What strategies can be used to navigate a potentially difficult feedback conversation with your boss? How can you effectively communicate without risking your relationship or your job?
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- Establish a foundation that will support challenging conversations
- Focusing on facts, data, and the impact on business deliverables
- How to make a specific request for change and propose a follow-up
This podcast episode focuses on adapting a four-step feedback formula and expresses the importance of effective feedback delivery, even when the recipient is a colleague or superior.
By following this adjusted formula, listeners can approach challenging feedback conversations with confidence and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes.
In this Episode:
[4:52] How to get permission to say the hard stuff to your boss
[8:10] Include your feelings, but emphasize impact on the work
[10:13] How to end the conversation, and how to follow up with accountability
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
Episode #122 – Four Step Formula for Giving Difficult Feedback
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 123 – How to Give Difficult Feedback to Your Boss
Hey everyone, welcome back. Today’s episode, we’re going to be talking on revisiting really the four step feedback formula. That was on a recent episode, I put out an episode talking about giving feedback or because end of year evaluations, this is the time when you need to give feedback to your teams and to the people who report to you. And especially if you have someone who really does need to change that can be hard to do.
What I heard from you after that episode, from your listeners was, yeah, but many of you are not really in a position today where that’s your job to give feedback to people who report to you. Instead, a lot of you feel like you’re in a position where you do have some challenging constructive feedback you want to give, but it’s either to your colleagues who don’t report to you, which can be tricky, but still as appropriate, I think, and to your boss, or to someone who is clearly senior to you, but you want to communicate something, you want to deliver some feedback.
And again, that’s, I think, totally appropriate to do that. Especially if it’s having an impact on you and your ability to be your best at work to do the best that you can at work. Or to be the best part of the team. You know, if you have feedback, just because you don’t directly manage someone doesn’t mean you can’t give it. So since that’s what people wrote to me and said, is do you have a formula for that?
And also, I should mention, I’m not like a feedback guru. This is, this is my preferred approach based on having read lots of books, heard lots of other podcasts, a lot of these ideas are certainly like not my own, you know. But when I think about how you would apply this feedback to someone that you don’t, it does not report to you. I think it’s very, very similar, but I’m going to show you how it will look a little bit different.
So if you’ve listened to the fourth step feedback formula, this will sound familiar. And we’re just going to tweak it a little bit for how you can use this to communicate information to someone that you do not manage, right, that either is your peer, but then you don’t have a reporting line with or someone who is senior to, again, whether it’s actually your manager, or possibly somebody else.
Now, a little caveat here, right? If you know your organization the best if it’s appropriate for you to give feedback to or via your manager. So if it’s someone who is more senior to you, but not in your direct reporting line, you may want to loop in your manager, your boss, your chair, whomever to help with that, depending upon sort of the internal politics of the organization, I will leave that to you.
But I’m just assuming here that you have an opportunity to have a feedback conversation. And for most people, you know, you’re professionals, you’re adults, there will be usually an expectation that you have brought your feedback directly to the person involved before going up the chain to their boss in most cases, right.
And I’m not talking about HR type of cases where, you know, there’s something very sensitive, where you may not want to have to do that directly. I’m just talking about good old fashioned interpersonal, team-related performance feedback.
Okay, let’s revisit the four step formula. So step one, shared purpose, mutual respect. In the prior episode, I was talking about how you tell someone how valued they are to the team, right?
How much you appreciate them, because you are there to develop them, right? You’re, you’re their boss, you want to develop them, you want them to be successful. In this case, that part may feel a little bit out of place. But instead, it’s really just still communicating that shared purpose shared respect, that you value working together with them, or that you value them, as your manager, as your boss, as the leader of the group.
And that you want, you know, it’s important to you, they are an important stakeholder to you and that, you know, meeting their expectations is important to you. So whether that’s what the feedback about that that’s not what’s being done here, right?
What we’re trying to do is set up that mutual respect. And to say out loud, like, we have a shared purpose we work together, it’s important for me that we worked well together, it’s important to me that we’re effective, or if it is your boss, it’s important to me that I meet your expectations, right that I am delivering what you need from me, this is what’s important. So you’re setting that the table there that establishes that mutual safety. And it also I think, protects against any perceived, you know, lack of respect of a hierarchy, if you will, if you just sort of set it out of, you know, you understand that your relationship is either as peers or that their manager and it’s important to you that you continue to work well together in that way.
And then in Step two, I think it’s basically the same you say, because of this, I have some feedback. That might be difficult for me to give. So in the prior episode, we talked about this may be difficult for the other person to hear. And this one, I think it’s important to acknowledge, it may be difficult for you to give it because you are giving it in a way where you don’t necessarily have authority or expectation to be giving it, or you realize it’s sensitive, because you’re giving it you know, “up the hierarchy”.
So you just acknowledge that, and then you ask permission, you say, “is that okay?” So that’s a little bit of a different? Well, I mean, you could ask permission, I suppose anytime you’re giving feedback, regardless of whether somebody reports to you but in this set of circumstances, I think it’s especially important, you’ve laid out your mutual purpose, you’ve acknowledged, this is a little bit difficult for me to say, is it Okay If we have that conversation? I don’t know that anyone’s ever going to say no to that. But you’ve asked her permission.
