that your employees understand where they're struggling, where they're performing well, and what they can do in order to improve even further.

So, tip number two, be prepared.

Tip #3: Don't make it personal.

Feedback is hard enough without making it about someone's character too, so my advice is to watch your tone. By that, I mean try not to come across as accusatory, and where you can, try to avoid sentences that start with ‘you.’ I talked about that in episode two.

Things like ‘you're not getting your work done’ can become, ‘it seems like there have been some delays in getting the work accomplished. What's been the biggest hang up?’ That small change in phrasing and approach moves the issue away from it being about the person doing the work to being about the work itself. And I want to be frank about why this matters, especially for women giving feedback. Journalist and researcher Kieran Snyder analyzed nearly 250 performance reviews and found that high-performing women were far more likely than high-performing men to be given feedback that used personality-based language…words like abrasive, bossy, or strident, rather than being given feedback about their actual output. That personality-based bias runs in both directions because those same descriptors (abrasive, bossy, strident) are often how feedback from women gets described as well. Keeping your feedback anchored to specific and observable behavior or work, instead of character judgments and personal issues, protects you on both sides of that conversation, whether you're the one giving the feedback or receiving it.

Now, some people will tell you that this approach of “not making things personal” and keeping things about the work is a way of babying your employees and letting them off the hook when it comes to taking responsibility. You're welcome to believe that if you want, but I am here to tell you that this approach, focusing on the work instead of the person, gets better long-term results than blame and shame ever will. When you keep the conversation about the work, you and your employee stay on the same team. It stops being “you vs the employee” or “boss vs subordinate,” and becomes “the two of you vs the problem.” That positioning tends to produce better outcomes, better performance, and a lot more honesty going forward…And you might even uncover something you didn't even know was leading to the performance issue. And then, on top of that, it might be something that's easily fixed once it's out in the open. These positive things all happened just because you stayed on the same team and had a more open and honest conversation.

So, tip number three is don't make it personal.

Tip #4: Ask questions.

A feedback conversation should be just that: a conversation. It shouldn't be a monologue, and in order for that to happen, you, as the feedback giver, need to show up with genuine interest and curiosity in your employee and give the other person room to talk. If you want to understand why someone isn't meeting expectations, you have to actually ask them about what's going on.

Open-ended questions, those that start with who, what, when, where, why, and how, can be tough to ask, partly because most of us don't get much practice asking them. We default to closed-ended or leading questions instead. Just as an aside before I really jump in, for those that aren't familiar, closed-ended questions are ones that require a yes or no type of answer…Usually one or two words, no detail or explanation is required when you answer it. Leading questions are ones where we're trying to get a person to respond in a certain way. It could be something like, ‘Well, wouldn't it make you feel better if we did this instead of that?’ That phrasing is clearly trying to get the person to respond that yes, they agree with your assessment that they would feel better if you did this instead of that. Those are the types of questions we want to avoid in feedback conversations. You need to ask true open-ended questions so that your employee will open up to you.

Now, back to open-ended questions that start with who, what, when, where, why, and how. I may have mentioned this in episode two with the tips to communicate more effectively, but questions that start with ‘why’ in particular can come across as an attack and put people on the defensive pretty quickly. So, one way to rephrase why questions is to not make them questions at all. Instead of asking, ‘why did you say that to them?’ try saying, ‘tell me more about that conversation.’ The statement, ‘tell me more,’ invites the person to give the same information as the question did, just in a much less threatening way.

Now, once you've asked the question, you have to resist the urge to respond with judgment. You asked them a question, they answered it, and now you have to move forward with the discussion in an even-keeled, non-judgmental fashion, or you'll shut down the openness you were just starting to build. This isn't easy, and like most things, it takes practice.

Also, if you want to build your listening skills specifically, I'd recommend Madeline Burley Allen's book, Listening, The Forgotten Skill. It is full of self-assessments and exercises that'll help you listen better and stay emotionally regulated in difficult conversations. If you're in a position to give feedback, or honestly, if you talk to any other human at all ever, it's worth picking up.

So, tip number four is to ask questions and then listen and respond without judgment.

