Difficulties Giving Feedback?
Written by: Anna Pasternak / Communication Coaching / June 02, 2021 / 8 minutes read
With leadership roles, comes the task of giving feedback to others. Sometimes this can be a hard task to accomplish especially when having to give negative feedback. When giving feedback we maybe often worry about hurting the others feelings or not clearly giving the feedback they had hoped for due to language that is too flowery and not to the point.
Let’s read over this scenario:
Macy is in a supervisor role at her job. Part of her job is delegating work to other co-workers. There has been a few occasions where Macy has received the work she requested back with numerous errors. Macy decided to go through the documents and fix the mistakes herself and submit the finished products.
Do you think what Macy did is right? Or should she have handled the situation differently?
Since Macy decided to make the corrections herself without communicating these errors to her co-workers she risks next time the same situation happening again. If Macy took more of an assertive approach and gave constructive feed-back about what she thought was completed correctly and incorrectly, next time she would not have to deal with receiving similar mistakes, and having to spend time doing it on her own.
One technique that could be used when giving feedback is called sandwiching. We call it sandwiching because we sandwich the negative feedback in the middle of the conversation putting the positive feedback around it, so that the conversation ends on a positive note. This can often help ease negative feelings or reactions the recipient may have. You can give some positive feedback, then negative, and end it off with positive again.
For example:
Thank you for handing in the assignment the day before the due date. Next time make sure to fill out this section the way I did here, as I had to make a few changes. The rest of your work looked great!
This technique allows for feedback to take place as opposed to being avoided like in the ‘Macy example above’, but is also accommodating to the recipient as it explains what they have done well not only focusing on the negative.
It is important to remain clear and concise when giving feedback especially when giving negative feedback.
Strategies for word finding
When feedback is not clear and not to the point, this can lead to over-explanations, and the main point of the feedback may be lost. Language that is too flowery can lead to over-politeness or ‘beating around the bush’ and the main point may not be brought across efficiently. A person who dislikes giving negative feedback or is often overly nice may experience this which shows more characteristics of a passive communicator. Take a look at these two examples:
The project you completed yesterday looked great. Though I found a few errors that will need to be fixed, please review and apply to all future projects. Your summary of the data was well done.
Thank you so much for handing in the project in time. Everything looked great, the customers were very happy after reading it. There was a few errors I noted that will need to be looked over for next time, though that’s small stuff, overall, I thought it was great!
The first person that expressed their feedback did it clearer and more concise compared to the second person. They got straight to the point which allows for the recipient to be more aware of what they did wrong and also what they did right. There are no questions to what needs to be fixed for next time. The second person gave feedback though they tried to be very nice about it, to not offend the other person. Though they mentioned a few mistakes it did not seem like a big deal, and the recipient may not have taken it as seriously.
Check out our communication Masterclasses for self-guided training on how to communicate more effectively. The assertive communication course which goes deeper into how to be more assertive. The leadership communication course is also a good course to look into if it sparks your interests which will also go more in depth into how to be a good leader including how to give feedback.
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