Eleven Tips for giving awkward feedback

Eleven Tips for giving awkward feedback – especially to your boss or customer

I’ve been asked to do a talk on this subject and have been thinking about it quite a bit, and here are some of my favourite ideas:

1.         Choose your moment – not when they are busy or thinking!  We all know what it’s like to be collared just when you’re in the middle of something else – the answer is much more likely to be a no!  So you can look for your bosses body language, and know their daily habits: are they grumpy in the morning?  Do they have a quiet thoughtful patch at the end of their day, or are they worn out by then?

2.         In private – NEVER criticise your boss or their ideas or plans when other people are around, e.g. in a meeting, they will HAVE to become defensive and it won’t go well.  Quietly catch them on their own, ideally behind a closed door.

3.         Consider confronting them with facts – measurable and provable.  Confront is maybe a bit of a hostile word, but my point is that if you can say “You’ve changed the plan five times in the last 3 weeks and I wonder if….” or “We have spent 25k on advertising in the last 6 months and got nothing back for it, so I’m thinking…..” this can be a powerful start.  Often people reply “Really?  Is it that many / that much??  Gosh I hadn’t realized!” because sometimes we kid ourselves and avoid reality.

4.         Give a concrete solution, e.g. not “You are bad at communication”, not “I want better communication from you” but “Can we have a ten minute meeting every Monday please?”.  SO much better!

5.         Consider questioning – why is it done like this?  Are they happy with the way it’s going at the moment? Do they know about the details of what’s going on in that area? (Bosses don’t know everything!). 

6.         Consider a small trial first before you go for the big one – and I don’t mean a small trial of the change you want to make, though that could be a good way in.  I mean a trial of the process of giving your boss or customer feedback.  How able are they to accept it??  Ask for a small change, or give them a small bit of negative feedback on something unimportant, and see how they take it.  They might be more up for making improvements than you realise – …or not!

7.         “If I could show you a way” - “If there was a way to get better results” would you like to see it? / could you give me ten minutes to show you it?  Would it be worth a conversation?  This is hard to say no to!  And remember this could follow nicely from 3 or 5 above.

8.         Consider stories about others who did it and it worked brilliantly.   This depends a bit on the personality of your boss or customer, though stories are always powerful.  Keep it fairly short, and ideally choose a story about someone who is very similar (or has things in common) with your boss/customer.  Similar business, similar problem, etc.

9.         Worried if we don’t…..    This is a subtle way to focus on the negative without seeming negative yourself, especially if it’s followed by a positive suggestion.  For example “I’m really worried that if we don’t open a Tik-Tok account that we’ll miss out on the 18-25 market which could be huge – so how about if I talk to Dave and the two of us create something we can show you for approval?” or “I’m getting quite worried that if we don’t get the quality of our units sorted out we could get sued by a customer, and that could be for millions, so I’m thinking we should have a meeting with Production about that, what do you think?”

10.      Link to money – A way to save or make an extra £5000/month, or “I think we are wasting £5000 a month”, or “I think it could cost us a whole lot of money if we do this the currently planned way” – managers can’t resist it if you link a proposal to money, because in the end that’s what we are there for – and image if they DIDN’T act and all that money was lost or wasted, and it was on their head!  Even if you’re estimate is not 100% accurate, it’s powerful and can’t be ignored.  Be sure not to exaggerate it, but keep it on the conservative side, so it can’t really be challenged. 

11.      Sandwich – some good news, then the change you want, then more good news, e.g. “I’m loving the job and the customer is really happy, but there’s one small thing I’ve been thinking about….. but I know it’ll be easy to do and I’ll sort all the details for you if you want to do it”.  This is known as the Something Sandwich and it’s one of those techniques that most people know but when you use it, they never notice...

To sum up: it’s your duty to speak up if your organization is not doing things the best way.  But don’t only do it for the company (and your job security), do it for your customers, and above all do it for yourself!  Fight for what you believe in, but do it in the most diplomatic way.  Then you can be proud of how you’re spending 5 days out of every 7.

onwards and upwards!

CC