Three more reasons “You don’t take feedback well” is risky performance feedback
In my previous article, I discussed the common tendency for managers, in a feedback conversation, to give the secondary feedback to their employees, “You don’t take feedback well.” Perhaps you have experienced this scenario yourself: you receive feedback from your manager, and you react negatively in some capacity (perhaps by debating the feedback, or respond with emotion), only to be told, often in the same session, “You need to take feedback better.” I argue in my previous article that this reveals the manager
a) is willing to distract away from the original intent of the feedback conversation, and whether the feedback is actually incorporated
b) believes the feedback conversation would not or ought not surface a response
c) is interested in protecting his or her ego.
There are more things that “you need to take feedback better” reveals about the manager. Here they are:
1. It probably means that the either manager or employee or both together are new to the feedback conversation process
When a manager gives feedback to an employee, and the employee reacts negatively, this is probably a sign that the whole performance feedback process is new to either the manager, the employee or both together, which are all highly likely situations. It should be expected that initial performance conversations will be wrought with defensiveness, excuses, emotion, and other reactions. That is, they will be clunky. But if the tandem keep working on it, and try to have performance conversations over time, they will both get used to the process and stay increasingly focused on the performance and the desired outcomes.
It should be expected that the more the manager and employee do something (in this case, have feedback conversations), the better they will be at it over time. Isn’t this true on just about every other activity? When the manager feels like the (initial) conversation isn’t going well – this should be the default understanding: “We’ll keep working at getting better at this,” rather than immediately assert that the “taking feedback” part is an inimitable defect in the employee. So to you managers out there, don’t be surprised when the first time you do something it isn’t perfect.
How to be collaborative rather than combative with your employees – and make annual reviews go SOOO much better
Many managers botch the annual review process. There’s this persistent idea out there that the manager needs to provide “one good thing, one bad thing” on an annual performance review. However unlikely it is that the employee does an equal amount of damage as good over the course of the year, this model seems to persist. Many times, managers will actually go fishing for incidents that are bad. They’ll try to find those moments where the employee said something wrong, missed a step, or caused friction on the team. The manager will fastidiously wait for the annual review and then spring it upon the employee – Aha! You did this bad thing during the year! And I get to cite it on the review.
Well no more of that!
I propose the sympathetic model of performance feedback. In the sympathetic model, the manager looks at both the individual and the system in determining what the employee ought to have done differently (if anything) and what ought to be done differently in the future.
Here is the sympathetic model: (Click for larger image)
When you look at an employee’s actions this way, you can see that there may be some greater forces that went into the employee’s behavior. So instead of using a bad incident to cite what is wrong with the employee, the sympathetic model asks that managers engage in analysis and discussion with the employee to figure out what drove the behavior. Then the manager and the employee strategize on what to do next, and what should be done in the future.
How to use strategy sessions as a way to manage indirect sources of info about your employees (part 3)
This is the third part of a three part series in which I describe how managers should use strategy sessions to address indirect sources of information. Many managers react to indirect sources of information and pass it along as feedback, when instead they should focus on direct sources of information for providing performance feedback. When dealing with indirect sources of info, I advocate for “strategy sessions.”
In the example I’m using in this series, you’re receiving information from your employee’s peers and partners that the employee is being “difficult” in meetings. In my previous articles (part 1 here, and part 2 here), I describe the first six steps for managers to take:
1) Make sure it’s important and worth strategizing about
2) Introduce the conversation as a strategy session
3) Introduce the issue that needs to be strategized share the information that is driving the need for discussion
4) Ask for the employee’s perspective on what the issue is
5) Find points of agreement on what the issue is
6) Strategize on how to resolve the problem
In today’s article, I wrap up the steps for conducting a strategy session with your employee:
7. Agree on what both of you plan to do differently
Since you never directly observed the original behavior, you can’t give quality feedback on the behavior. You can, however, agree on what should be done moving forward. This is a form of providing expectations of behavior. As a result of the strategy session, you and your employee may agree to the following:
How to use strategy sessions as a way to manage indirect sources of info about your employees (part 2)
This is the second of a three part series in which I describe how managers should use strategy sessions to address indirect sources of information about their employees. Many managers react to indirect sources of information and pass it along as feedback, when instead they should focus on direct sources of information for providing performance feedback. When dealing with indirect sources of info, I advocate for “employee strategy sessions.”
In the example I’m using in this series, you’re receiving information from your employee’s peers and partners that the employee is being “difficult” in meetings. In my previous article, I describe the first three steps for managers to take:
1) Make sure it’s important and worth strategizing about
2) Introduce the conversation as a strategy session
3) Introduce the issue that needs to be strategized share the information that is driving the need for discussion
In today’s article, we continue the steps for conducting a strategy session with your employee:
4. Ask for the employee’s perspective on what the issue is
You can say, “I’d like your perspective on what the issue is and what is creating it.” In our example, others may find the employee difficult, but perhaps the others are being difficult to the employee. You don’t know, so provide ample space in the conversation for the employee to explain his or her perspective. You will likely get more robust information than you probably got from the “indirect” sources. The better the manager listens and understands the employee’s perspective, the more trust will be built between the employee and the manager. In many instances, the employee will fully admit to being “difficult” and will explain what their behavior was that would be interpreted as such. But the strategy session is about resolving the issue – not only the employee’s behavior. So make sure you get the employee’s perspective on what the issue is.
How to use strategy sessions as a way to manage indirect sources of info about your employees (part 1)
This is the first part of a three part series on how managers can use “strategy sessions” to improve the performance of their employees and their team, as well as the manager’s own performance.
