Everyone hates to give feedback. Yes, they do. Whether it’s individual leaders or groups as large as a seventy-member administrative team for a school district; in every case, people consistently – and avidly – avoid giving each other feedback. The sad result is that teams miss out on using feedback to build trust with each other.
By “feedback,” I mean a constructive, caring response that someone shares with me, preferably in person rather than by email or text, about something (positive or negative) that I’ve said or done, at or near the time that I said or did it.
Why is this so hard? We avoid giving feedback for three main reasons:
We don’t want to injure the relationship
Most people don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. We think that declaring an issue will cause a fight or a misunderstanding, and we fear the possible consequences of conflict: mistrust, hard feelings, silent treatment, ostracism, undermining by the other person, etc. We forget that giving feedback can be a gift to the other person and to your relationship with them.
We don’t know how the other person will react
Giving feedback is a heavy lift, emotionally. So, when we don’t know the outcome, we’re less likely to make the effort. We don’t know if the other person will receive the feedback calmly or react with anger or withdrawal. (See the companion article: “When Feedback Hurts.”) We don’t know if the other person will hear our point of view, and we don’t know how the other person will use the feedback we offer. Will they be willing to make a change, or will they hold the feedback against us in the future? While we hope for a measured response from the other person, some people do not react well to feedback and may even retaliate.
We lack skill and confidence in giving constructive feedback
This obstacle is the easiest one to fix and it’s the key to overcoming our reluctance due to the first two points. More importantly, knowing how to give constructive feedback starts a virtuous cycle. When we know how to give constructive feedback:
- We know how to start, making it easier to approach the other person.
- We’re confident in the possibility of a positive outcome, because it has happened before.
- We therefore give constructive feedback regularly, preventing issues from being blown out of proportion.
- The other person responds with trust in us to give feedback with caring, and they become more willing to hear it and more able to give feedback to us, thus leading to more positive outcomes.
When this cycle repeats over time, the ultimate benefit is a strengthened relationship in which people can discuss difficult subjects and weather the storms that inevitably arise in their relationship. That’s one of the hallmarks of a high-performing team: a team that trusts each other to speak forthrightly and avoid gossip, without back-biting the leader, second-guessing each other, or allowing resentment to fester.
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Thanks for reading! I help teams learn how to give and receive feedback constructively, often in tandem with Patrick Lencioni’s Five Behaviors of Cohesive Teams. Contact me to find out how I can help your team with team coaching and learning essential soft skills such as Conflict Competence.
