Is it feedback or bullying?
It seems as though everyone has jumped onto the radical candor bandwagon these days and for that, I couldn’t be more grateful. As a very direct person, I’ve always been categorized as “aggressive” in the workplace because I never offered up $hit sandwiches.
If you did something great I acknowledged that. If you messed up I told you. I am a believer that if you offer up $hit sandwiches on a regular basis one of two things happen to employees; they either never hear the negative because there’s always so much positive or they start to panic every time you talk to them because they know that with every good piece of feedback comes something negative.
So now this book comes out everyone like me is so happy because we’re like “Hey! It’s a good thing to give direct, timely and constructive feedback”. Except…
Feedback without guidance is not actually helpful. Constructive feedback, no matter how well intended and no matter how well received tears people down a little. Consistently telling people all the things they aren’t great at isn’t actually helpful. Especially if you’re not helping them get better.
If you think about it, feedback without guidance is pretty much bullying.
So how can we revolutionize feedback a little more? How can we take the spirit in which radical candor was written, and all the other things we’ve learned about feedback and make it work? How can we build people up into an even better version of themselves?
Here are a few ideas to help you re-shape how your organization does feedback:
Stop 3rd party feedback - it’s literally like playing a game of broken telephone with someone’s career. If you have feedback for someone, speak to them directly. Not sure how? Consult someone (maybe your manager or your HR team) to help figure out how to address the issue, but if the issue does not pose a legal issue or a danger to you, YOU should be the one delivering it.
Just because you think someone should be better at something doesn’t mean they need to be better at it. Make sure your feedback is relevant to them and not just you. People cannot be great at everything and your time is much better spent building your team members very good skills to become great skills and being ok with some of their skills just being average (this is why Team Matrixing before hiring helps!).
Feedback isn’t about the giver it’s 100% about the receiver. If you are giving feedback to someone make sure you can offer them ways to improve or handle things differently in the future. Feedback without guidance on how to change/grow is just bullying.
Don’t give positive and negative feedback together. Even in performance reviews make it very clear that you will focus on the good, then the bad, they should not be intertwined and outside of performance review times should never be delivered together.
Learn how your team members and colleagues take feedback, some people (like me) need it direct and timely. Others need a little more time to think through the feedback before engaging in a discussion about it, so think an update in your company’s feedback tool followed by a chat the next day. Some folks immediately get defensive, that’s a natural reaction, however by giving helpful guidance on how to get better you’re showing them that this feedback isn’t against them but rather for them.
Remember, feedback is intended to help make people better if at the end of the conversation they don’t know how to be better than your feedback was not delivered properly.