Adding Weight to Your Words
Employee feedback must be carefully crafted if it’s going to make a difference.
Feedback is a must for employees to improve competence, but all feedback isn’t created equal. Effective feedback sets goals and provides direction without alienating or discouraging the recipient. Toxic feedback can do just the opposite. If your words are to have weight—if they’re going to make a positive difference—you, as the sender of that message, must be mindful of three things.
Respect: Differentiating Feedback from Personal Criticism
Respect is fundamental to any good relationship, professional or personal. The good news first: research suggests that 86% of employees feel respected at work, while just 4% say they feel disrespected.
But what about that 4%? You want your entire team––not just most of it––to feel you respect them. If you want to be effective, you must demonstrate respect when you speak to someone—anyone, regardless of their job title, race, gender, sexuality, ethnic background, and so forth. In my view, much of the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation boils down to respect. If you respect someone as a human being, you respect their values, ethics, religion, language, culture—the whole package. Respect communicates the message, I honor you for you, rather than the message, I judge you.
When giving another person feedback, whether positive or negative, it should always come from this place of respect. You aren’t giving the other person feedback because you’re an autocrat or to feed your ego, or because you’re the boss and they’re not. Toxic-feedback culture is often rooted in hierarchy or a “better than you” mindset: I’m the boss, so I know best. Feedback given from this approach is framed in a way that posits the sender as incredibly smart and the recipient as a bit of a dolt. It should come as no surprise that this type of feedback generally isn’t well received, and tends to set up barriers and create resistance.
Most people in the workplace want to perform well and are doing the best they can. In my experience, rarely does an individual intentionally do something that’s not good. Yes, their actions may have an outcome that’s not good, but the actions aren’t maliciously inclined. Remembering this fact can help leaders couch feedback in a framework of respect. To do so, they must distinguish the person from the task.
This differentiation becomes especially important when delivering difficult feedback to somebody. In the discussion, you must separate the person from the performance. And this applies to any facet of life, in the workplace and beyond. If your spouse or partner does something you don’t like, you aren’t going to rake them over the coals personally. They’re your loved one. They’re still a wonderful human being. You still care about them. So, you focus on the action, not on the person. The same applies to workplace feedback.
Even then, when receiving feedback, the other individual may have an emotional reaction. This is the feedback sender’s cue to reiterate the distinction between the person and the action: This has to do with your performance. I still value you. Don’t confuse how I view your performance with how I view you as a person. At the same time, feedback receivers need to learn how to separate the two, otherwise every bit of feedback feels like personal criticism and results in an emotional tailspin. However, it begins with the feedback sender making the distinction and couching the feedback in the appropriate framework of respect.
Relevance: Clarifying the Significance of Feedback
Respect is only one part of the effective feedback equation. For words to carry weight, they must also be timed appropriately. It doesn’t do any good to give feedback about something you saw six months ago. It also does no good to give feedback to someone about something over which they have no control; this wouldn’t qualify as feedback but venting. Feedback must be timely and appropriately targeted.
As with respect, relevance starts with the sender, not the recipient. The person you are giving feedback to may not recognize the significance of the conversation immediately. You are responsible for clarifying that relevance. Otherwise, you again risk being met with emotional reactions; the other person may think you’re needlessly criticizing. You’ll face the pushback of, What’s the point?
Say you run a sales team. You join an in-person sales call with a potential client. When you get there and meet up with your colleague, you notice that they’re dressed casually. You can’t provide feedback then to correct the situation but can immediately afterwards.
You can frame this instance as a learning experience and ask your employee to wear a suit and tie for future sales calls. You can encourage them to ask what the dress code is before going into future meetings, in order to show respect to this client, who’s always in business attire. In this way, you’ve added relevance to the feedback.
