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Rell DeShaw is a manager in Canada’s federal public service and I met her at the National Managers’ Community Development Forum in Winnipeg this past May.  She is not only an exceptional leader but also an avid learner and teacher, seeking to discover and share resources with others.  She is the author of her own blog Letter to a New Manager, and a few weeks ago I asked her if she would guest here on Turning Managers into Leaders.  Much to my delight, she agreed!

I believe in giving upward feedback … but I subscribe to the theory that the higher up you go, the less willing people are to give you honest feedback.  Unfortunately, because of the perceived power imbalance, many employees won’t bother telling you what they really think.  Here are their top five reasons why they won’t AND my rebuttals to these rationales.

1. It’s the leader’s job to give me feedback not the other way around. Like any relationship, your relationship with your boss goes two ways, so as long as feedback is given in a way that has the potential to strengthen the relationship, it can be done.
2. They should already know this – don’t managers get trained? No matter how much training a manager takes, the fact is that they have never managed you. They can’t read your mind and they may forget that they are not managing a clone of themselves. Of course your boss has preferences about how they want to work and ultimately they get the last word. But you won’t know if there is room for change until you ask.
3. I’ll probably get fired for insubordination. That is certainly possible if you choose to give the feedback in a disrespectful way but I think that the better way to approach it is that you were both hired to work for the same goal. If you have a suggestion to change the working relationship to be more effective in reaching a common result, why wouldn’t you propose it? In upward feedback discussions I always ask myself “What’s in it for them?” and “What’s in it for the organization?” Without good answers to these two questions, I am not yet ready to have an upward feedback discussion.
4. If they wanted my feedback they’d have asked for it. Yes in an ideal world they would have, but this doesn’t mean you can’t offer it anyway. It won’t occur to some, some don’t know how to ask, some don’t think they’d get any feedback even if they tried.
5. I have no reason to believe this will be effective. Some ways to test the water without actually talking to your boss include: Doing back door checks to see how they have reacted to feedback in the past. If the person doesn’t “suffer fools gladly” it may not be worth it. It is however a good sign of the person has done a 360 degree feedback exercise.

So, what do you have to add to this list?  What are your reasons for not giving (or giving) feedback to your boss?  Let’s add to this great list that Rell has started.  Please add your Comments below.

You can dialogue with Rell through her blog at Letter to a New Manager.

A few weeks ago, I gave you a short video clip about focusing on the problem rather than the person when giving negative feedback to your employees.  In this installment, I show you a way to criticize an employee while actually boosting the employee’s morale!  Watch the video below to find out how.

If giving negative feedback to your employees is something you struggle with, then be sure to also take another look at these past blog posts:

• Giving constructive feedback to employees – one powerful tip
• Giving negative feedback: focus on facts instead of opinions
• Giving negative feedback: stay future-focused
• Giving negative feedback: focus on the problem, not the person

So, let’s have a conversation about how you manage this challenging aspect of your leadership role.  Share your approach to giving negative feedback with me and others on this blog.  Just click on the Comment link below.

Giving negative feedback to employees is a task no one looks forward to. But, if you’re in a position of leadership, sooner or later, you’ll be called upon to do exactly that! So how can you be more effective? In past blog posts, I’ve shown you how to focus on fact rather than opinion, and how to emphasize the future and not the past. This short video illustrates one more tip to deliver the message in such a way so that other person is more likely to listen (and act) on what you say.

So … what are you saying or doing to increase that likelihood that the feedback you offer to others is heard and acted upon?

Last week, I showed you exactly how to ensure that the positive feedback you give your employees has the encouraging impact you want — I told you about how critical it is to be specific. This week, I want to talk about another necessary and important component of praise — timeliness. This short video explains what I mean.

So … how good are you at making sure that your praise is “immediate”? What gets in the way?

As a leader, many of your tasks can be difficult or challenging.  Which means that when you find an opportunity to give positive feedback to your employees, it’s even more enjoyable.  Praising your staff for a job well done is one of the most pleasant responsibilities that comes with being a  supervisor, team leader or manager.  So if you’re going to do it, you want to make sure that it counts!  This short video demonstrates first how not to give positive feedback to an employee, and then follows it up with a much improved version.  The difference — specificity.  See for yourself.

I may have been sincere in all the situations, but because I was SPECIFIC in the latter examples, I was much more effective. My praise had the positive impact that I wanted it to have. Do you see the difference? Your thoughts and comments welcomed.