Tip #5: Create an improvement action plan.

As I mentioned in Tip #2, feedback without a path forward leaves people stuck with no idea on how to improve, what to prioritize, or how their success will even be measured. To put it bluntly, if you provide feedback and do not also provide guidance, you are setting your employee up for failure. And if they do fail, some of that blame will fall squarely on you. Close out the feedback conversation by reviewing what needs to improve, building a plan together with specific steps, and then setting up regular check-ins so that you can work on the plan together.

For example, if someone is slow to respond to emails, you can set a measurable goal for them to meet, like responding to all emails within 48 hours. This way you have something concrete to track when it comes to their performance. At your action plan check-ins, you can then talk them through what's working, what's still a struggle, and adjust the target if you need to. A new behavior doesn't become a habit overnight. Give your employee real time to adjust and be willing to adjust your approach right along with them.

So, final tip: create the improvement action plan.

And now I’m finally getting to the last thing I mentioned in the intro paragraphs, which is the question of whether or not feedback should look different depending on who's receiving the feedback. Meaning, are you are you giving feedback to a man or a woman? To be honest, there isn't really a ton of research specifically telling women how (or if) to adjust their feedback style based on whether they're talking to a man or a woman, but there is a growing amount of research showing how feedback content tends to differ based upon whether a man is receiving feedback versus when a woman is receiving feedback. The content issue is worth being aware of so that you can take note of your own actions in this regard. Meaning, are you falling into this trap as well? And you you might be.

So, three researchers, Elena Doldor, Madeline Wyatt, and Joe Sylvester, analyzed over 1,000 pieces of developmental feedback and found a pretty consistent pattern. Men tended to get feedback about vision and strategy, while women got feedback about execution and getting along with others. Men were pointed toward leveraging office politics and getting more involved, whereas women were told to basically just cope with it. When women were told to be more confident, it usually stopped there with no action plan or guidelines on what that meant or how to build confidence. Like I said earlier in this episode, vague feedback doesn't help anyone grow, and focusing on a woman's relationships instead of her abilities is not doing her any favors. If you're giving feedback to a woman on your team, get as specific about her strategic and political skills as you would for any man on your team. And if you give execution and relationship feedback to the women on your team, then I hope you do the same for the men.

A couple other researchers, Lily Jampol and Vivian Zayas, found something else related to this topic. Managers, regardless of whether they were male or female, were more likely to soften feedback for underperforming women than for underperforming men. Softening the blow, so to speak, comes from a good place because we're trying not to hurt anyone's feelings, but it doesn't actually help anyone improve. You don't need to soften the feedback out of fear that your female employee may get emotional. And you don't need to not soften the feedback for men because “they can handle it.” You shouldn't be softening the feedback for anyone, regardless of gender. You don't need to be an asshole, but you need to be honest. Otherwise, you're delaying any chance your employee has at rectifying the situation. Treat your male and female employees equally when it comes to feedback.

If there's one thing to take from the research in this episode, it's this: Male or female, whoever is sitting across from you, needs to be held to the same standard. Be just as specific, just as direct, and just as generous with real guidance, regardless of whether you're giving feedback to a man or a woman. The instinct to go easier on women, even with good intentions, ends up costing them in the long run because softened or minimized feedback will limit their growth. '

And if there's one thing to take from the episode overall, it's this: Anytime you're giving feedback, focus on remedies, not faults. That's really the whole point of this episode.

Giving valuable, effective feedback takes effort from both sides of the conversation, the person giving it and the person receiving it. If either side checks out of the conversation, the feedback is going to be ineffective. So prepare yourself for the conversation, approach it as an act of help or a growth opportunity instead of an attack or criticism, and be there to help guide the other person forward. Being a leader isn't always easy, and giving feedback isn't really ever easy, but you can make it easier by conducting your feedback sessions in a way that shows your team members that you value them and you want them to succeed.

I hope you found this content useful. I'm Lauren. This is Glass Ceiling Smashed. Go grab your hammer and let's break something together.

You can find the sources used to write this episode/article in the show notes for this episode linked at the beginning of this post.