Employees often make up their own stories when they don't get helpful feedback. The stories they tell themselves are often a problem for them (and for the manager). By giving helpful feedback, you'll give your employees the data they need to do more of what's working, and give them less opportunities to make up their own stories.

Without helpful feedback, employees will make up stories

Most professionals prefer to know what good and not-so-good impact they're having. If satisfactory performance is "not a problem employee", you will probably sit with "non-troublemakers" instead of high-performing, committed and engaged professionals. Instead, let your employees know specifically what you appreciate and value when they meet expectations, and share your perspective on how they could improve if they fall short.

Story 1: “As long as I’m not creating trouble for my manager, I’m doing fine.”

It's the manager's job to create a psychologically safe environment where an employee won't be punished when they make a mistake. If you fear that feedback won't be well-received, it may be that you're falling short:<ul><li>You're not helping your direct report to have more impact.</li><li>You're not modelling accountable behaviour if you don't give feedback because you fear how it will be taken.</li><li>You may be contributing to a lack of psychological safety.</li></ul> Instead, consider why you fear your colleague won't receive feedback well. If you don't have a good reason, go ahead and give feedback. Just do it.

Story 2: “My manager doesn’t think I can take feedback well.”

If you really believe your employee cannot change, you will not offer him resources or opportunities to change. Instead, adopt a growth mindset for your employee and yourself. Employees with growth mindsets welcome challenges and work harder and more effectively, making them better contributors to their organisations. You will give more feedback because you believe they will rise to the challenge.

Story 3: “My manager doesn’t think I can change.”

There are three common stories that employees tell themselves when they don’t get enough feedback from their managers: 1.) “As long as I’m not creating trouble for my manager, I’m doing fine.” If the bar for satisfactory performance is “not a problem employee”, then your bar is way too low. 2.) “My manager doesn’t think I can take feedback well.” If you don’t have compelling evidence to support the belief that your employee won’t receive feedback well, then you need to, as Nike suggests, “Just do it”. 3.) “My manager doesn’t think I can change.” It’s important to adopt a growth mindset, for your employee and for yourself. By giving more helpful feedback, you’ll be providing your employees with the data they need to do more of what’s working, less of what isn’t, and with fewer opportunities to make up their own stories.

Stashed ideas

The Assumptions Employees Make When They Don’t Get Feedback

Bad bosses can be a factor for employees who decide to leave. However, if you’re considering leaving your job because of your manager, it could be that your boss is a diamond in the rough: someone who just needs some input on how to do a better job.

What if your boss can be fixed?

Consider the purpose of giving your boss feedback. Is it feedback on their performance or a project? If the feedback is about them, you have to be very cautious in how you're sharing your thoughts.

Understand your goal

Instead of speaking off the cuff, jot down some ideas you want to chat about. Ensure the conversation is happening face to face in some way. Body language and facial expressions add context that can't be conveyed over the phone. You'll be able to see visual cues and steer the direction of the conversation in an appropriate way.

Prepare for the conversation

Ask permission to share your thoughts. “I know you have a lot on your plate. I’ve noticed [this issue]. Can I share some thoughts on that?” Then state data and what you've seen happening. Start with something small to see if they're open to receiving feedback or if they shut it down.

Ease into your feedback

Approach the conversation honestly and respectfully. Be as direct as you can and ensure a professional tone. For example, "I've been having this issue. What do you think about approaching it from this direction?" Communicate how the change could positively impact your workflow. "I think I could be more efficient if X, Y, and Z happened."

Remove emotion

Once you provide your feedback, ask for theirs to ensure that it doesn't seem like you're attacking them. End the conversation by asking how you can help. Feedback can feel awkward when you're giving it to your boss. But, if you don't take the risk, your situation will remain the same or could worsen.

Create a two-way street

How to give your boss feedback without losing your job

One of the most integral parts of a manager’s job is providing performance feedback and holding people accountable. So much so that it can’t be abdicated or delegated to someone else. And yet, managers often avoid these types of conversations. Just the prospect of giving feedback on another person’s performance <a href="https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Using-Neuroscience-to-Make-Feedback-Work-and-Feel-Better">triggers an immediate increase in heart rate</a>—a sign the body is going into “fight-or-flight” mode.The resulting anxiety can be especially stressful when the intended recipient of feedback is more knowledgeable and experienced than the person giving it.

The Anxiety In Giving Feedback

To avoid the emotional buildup to delivering feedback in situations where you’re leading a team of experts, it helps to address the elephant in the room from the moment you join the team. Rather than letting your insecurities lead you to pretend to have more knowledge than you do, acknowledge your senior team members’ experience and expertise upfront and ask for their help in bringing you up to speed.

Set Expectations from The Start

Create clarity around your expectations and check on your individual team members’ capabilities to meet them, before agreeing on milestones and what success on a given project or initiative looks like. Let them know that you’ll be providing regular feedback along the way so people know where they stand in terms of their performance, and that you’ll be asking for theirs as well, to learn how you can be more helpful in supporting them.

