minimizing the chance of triggering defensiveness
Suppose you have an early-career teammate who is under-performing, and you have to give some negative feedback (perhaps in a formal performance evaluation meeting). Ideally the negative feedback is received as a clarifying message of what to work on; so how can you set up the meeting to avoid triggering defensiveness, the enemy of growth?
The most important thing you can do to avoid a defensive reaction to negative feedback is to first align on the purpose of the feedback meeting.
People show up to these conversations with a ton of historical baggage that you’ll never know about. When I’ve seen harsh feedback conversations go badly, it often seems to be rooted in the fact that the feedback recipient isn’t clear on what the purpose of the feedback is. If you were to ask the recipient what the purpose of the feedback meeting is, what would they say? Critically, even people who know the right answer (“It’s to help me grow!”) may nevertheless maintain deeper feelings that this meeting is a moratorium on their work quality, identity, or stability in the organization. Those feelings immediately, understandably put people in a defensive crouch. In fact, this can happen even if it is absolutely clear in the leader’s mind that the only purpose of tough feedback is to help the teammate grow.
Because the purpose of negative feedback meetings is so likely to be misunderstood, the first move in these meetings is always to establish a common understanding of what this meeting is all about. I typically start by asking my direct reports to explicitly state what they think the purpose of performance eval meetings is. (Yes, I even do this with veterans.) No matter their answer, I always reiterate my key stake in the ground: I’ll never tell anyone if they are being fired or on that path in this meeting; I’ll never tell someone if they’re getting a promotion or a raise in this meeting. All of that happens outside of this meeting. The only purpose here is to help you grow. That applies equally to both the positive and negative feedback I’ll share today. This meeting is one of our many vehicles for furthering your development; nothing more.
Plenty of ink has been spilled by others on the subtle art of delivering harsh feedback. I find that none of those skills matter when both the leader and the teammate aren’t first clear and aligned on what this meeting is all about. And this isn’t just about protecting your teammates’ feelings — when feedback is received with defensiveness, people don’t grow. And no one wins.
-Ben
