How to Give Constructive Feedback

AI is transforming the world. And it starts with the right compute. ARM is the AI compute platform trusted by global leaders, proudly NASDAQ listed, Built for the future. Visit arm.com discover. Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Greencart Carmichael. Today I'm talking with Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. They are the CEO and president of Zenger Folkman, a leadership development consultancy. They're both regular contributors to hbr and to hbr.org Joe and Jack, thank you so much for joining us today.

Most welcome.

Thanks for having us, Sarah.

So I thought before we just dive into today's conversation on feedback, I wanted you to talk a little bit about your approach to figuring out what leaders ought to do, because it's very data driven and it's a little bit different than a lot of leadership advice that is out there. So, Joe, let's just start with you. I thought maybe you could just give us a sense of your approach to sorting through your database and sort of how you use the data to come up with advice.

Well, you know, Sarah is a great question. And as I read a lot of blogs people talk about I was sitting at my kitchen table this morning and I had this profound thought. And then they write about that. And what we found is that there's an awful lot of leadership research is based on. I had this thought and what we wanted to do was write a blog based on data. And we're lucky in that we have hundreds of thousands of assessments that we're doing and we have a database. And what we've tried to do is look at those databases and ask questions and really try to get our answers to those questions out of the data instead of I had this thought.

Yes, exactly. And that's sort of what I like about your writing. And your characterization of the beginning of many personal pieces of writing is very appropriate. I see that lead a lot and I always cut it out of the stuff that I'm editing. So I thought we could just start with what many people find the thorniest aspect of feedback, which is critical feedback. This seems like something that all managers just, for the most part, really hate to have to do. And there may not be a way to make it necessarily more pleasant, but is there a way to to do it at least better than we usually do? Jack, what do you think?

Well, there most certainly is a way to do it better than we usually do. And I think it involves having some fundamental objectives that you're trying to accomplish in that feedback, in that discussion. It Helps to have some underlying kind of principles and philosophies. It also helps very much to have a plan and have a track to follow. And then finally, I think it really helps if you've practiced it or rehearsed it with a friend or a partner or somebody from hr. You know, you always get better at things that you've practiced. And so particularly when you're giving somebody, as you're calling it, critical or redirecting corrective feedback, that's especially important that you do it then well.

And it's interesting too, how you then you framed it there as corrective feedback, not critical feedback.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So what's tricky when you talk about feedback as being either negative or positive is that in a funny kind of way, for a lot of people, the most beneficial feedback, and therefore in some ways the most positive, is corrective suggestions. It's kind of redirecting feedback. And for many people, the most negative feedback is just the attaboy phrase, you know, praise, kind of hollow compliment, which many people perceive as disingenuous and not really being serious. So we try to use this term, redirecting feedback, as really the way to describe ideas that you're presenting to somebody else about something they're not doing very well or something that they need to start doing or something that they're, you know, kind of not handling quite the right way.

And, Joe, I thought one of the findings that you wrote about together on this topic that was really interesting was that the more experienced and skilled someone is, the more they say they want that critical or corrective feedback. What do you think is going on there?

I think all of us have a little fear in the back of our minds. And the fear is, I call it the toilet paper hanging out of the back of your pants fear that there's something you're doing and it's a stupid thing you're doing and nobody's telling you, and it's that mistake, and they fear that mistake. And I think that's why they want to know. I mean, if you ask people their preference, would you rather have your manager tell you something that you're doing wrong or praise you for what you're doing right? They're always on the negative side of that. It's like, oh, I want to know what I'm doing wrong. And I think it's that fear that really generates that response.

So it's interesting because I wonder how the reality of how people react compares to what they say they want in a case like that, because In a case like that, maybe they say they want the critical feedback, but in reality, what they want is, you know, to be reassured that they're not doing the wrong thing. They don't have the spinach stuck in their teeth or whatever it is. And I. I wonder, when people do get defensive about critical feedback, what is it? Is it that the feedback was clumsily delivered? Is it that they sort of want to know, but at the same time it's hard to hear, you know, what's going on when someone gets really defensive with critical feedback. Jack, maybe we'll go back to you for this one.