Clarity Of Expectations

We can reduce the intensity of negative emotions by using science-backed emotion regulation strategies to intervene in the four-step process that generally gives rise to emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness.  The process starts with a situation—real or imagined. One strategy to keep your anxiety in check at this stage of the emotion generation process would be situation avoidance.

Short-Circuit Your Emotions: 1. Situation Avoidance

The second step is the attention paid to a particular, often threatening aspect of a situation. The intervention strategy in this step of the emotion generation process would involve intentionally changing your focus, and instead of ruminating about something negative that might happen, focusing instead on positive aspects, such as a feedback recipient’s leadership potential or the value they contribute to the team and the organization.

2. Changing Your Focus

The third step is what called appraisal. So when we would think of providing negative feedback (the situation), and focused (attention) on what we expected would be strongly negative reactions by our team, the meaning (appraisal) we assigned to providing feedback was that our team would resent our “incompetence” and hate working for us.

3. Appraisal

Our appraisal of a situation then leads to the fourth step in the emotion-generation process, the emotional response.After gaining insight into the neurological process by which our anxieties were generated, We learned We could take control and change the meaning We assigned to the act of providing feedback, rather than defaulting to the automatic assumption our brain made that our team would resent us.

4. The Emotional Response

Just the prospect of giving feedback on another person’s performance can set your heart racing, especially when the intended recipient is more knowledgeable and experienced than the person giving it.  


How to manage the anxiety of giving negative feedback

The biggest issue facing employers today is finding and keeping top talent. This is particularly true for startups and high-growth tech companies. Employers need a head’s up as to why employees may be on the job hunt. However, a single annual performance review or satisfaction survey will not be helpful.

Retaining employees

Research shows quality feedback is a key indicator of employee satisfaction and ultimately retention. However, practices like 360-degree feedback and annual reviews are dated, cumbersome and often inefficient because they address employee successes and challenges out of context and do so far too late to take action. As a result, leaders could end up with a disengaged workforce that is always on the job hunt. The solution is weekly pulse surveys to see how employees are doing, not how well they are performing.

Regular employee feedback is crucial

Relying on technology for regular, automated feedback is invaluable. <ul><li>Regular surveys provide valuable insight into employees' mindsets, which is different to the performance review in which employees hear how they may fall short.</li><li>Weekly stats can show managers where they stand compared to previous weeks. Perhaps seasonal patterns will emerge.</li><li>The right questions can address things like autonomy, flexibility, quality of life and teamwork.</li></ul>

Measuring culture and other intangibles

When the survey is complete, employees immediately receive a snapshot that indicates where they are thriving and where they are less than satisfied. The manager can use the anonymous survey outputs to drive formal and informal conversations with their team members and fellow managers.

Translating feedback into action

One survey question such as "What else can we do?" can cause employees to pursue a new idea. This approach can be particularly effective in younger companies which often attract more entrepreneurially-minded employees.

Invent and wander

Skip annual reviews and do check ins with employees instead

Practice is the foundation for effective learning. Yet, simple observation is more complex to do. Good practice is possible with the see-do-feedback loop:<ul><li>See. Find an example of how to solve a problem.</li><li>Do. Solve the problem yourself.</li><li>Feedback. Check if you got the right answer.</li></ul>

Practice is more complex than a simple observation

Decades of research show that experts get good by acquiring tons of specific patterns of knowledge. One specific study by Graham Cooper and John Sweller showed that when students were given examples where the problems were worked step-by-step and the solution provided were better able to solve test problems than those who did not get examples. The reason is that when you learn a pattern, it is less cognitively taxing.

See: The Power of Examples

Watching alone is not effective. Knowledge needs to become an automatic skill to be useful. Practice is not just for physical skills. A <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-05951-001">study</a> by Jeffrey Karpicke and Janelle Blunt showed that students that recalled a passage they've read did much better on a test than those who re-read the passage several times. The best approach to learning is to see a few examples of the pattern to be learned, then practice without examples so you can perform from memory.

Do: The Need for Retrieval

You need to get feedback on your practice. If the problem is straightforward, seeing the correct solution is enough. But skills with gradations of performance or more subjective measures of success need a teacher, tutor or coach for feedback. <ul><li>Feedback correct errors.</li><li>Feedback can train your unconscious learning system. The brain works through rewards. It reinforces past actions that led to success and weakens those that led to failure.</li><li>Feedback guides your attention and motivation for future learning.</li></ul>

Feedback: Check Your Work

<ul><li>Languages: Notice vocabulary, phrases and grammar; test it out in a conversation, then check if you are properly understood.</li><li>History: Read a book, write a summary explaining the main points, then check back to see what you’ve missed.</li><li>Business: Learn a new management technique, implement it in your company, then see how it performs.</li></ul>

Examples of implementing the Loop

Practice makes perfect. But what's the best way to train? I review research showing the three ingredients to do it right.

The Assumptions Employees Make When They Don’t Get Feedback

How to give your boss feedback without losing your job

How to manage the anxiety of giving negative feedback

Skip annual reviews and do check ins with employees instead

See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice - Scott H Young

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