How to Give Negative Feedback

Feedback is crucial when you work with other people. Positive feedback can motivate people and lets them know what they are doing right, so they can do more of it. But sometimes it’s also necessary to give negative feedback.

There may be a number of reasons why you don’t easily give negative feedback.

• You are worried about how the other person might react – that it destroys the relationship you have established with him or her.
• You are too angry or upset right now and you know it’s not the right time to give feedback, but you never come back to it again.
• You assume the other person knows that he or she is behaving inappropriate and you think they will change by themselves.

Ignoring the issue will not make it go away. Quite often the other person does not even know that he or she is doing something wrong. Properly given feedback can eliminate many misunderstandings.

The following steps show you how you can give negative feedback.

1. What message am I trying to get across?
Before you arrange to talk with the other person, you first prepare what you want to say and how you want to bring this across. Make sure you have a common cause. The feedback should be important to you and the other person. You use it to make the other person aware of something, and you give leads to how this can be changed. The other person uses the feedback to learn about himself or herself, to change, to achieve better results or to build relationships.

Here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself:

• Have I seen it right?
• Is it ‘normal’ for me to get annoyed about this?
• What exactly is annoying me?
• What do I think is wrong about his or her behavior?
• Am I allowed to say something about this?
• Why do I want to say something about this?
• What am I trying to accomplish?
• How can I say it without him or her getting angry or upset?
• Is it possible to work together after the conversation?

2. Time and Place
Don’t give feedback while you are still too emotionally involved (angry, sad, et cetera). But don’t wait too long. If you wait too long, the other person might not recall the specific incident you want to talk about.

Make sure you both have enough time so you won’t be rushed. Communication is not optimal if both of you are staring at your watches because you got appointments you need to go to. You need their full attention to ensure the message is received and understood.

Meet somewhere private so you won’t be disturbed. Don’t give people negative feedback in front of their friends or colleagues. I’m sure you would not like it if someone did that to you.

3. Describe Observed Behavior
Feedback only makes sense when the behavior can be changed. When you give feedback, make sure you give feedback on observed and changeable behavior. That also means no interpretations, but only behavior that can be observed by your senses. In other words, it could be recorded by a camera.

Always give feedback starting with “I”. If you say something like “you are doing something wrong”, this usually only leads to the other person denying it or defending himself or herself. It certainly distracts from what message you are trying to bring across. Or as they say: “Be hard on the problem, easy on the person”. Focus on the aspect of the behavior or work that needs attention. Avoid making personal comments.

You also want to make clear what effect the other person’s behavior has on you. Let the other person know how you feel. It doesn’t really matter what the other has done or has not done – what matters is that you have a problem with the consequences of that behavior.

Situation:
An employee in your company is working at the customer service and his job is to handle the incoming phone calls, but he is sometimes more engaged in social conversations with his colleagues.

Your feedback (bad example):

“Why don’t you pick up the phone when it rings? What’s so important that you can’t find the time to do that? That’s what you are paid for after all. Do you not take your work seriously?”

Your feedback (good example):

“Yesterday I noticed that you didn’t pick up the phone when it rang. I know this wasn’t the first time I saw this. That could mean that some of our customers can not reach us at that time. That doesn’t feel good to me, because I want to give our customers all the service we can.”

Try to be as specific and clear as possible. By being specific you avoid misunderstandings and resistance. Collect as much information as possible. The following questions can help you with this.

• Who: Who does something? Who is involved?
• What: What happened?
• Where: Where did it happen?
• When: When did it happen? How long did it last?
• How: How did it happen? How did I notice it?

Don’t try to offer explanations for his or her behavior. Leave that to the other person (see #4 – Let the Other Person Respond).

4. Let the Other Person Respond
Don’t try to give explanations for the observed behavior. Give the other person the opportunity to come up with an explanation. It might be a better explanation than the interpretations you have come up with. So after describing your observation and how you feel about that, be quiet for a while. I know this can be hard, but this is really important. Certainly don’t try to explain and interpret the situation for them. You can ask the other person if he or she understands you and if he or she remembers the incident the same way as you do. If that isn’t the case, you can give more examples. Be willing to listen to the response of the other person and ask questions if something is not clear. Try to find out what the cause of the observed behavior is. Do this by asking open questions. That way you give the other person the space to clarify his or her behavior. It is real important to listen well to what is being said. What the other person says will give you hints on how to come to a solution.

5. Discuss the Future
When you are both clear on the feedback that is given and on the cause of the observed behavior, you can then look for a solution. Sometimes you need to give the other person time to let the feedback ‘sink in’. If he or she is too emotional, you may better make an appointment for the next day to continue the conversation. Furthermore, the other person has to accept the feedback. If he or she thinks the feedback is nonsense, you will have to go through the previous steps again. See if you can get the other person to come up with the suggestions and ideas on how to improve the behavior or attitude. It is usually easier for a person to change if they thought of it themselves.

If it is not clear for the other person what the desired behavior is, help him or her by being very clear on how you would want that behavior to be. Being clear about what you want is especially important when the negative feedback is a blind spot for them. Sometimes people do not see their behavior as being in any way problematic and have no idea what to do to change it. Try to agree targets that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-framed).

Try to leave the other person feeling confident. End on a positive note and be encouraging.

6. Schedule Meetings
This one works best if you are the coach or manager of a group of people. Ask the other person on a regular basis what has gone well and what could have been better. Let the other person do most of the talking. If you tell someone you need to talk to him or her, most people immediately think that something is wrong. By holding regular discussions, both sides get used to discussing performance. And if you also use these meetings to review successes, the other person is more likely to look forward to these meetings rather than dreading them. If you create a safe environment it becomes easier for the other person to admit mistakes and see them as a learning experience.

7. Reflection
You can learn a lot from the feedback you give others, because it also says something about yourself. Feedback is always a projection of what you observed. Consider this once in a while and check for patterns in the feedback you are giving.

What has stopped you from giving negative feedback until now or what difficulties do you think you can come across when giving negative feedback? Let me know what your experience is with handling negative feedback (giving and receiving).

Gerber

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