So again, kind of establishing deference and respect just by asking, and they will say, “okay.”
Then the next step, which is facts and data, facts and data, facts and data and impact. So you describe the facts, again, really objective, not your judgments, your assumptions, your inferences about it, not your made-up stories, you know, like the context of what you perceive.
And by that, I mean, you know, someone cuts you off in traffic, and you’re like, well, that person is a jerk, they only care about themselves. The first part is factual. Right? The second part is your judgment, your story. So leave that part to the side facts and data, and then the impact that it’s having, right? How is it impacting you, it’s preventing you from being able to do your best work, because blah, blah, blah, so you need to kind of paint that picture.
So you’re giving the feedback, facts and data so that it’s not subjective, it’s not really refutable? And also the impact. So why should your boss or your colleagues care that this is happening, right, that you are observing from them of behavior pattern, it’s the so what factor that you need to communicate. So this is how it’s impacting you.
It’s how it’s preventing you and I, you know, again, you can, you can include personal feelings here, if you want, right, you can, you can say it makes you feel like you’re not always on the same page, or it makes you feel attacked or diminished or belittled, or whatever it is, you could include that.
I think it’s also though really important to frame it and how that impacts the organization’s goals. Right? How does that prevent you from doing your best work? Or how does it prevent you from really, you know, feeling embedded on the team or whatever is like the impact of the business, I know, that sounds really impersonal?
I think it’s good to include both so that people understand how is this impacting you as a human being? And how is it impacting them, basically, in a way that they just don’t realize today, because it is preventing you from doing your best work or feeling like you want to continue working there, or whatever the case may be.
This is not a place for threats, by the way, like I’m going to quit. That’s not what I’m talking about. But importantly, you know, you tell them, here’s the facts, here’s the patterns, here’s the data, here’s how it is impacting me, here’s how it’s impacting the work. So be sure to do that.
And then the last part, is a request for change. So in my prior episode, we were talking about here’s the plan, I need to see this change in you, I need to see it by this time. And this type of situation, I think you make a request, and you say, you know, I really like it, if that would change. And if you have specifics in mind, like I really like it. If that would change in this way, then I think you lay that on the table.
Don’t make people guess or read your mind. I would like to see this change XYZ spell it out. And then I think you asked for a follow up conversation. So your request the change that you want. Then you say is it okay? If we have this conversation again, in three months, six months, or whatever is the appropriate follow up time.
So you’ve essentially set a structure for how you’re going to be following up on what you’ve just described. Now, I know there is a tricky middle space there between after you put your cards on the table and you say what you say. And you request the change that you have. It’s not impossible that your colleague or your boss is going to not agree. Right? They’re not going to agree with the proposed change.
That can be a little bit tricky. I do think it’s important to to hear that my people want to be heard. And so you will need to make space for that in that conversation. And unlike my prior episode you don’t make you may not have the same amount of control over when this conversation ends.
So you’d like to extricate yourself having said what you said, let them digest it, let them not be especially defensive, let them think about it. If you can, I wouldn’t steer the conversation in that way. Still, because I still think it’s not likely to be especially productive to spend a bunch of time going through what is again gonna be justification explanation and in may actually be valid.
I mean, I don’t know, I’m not, I’m not judging the other person here, maybe their justification or their explanation is valid. And it’s just something that you don’t like or you don’t agree with that could be, then it’s up to you to decide what to do with that, but at least you are clear on whether or not that behavior is going to change or that structure is going to change or whatever it is.
So that part is a little squishy, you’ll have to navigate it and kind of take it as it comes, whether it’s part of this conversation or a follow up conversation. But I think, again, the general structure is largely the same. Start with shared purpose, how important it is for you to continue working well together and for you to meet their expectations.
And vice versa, acknowledged as difficult for you to give the feedback and ask if it’s okay for you to do so. facts and data impact on you an impact on the work impact on the business impact on the team, a request for a change, and a proposed time for follow up is it okay?
If we have this conversation again in three months, or next year, or whatever the case may be, that is my best formula for giving feedback either to colleagues or to your manager, people that do not report to you that you don’t manage. I think the basic tenants are the same. And I think it’s generally quite effective.
Hopefully, spending the time really just focused on having a model for how the language comes out of you and, and spending the time to write down whatever your notes are, and really get very clear on what the facts are and what the impact is, you can describe it in a way that is very objective, and very actionable. usually leads to really good results.
Now, you may not always get the answer that you want. But that is still okay, as we’ve talked about in plenty of other episodes, getting clarity is sometimes better than getting your way. I mean, as long as you know how it’s going to be that you can make a decision about whether or not that works for you.
And whether or not you’re in the right role, the right position, the right organization, etc. having this conversation is just very transparent, really clear, is often the fastest way to get the answers that you need. So you should feel I think, pretty protected and pretty safe to be able to give feedback in that way if you follow this language model.
I hope that this helps for my listeners who are not yet having people who are reporting to them but are having these conversations nonetheless and you want to be able to give feedback sort of a cross or up a hierarchy. I hope this formula helps. That’s it for today. Bye for now.
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