Yeah. I think, as you've pointed out, it's a tricky kind of balance because on the one hand, people want to know information about how they can perform more effectively and be better, but they want it delivered in such a way that it doesn't. It's not harmful to them, it doesn't frighten them. You know, when someone in authority asks you to come into his or her office, and there's always this whole series of potential scenarios that a person can conceive of, oh, my goodness, am I going to lose my value to the organization? Is my future in jeopardy? Is my independence going to be in question? All these fundamental human needs are potentially kind of at risk. And so if the message can be delivered by the manager in such a way that he or she kind of puts it in proper perspective, and if it's trivial, they know it's going to be kind of trivial. If it's Titanic, they know it's going to be, oh, this is going to be a serious conversation. But when you go to a movie and something traumatic is going to happen, the music kind of plays a little bit. You're alerted to that. What often doesn't happen, I think, in a business context is there's no music. The manager doesn't set the stage that, hey, look, I just want to pass on an idea to you. No big deal. Drop in my office. I want to kind of share some thoughts with you versus, you know, I need to have a very serious conversation with you about, you know, some things happening in your role. And so I think if we can put it in perspective and kind of set the stage for it, if it doesn't come as a big surprise, if it comes in small doses, then I think it goes down much, much more effectively.

And it sounds like what really is needed are sort of regular conversations there. Not just to sort of only meet when there's a problem, but to have a sort of regular cadence meetings well, exactly.

And as you said, if the manager will have frequent meetings and if the great bulk of those meetings are constructive ideas, positive reinforcement, then when the time comes that the manager wants to pass on some kind of corrective kind of feedback, then it's no big deal. But if this only happens once every six months or once a year, then it is a big deal.

It is interesting, Sarah, because I think most the time when you have some feedback to give, you imagine yourself, they just, I need to tell them because they don't understand, they don't know about this problem. When we ask people, how often is feedback a surprise, 73% said it isn't. I already know it. And so I think that one of the things we do is we imagine, well, gosh, if they knew this, they wouldn't do it. Well, they do know it. And they also have a way to plan for how they could correct for it. The problem is you walk in, you're really upset, and you say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they already knew it. And then you say, here's what you need to do about it. And that's exactly the opposite of what you ought to do. You ought to sort of bring up the issue, have them describe it, have them talk about it, and then ask them what they ought to do about it. Because you'll find that people come up with a better plan and a more comprehensive plan than you would have.

So I'm wondering also about sort of the value of giving feedback in public versus private, because we've published a lot of dissenting views on this on hbr.org over the years. And often people will say, well, you have to praise in public and criticize in private. But are there times when. When you really should have a critical conversation in a group setting? And how can people do that? Well, if that's what's called for, I.

Think there's great value when people are given positive reinforcement in public. And I think the more that that can happen, the stronger people kind of see that people are appreciated and there's gratitude for what they're doing. I can't think of very many occasions when it would be appropriate to criticize some individual in public. I can't even imagine the scenario that would have that be the best avenue. A manager may want to address some general problem that's happening that influences several people, but if it's really only one individual that's involved or responsible, I can't imagine the time that would have that be made a public discussion. Because again, it's one thing to have the manager talk with you privately and have all these kind of human needs kind of begin to surface. But now, if it's public now, it takes on a whole greater crescendo of importance and meaning. And my status is really now being questioned in front of the whole group.

Yeah, it seems like it would just be hard to get through the sort of toxic potential. Potential for turning the conversation toxic. I do wonder if an entire team has sort of fallen short of a goal and that the purpose is to kind of have a conversation about, like, a postmortem of some kind. Is that sort of the equivalent, or is that something where you sort of need to talk to people one on one and then come back together with the group to talk about what to do next?

I was thinking that in a lot of circumstances, perhaps a mistake is made in the group by an individual. But when you really look at it, when you really examine it, the whole team was involved. I mean, there was advice given, there was a setup, there was support, and sort of lots of players were involved. And sometimes those discussions, I think, can be beneficial in a group.

Yeah, you know, the military has pioneered a concept called after action reviews, where after a mission, people all come back, they get in a room, they kind of symbolically take off their stripes, and they have this conversation about, okay, so what did we have? What did we hope would happen? What really happened? What made the difference? But what there is about that whole discussion is that there's never a finger pointing, who's at fault, who made a mistake, but it's really, what can we learn? How would we do it differently next time? How can we use this as a learning experience? And I think as long as that's the tone of the conversation, then I think a group conversation is very appropriate.

What about a totally different scenario? Now I'm pivoting to a sort of different scenario where, you know, we've been talking a lot about defensiveness. And it sort of occurred to me as we were wrapping up our conversation on the after action review idea. What if the feedback is totally baseless? What if you're the person then receiving the feedback and it's just you're not being defensive. It just literally you're like, this isn't fair. What can someone in that situation do?

