A Better Way To Deliver Bad News
by Jean-François Manzoni
Giving feedback to your employees, particularly when their performances fall short of expectations, is one of the most critical roles you play as a manager. For most people, it’s also one of the most dreaded. Such conversations can be very unpleasant—emotions can run high, tempers can flare. And so, fearing that an employee will become defensive and that the conversation will only strain the relationship, the boss all too often inadvertently sabotages the meeting by preparing for it in a way that stifles honest discussion. This is an unintentional—indeed, unconscious—habit that’s a byproduct of stress and that makes it difficult to deliver corrective feedback effectively.
The good news is that these conversations don’t have to be so hard. By changing the mind-set with which you develop and deliver negative feedback, you can greatly increase the odds that the process will be a success—that you will have productive conversations, that you won’t damage relationships, and that your employees will make real improvements in performance. In the pages that follow, I’ll describe what goes wrong during these meetings and why. I’ll look in detail at how real-life conversations have unfolded and what the managers could have done differently to reach more satisfying outcomes. As a first step, let’s look at the way bosses prepare feedback—that is, the way they frame issues in their own minds in advance of a discussion.
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