Managers receive a lot of information about their employees from indirect sources – often much more information than from direct observation. I frequently write about how it is important that performance feedback be performed based on direct observation, or else it risks being non-specific and non-immediate, and generally becomes useless the less specific and less immediate it is.
However, managers are not often enough in the position to observe directly what it is the employee did exactly and provide this level of performance feedback. And with all of the indirect information floating around – such as from customers, other employees, bosses and metrics – it becomes difficult to figure out what to do about it.
Here’s an example I’ll use throughout this series: You are getting “feedback” from your employee’s peers and partners that he was “difficult” during a recent series of meetings. You’d like to give feedback on this. But what is it exactly that was “difficult” and why is this happening? And maybe this “difficult” behavior was actually a good thing? You really don’t know.
My recommendation is, instead of having a “feedback conversation”, have a “strategy sessions” with your employee. The idea with strategy sessions is that you partner with your employee to figure out the best course of action moving forward to address the “feedback” (actually, it’s an indirect source of information) and still achieve the goals. In short, you and your employee strategize together.
This is different from delivering corrective feedback, which is more direct, specific and immediate, with a clear course of behavioral actions that are different the next time it is performed. Strategy sessions are more along the lines of “What should we do to get the best outcome?”
Here are the first three steps on conducting strategy sessions with an employee:
What to do when you receive a customer complaint about your employee’s performance
In my previous articles, I provide warnings to managers who rely on indirect sources of information about employees’ performance in providing performance feedback. I generally advocate that a manager use direct observation to provide performance feedback, as this is the path that most likely will generate improved performance. Relying on indirect sources tends to erode trust and is often very confusing. I provide some tips on what to do about “indirect sources” here.
But there are times when you receive some sort of feedback about your employee’s performance that doesn’t allow you to wait until you can notice a trend and/or perform more direct observation. A common scenario is when you receive a complaint from a customer about something one of your employees has done. So let’s talk about what to do in this scenario!
1. Get info from the customer about what happened.
When a customer complains to you about what the employee did, try to get the points of fact about the situation, what was said and done during the situation, and where things stand now (has the issue actually been resolved, or does it still need resolution?”) Often with complaints – and if you are speaking directly with the customer – the details are fairly fresh in the customer’s mind – and usually given right away after the situation, so it is possible to get fairly specific quotes about what your employee said, specific info about what your employee did. Try to write these quotes/actions down and understand as many of the “facts” of the situation possible. Of course, if you receive this complaint indirectly (like via a survey), then this option is not available.
2. Resolve the customer issue/inform that you will take action
When a customer complains, there are often two complaints wrapped in one. Read more
Performance feedback is a means to improve your expectation-providing skills
The Manager by Designsm blog discusses the art of providing feedback, such as making your feedback specific and immediate and attempting to describe the preferred behavior.
Now let’s take this to a new level. When giving performance feedback to an employee, you are in the position to specifically articulate what you want the employee to do. This is handy information, because it could be a clue that you never actually set this expectation in the first place.
Let’s say you are in charge of a team working on a significant systems delivery. The team has been working on it for a couple of months without significant issue, and the Vice President comes into your office saying, “I don’t know what’s going on with this systems delivery project!” OK, so this is a problem. Something needs to be solved. You determine that the VP wants a visibility to the project status, and you work out a format and timing for getting this info to the VP. Nobody wanted this crisis to happen, but it did.
Step 6 for Employees Providing Feedback to a Manager: Phrases to use during the feedback conversation
This is the last in a series of articles designed to help you give feedback to your manager. In the previous articles, we discussed the previous steps:
1. Setting up a performance log
2. Giving positive reinforcement of the behaviors you believe are good
3. Contracting with your manager to give feedback on improvement
4. Previewing the conversation with HR
5. Preparing for giving the feedback.
Yes, it’s a lot of work to get to this point. But hopefully you’ve discovered that the very act of doing the previous steps will a) Actually solve problems you’re experiencing already and b) keep you focused on what areas you’d like to give feedback.
Today, I’ll provide you some phrases to help you perform the feedback discussion on behaviors you’d like to change in your boss.
1. The setup
Here you want to ease into the conversation with your boss based on your preparation. The more you are focused on the intent (provide feedback) and result (better results), the better the setup will be:
“I’d like to provide some feedback to you in regards to what happened last week. Is this a good time?”
2. The context Read more
Important fields that an employee performance log should contain – Intermediate Level
The Manager by Designsm blog advocates that people managers should keep some sort of log, easily created in a spreadsheet, that tracks the behaviors and performance of their employees. I provide a few reasons to do so here. In my previous post, I provide the initial fields that get you started in the log. These beginner-level fields focus on documenting the specific behavior using behavior-based language. Here they are:
| Item num-ber | Date | Name | Title | Context | Observed behavior | Preferred Behavior |
| 1 |
In today’s post, I provide additional columns that should be added to your employee performance log to increase the usefulness and effectiveness of creating and managing such a log. Consider these the “intermediate level” fields. So in addition to the fields above, here are the next set of recommended columns for your employee performance log:
Helpful tip for managers: Keep a performance log
Here’s something I rarely observe managers do, but is immanently useful and helpful: Keep a log of the employee’s behaviors and performance.
Here are a few reasons why it is useful:
1) It will help you remember all the stuff that happens over the course of the year
A lot of stuff happens of the course of the year, and it is hard to remember all of the details about what happened, what you said, what the employee did, and what were the results. A week after an event, it’s easy to forget that something ever happened. And when the situation is complex, it’s even harder to remember. If you have a team larger than three people, which describes most managers, this is especially useful.
