Many managers dread performance conversations. There are so many ways they can go wrong, and new managers especially often have little experience delivering candid feedback.
There are some formulas that try to help. They give guidance to shape your delivery, including advice to be specific, use examples, focus on observable behavior, avoid assuming motive or describing character or personality.
All of that is good advice, but there’s one other question that can often have more of an impact. And that is the question of whether the other person is actually ready to receive that feedback.
In most cases, the reason you’re giving feedback isn’t just so that you can mark a leadership skill compete or check a box to confirm that you’ve delivered a message. If you’re an effective leader, then you’re giving feedback so that you can encourage something in the other person’s future behavior.
But when corrective feedback is public or unexpected, or when the other person is already overwhelmed with other heavy matters, even the most precisely crafted feedback content can fail to land.
At least one feedback model, one from Manager Tools, begins with an explicit request for permission, asking “May I give you some feedback?”
There are occasions, though, such as urgent safety issues, ethical concerns, or systemic problems, where asking for permission isn’t necessarily appropriate. But it’s still valid to consider whether the conditions are right for the feedback to be accepted, and what you can do to fix things if they’re not.
If you’d like to look further into your own approach to giving performance feedback, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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