Well, I think the first thing is to really try to understand. And lots of times feedback is emotion coming through. You know, the feedback that you get is based on somebody's negative feelings or frustration or anger or something like that. And occasionally when we do our 360 feedback with leaders, they get some of that. They get people sort of like lashing out and you go, what's going on there? I mean, I don't do that at all. And it's like people are sort of, you know, they're trying to make up for it. And typically if I talk to people and I say, what did you learn from that? And they go, nothing. And I go, well, you did learn something. You learned that somebody's really upset. That's about all you can get out of it. But somebody's really upset. And so maybe if you can just not worry so much about the truth or not the error of the feedback, but more what's the learning there? I think you can respond to it appropriately.

I think the second thing that can happen, Sarah, is that the recipient can do his or her very best to not get upset and excited, but to really ask a series of questions. Upon what do you base this? What's the data? I'd like to understand it better. And as long as you can kind of try to get to the heart of how did this idea come to you? What's the evidence that you have for it? A, you may find out that there is some substance to it, or B, you can help the manager to discover, oh, maybe there wasn't any substance to this. And let me present to you the other side of the story. But I think if the subordinate in this case would simply ask questions, not get upset, and then just say to the manager, would you like to hear the other side of the story? Then I think it can end up being a positive experience rather than just a horribly negative experience.

That's a good point. Yeah. And it's funny, what we're sort of really getting to here is the power differential between different people. And I know the people that you guys have assessed and helped over the years come from different levels in the organization. And I'm wondering if when you are looking at the data and looking at these 360 degree assessments, if you see any differences sort of between the people at the top and the people sort of that are managers, but not all the way at the very top and kind of how they respond to feedback or how they give feedback, it's a little bit of a fishing expedition type question. But I'm just wondering, when you look at the sort of power differentials between people, do the people with more power behave differently? I'm just sort of curious.

It was an interesting situation that a president of an organization became the CEO and after he was given the CEO Spot he thought about his direct reports. They were all incredibly competent. And he said, you know, they don't need a lot of feedback from me. And so he did what we encourage people to do when they get a new job is he did a360, and the feedback he got is, we need feedback. And he thought, well, you know, you're all really competent people. But they said, we want to know what you think. We want to know what's going on, and we want an evaluation of our performance. And I think that was a valuable lesson for him in terms of, you know, people continually want that feedback. They want to know where they stand and how they're doing, and he needed to give it on a regular basis.

That's a really good point. And I think that one of the other things is I'm sort of realizing now that we're almost out of time, and we've talked almost this whole time about negative feedback or corrective feedback. But I don't want to sort of let you guys go without asking a little bit about praise. I know most people also would like more praise, probably, I'm assuming, But there is a lot of people for whom praise is difficult to hear that sort of gets into some kind of imposter syndrome. They start feeling like the praise isn't deserved, and they sort of discount it. If praise is sort of hard to hear or people have a hard time accepting that, that's true. Any advice out there, either for those people or for their managers?

I think what's hard about praise is that sometimes managers feel that for me to praise you in a way automatically sets me up as being your superior and that we're now at different levels. And therefore, if I either praise you or if I criticize you, it's kind of one of the same thing. I'm setting myself above you. But what they don't realize is what Joe just got you talking about, which is people really do want to have more information about how they are performing, so long as it is delivered in a constructive, helpful way. My view is that the key to providing reinforcing feedback is to make it very specific and to tell people what specifically you appreciated and to make it very specific about what impact it has had on the performance of the organization or on the performance of the group. I think what people don't like about praise is it's just general, and therefore it seems kind of disingenuous and kind of. You're just blowing smoke at me, and it's not really meaningful. I think if it comes across as being thought through. And if you really are trying to convey a specific and an important message, then I think people really do appreciate it.

We ask a question of people, we said, what's been most helpful for you in your career? Has it been some corrective feedback or has it been praise and recognition? What's interesting about that question is the world is divided almost equally on that question. About 47% of the population said it was corrective, 53% said it was praise and recognition. And people work out of that scenario. So what you find is that people that say what's been helpful for me is corrective, they tend to be more corrective oriented.

And what.

And people that said, oh, it's praise, they tend to be more praise oriented. What we think is helpful is both. And whichever side of the equation you're on there, work both sides. It's like you're only using half of the power of this feedback. If you only praise or only are corrective, and so do both. And like Jack says, be specific on the recognition and let people know when they're doing a good job. Nobody says they need it, they want it. They feel weak when they do, but everybody appreciates it secretly.

Well, I think that's a really wonderful note to end on. Gentlemen, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Well, you're welcome. Been our pleasure.

That was Joe Folkman and Jack Zenger. They are the CEO and president of Zenger Folkman. For more from them, go to hbr.org.