If you’re in a position of formal leadership, then one of your responsibilities at some point or another, like it or not, will be to give negative feedback to an employee.  And it’s a task that no one looks forward to.  Let’s face it: people’s natural reaction to criticism is defensiveness, and when that happens, getting your message across becomes even more difficult.  So your goal in giving negative feedback is to convey your message in a way that not only achieves the desired behavior change, but also reduces or eliminates the likelihood of the other person getting their back up.  Ultimately, it all comes down to how you put your thoughts into words.  Last October, I told you about one small modification that you could make in your language to achieve accomplish this – focus on facts instead of opinions.  Here’s another adjustment you can make to increase the likelihood that the other person will listen to what you have to say and take positive action towards correcting the offending behavior – stay future-focused.  If you were to say to an employee “you’ve been late three times this week,” the conversation will quickly bog down into specifics – which day was the employee late, by how much, and of course a litany of excuses why.  Far better to head that off quickly by following it up with “I realize that you may have very good reasons for your tardiness this week, but I’d like to focus on what you and I are going to do to prevent it from happening again.”  Force the conversation towards the future rather than the past.  Even if you do end up talking about the past, make sure that the discussion does not conclude until you have talked specifically about behavior change in the future.

Now this one change in language isn’t going to magically make these negative feedback discussions effortless.  But it will move you in the right direction.  In future blog posts, I’ll share some more ideas.  But for now, I’d like to hear yours.  What are some of the specific things you say or do to increase that likelihood that the feedback you offer to others is heard and acted upon?

As a supervisor or manager, one of your toughest jobs is to give negative feedback to your people. Far too often, employees get defensive when confronted with criticism. Their defensiveness can be awkward and upsetting, causing you to veer away from your intended message. And to make things worse, defensiveness is known to worsen listening ability, so when you finally walk away from the interaction, you’re still uncertain whether your message was heard.  To overcome these challenges, successful leaders master the art of assertive language, which is based on the premise that you can emphasize what you need and still be respectful. While assertive language does not guarantee that the other person will not become defensive, it does lessen the likelihood of it happening. It improves the odds that your message will be received and understood in the way you had intended.

“I” language is one of the simplest and most basic assertive language tools in the successful leader’s communication toolkit. Consider this situation where Katrina is frustrated with Kelly, an employee always late in submitting his weekly expense statements for her approval.

“Kelly, you frustrate me when you don’t submit your expense statement on time.”

Unfortunately, Katrina’s use of the word “you” is practically guaranteed to make Kelly defensive and reduces the chance that he will listen effectively. Read the rest of this entry »

Offering negative feedback, whether to an employee or a co-worker, can be a difficult task.  The challenge lies in trying to convey your message in a way that not only achieves the desired change in behavior, but also reduces or even eliminates defensiveness in the other person.  Ultimately, it all comes down to how you say what you need to say. And fortunately, there are many small modifications you can make in your language that will increase the likelihood that the other person will listen to what you have to say and take positive action towards correcting the offending behaviour.  One such small thing is to focus on facts, rather than opinions.  For example, if I was to say to an employee “you’re disorganized,” it doesn’t tell the employee anything about what he or she needs to do or change in order to fix the problem, so the likelihood of a positive change occurring is low.  However, if I was to change my language to “I have noticed that you are unable to find the files I need when I ask you for them,” I am now being specific by focusing on facts rather than an opinion, and this tells the person what he or she needs to do in order to produce the change in behavior I desire.

Now I’m not saying that just this one change in language will make a difference in outcome 100% of the time.  But I am saying that the likelihood of getting a positive response will go up.  In future blog posts over the upcoming months, I’ll offer other specific ideas.  But for now, I’d like to hear yours.  What are some of the specific things you say or do to increase that likelihood that the feedback you offer to others is heard and acted upon?

If you’re a supervisor, manager or team leader, then there will be times when you will have to give feedback to employees about things they haven’t done well, or could have done better.   And it’s not an easy task!  In fact, you’ve probably read or heard, or even been taught, that this type of feedback is better received if it’s prefaced first by something nice.  So you might say something like:

You did a really good job of organizing the meeting but the agendas were not distributed early enough.

The feedback you wanted to give was that the agendas were not distributed early enough; and you attempted to soften the message by saying “you did a really good job of organizing the meeting” first.  Unfortunately, if your goal was to get your employee to listen and act on the feedback, you probably failed.  You were unsuccessful because the word “but” is the equivalent of a verbal eraser.  Anything you said prior to the “but” was erased in the mind of the listener.  So you started off well when you said “you did a really good job of organizing the meeting”; but it was never heard because you followed it with the word “but”.  Instead, try:

You did a really good job of organizing the meeting.  Unfortunately the agendas were not distributed early enough”.

Do you see the difference?  Period.  No “but”, no “however” (“however” = “but”).  Butt out the “butt”.

What other classic mistakes have to you encountered in giving (or receiving) negative feedback?