Miscommunication (and hurt feelings) occur when relevance is missing. Too often, the person giving the feedback sees the relevance, but the person receiving the feedback doesn’t. Obviously, the person giving the feedback sees the importance—that’s why they’re speaking up in the first place. However, if the person getting that feedback doesn’t see the relevance, it won’t carry any import. They’ll think The moment is passed or The project is done or I’m never going to see that client again anyway. That’s why the sender of the feedback must clarify the relevance, always. Never assume it’s clear.
Results: Relating Actions to Consequences
The third point is the most important. After all, results, often undesirable results, are the entire reason we give feedback in the first place. For feedback to carry weight, it must be linked to consequences. As with respect and relevance, the onus is on the sender of the feedback to clarify this point and delineate what those consequences may be. Even if they seem obvious to you, they may not be to the person you are addressing.
Results-oriented feedback draws a line of causation between what a person did (again, focusing on their actions, not on the person as an individual) and the outcome. At the same time, it presents a scenario that connects the dots between what the person could have done differently, and how this could have resulted in a different outcome.
If you’re in a leadership role, it’s important to remember that you have access to information and a perspective that others do not, which gives you insights into relevance that others lack. Say you’re a CEO; it’s your job to know about every facet of your organization. Your manufacturing lead may know what’s going on in manufacturing, your marketing lead may know what’s going on in marketing, and your accounting lead may know what’s going on in accounting—but they don’t have access to the big picture in the way you do
If your marketing lead does something that impacts your manufacturing and accounting departments, you may recognize this impact and its significance well before they do (if they do at all). It’s then up to you to clarify the results of the marketing lead’s actions for them. This means outlining the consequences they may not fully appreciate; you must give them that appreciation, in a way they can understand. If you can help a person see the results of what they did, good or bad, they will learn and be motivated to take your feedback and apply it.
Again, this applies to facets of life well beyond the working world. If a parent tells a child to clean their room just for the sake of having a clean room, that may not land. What if a parent takes the time to explain the negative consequences of a messy room? Say, someone could trip over the child’s strewn toys and get hurt, or the dirt in the room might attract germs that could cause illness. This creates a more tangible reason for the child to keep the room clean. At all ages, people can appreciate the consequences of their actions; sometimes they just need help seeing those consequences.
Receiving Feedback Well Hinges on How Leaders Send the Message
We broadly recognize that sound feedback is a good thing. The question isn’t whether you should provide feedback, but whether the feedback actually registers with the person receiving it. Did it land?
Toward this end, there’s a lot of talk of “feedback culture,” and employers often harp on employees being able to take feedback or accept “constructive criticism” well. These conversations often ignore a critical truth: the way to ensure that feedback is received and acted on is less about teaching a person to receive feedback and more about teaching the person who delivers it to deliver it well—that is, by showing respect, highlighting relevance, and pointing to results.
Many years ago, I provided feedback to a man who reported to me as a regional sales manager. He was a good leader but had taken actions that led to unwanted outcomes. So, I had a conversation with him. At the conclusion, he said: “I have never been so kindly reprimanded in my life.” I found it an interesting comment and never forgot it. He recognized that he had messed up and that feedback was warranted. At the same time, he saw the kindness and consideration given to him in the way that feedback was given. That’s why he was able to receive it so well.
I think that case demonstrates my point perfectly. People shouldn’t have to learn new skills to receive feedback well. Yes, they have to be able to differentiate feedback from personal criticism to avoid heightened emotions. However, the responsibility for feedback being received well lies first and foremost with the person giving that feedback, not the one getting it.
Again, most people want to do well at work. If you can provide them feedback that’s constructive and that they can use, they’ll be glad to do better. People can appreciate feedback because they want to perform optimally. However, they don’t want feedback that’s delivered without respect or that isn’t relevant or that doesn’t seem to relate to any meaningful result. Barriers to successful feedback are created when any of those three things—respect, relevance, results—are missing.
Leaders who want their words to carry weight must accept that the responsibility lies with them. Taking time to perfect the art of providing feedback benefits employers and employees alike.
