A definitive 3-step guide to giving negative feedback, according to neuroscience
Whether you’re in-person and sitting on opposite sides of a desk, or you’re remote and separated by screens, few experiences at work are as heart-pounding and stress-inducing as a feedback conversation between manager and employee. Managers fear creating a resentful employee if they give a less-than-glowing assessment, and employees may fear for their job security and reputation within the company. A sense of threat practically defines the interaction. But it shouldn’t. Research has shown that employees are far more eager to receive constructive feedback than managers assume. According to one survey, 96% of people agreed with the statement, “Corrective feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.” The operative word there is “appropriately.” Many leaders simply lack the tools to give feedback in a way that helps employees see where they got stuck and what they could do better next time. According to a Gallup study, only 10% of employees whose manager’s feedback left them with negative feelings said they were engaged at work, and 80% of that group said they were looking for another job. As a result, many leaders allow their own sense of threat to take over, leading them to dance around the feedback or, at the other extreme, deliver it too abrasively, without considering how the employee may feel. To give feedback that actually motivates employees and helps them change their behavior, NLI recommends leaders focus on minimizing threat through an easy three-step process. Three simple steps to do better Science suggests that in healthy cultures, people regularly ask for feedback. Our own research finds that asking for feedback, rather than receiving it unrequested, roughly halves the threat response for both the giver and receiver. However, sometimes leaders need to give unsolicited feedback, in which case a brain-friendly approach involves the following three steps: Ask the employee to give themselves feedback. Affirm what they did well. Offer advice on how they might improve in the future. The first step, asking the person to give themselves feedback, immediately creates a sense of autonomy. In the SCARF® Model of social threat and reward, the “A” stands for autonomy because humans are strongly motivated by feeling in control. Feedback about someone’s performance is sensitive, and the person can quickly feel out of control and judged in the conversation. Letting the employee go first puts them in control: It acknowledges they may already know where and why they got stuck. To reduce threat even further, a manager could avoid the word “feedback” altogether and ask questions like, “How do you think you’re doing in your new position?” or “How did that project go?” Second, leaders can deliver another reward in the form of a status boost (the “S” in SCARF®). By affirming the parts of the job the person did well, the leader makes it clear that the feedback is specific to one or two aspects of the situation; the employee isn’t a bad performer or a bad person. Rather, there were strengths and weaknesses at play, and it’s important for lowering people’s sense of threat to acknowledge the strengths as well as the weaknesses. Finally, it’s valuable for managers to share their perspectives on how the employee can improve going forward. Leaders enjoy a special vantage point in this regard. Employees are deep in their own work, so it often falls on the manager to lift the employee’s thinking and see the larger vision for the team. If they got the first two steps right, the employee should be in a calm state of mind to hear how they can do things better in the future. Feedback in action With those steps in mind, let’s consider a hypothetical feedback conversation. You’re the manager, and you’d like to go over a recent presentation your employee, Jon, gave to some senior members of the organization about a new initiative your team is piloting. At one point during the presentation, Jon lost his place and stammered for a few moments. You’d like to keep trusting him with leading these presentations, so you set up a chat to discuss how it went. Prior to the meeting, you tell him you have some thoughts on the presentation, and you want to hear his thoughts, too. In the meeting, you begin by asking Jon how he thought it went. He says he bombed it. He feels like a failure, which tells you he’s keenly aware of how he messed up. He says it was going well in the beginning, and he feels like it ended okay, but the middle portion was messy. He’s afraid he let the team down and that you don’t feel like you can trust him to lead future meetings. Jon is clearly in a threat state, so you take a moment to reassure him that key portions of the presentation went great. He knew his numbers and articulated the vision clearly. You let him know you’re not here to put those parts under the microscope. You also tell him that the leaders in th
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Whether you’re in-person and sitting on opposite sides of a desk, or you’re remote and separated by screens, few experiences at work are as heart-pounding and stress-inducing as a feedback conversation between manager and employee.
Managers fear creating a resentful employee if they give a less-than-glowing assessment, and employees may fear for their job security and reputation within the company. A sense of threat practically defines the interaction. But it shouldn’t. Research has shown that employees are far more eager to receive constructive feedback than managers assume. According to one survey, 96% of people agreed with the statement, “Corrective feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.”
The operative word there is “appropriately.” Many leaders simply lack the tools to give feedback in a way that helps employees see where they got stuck and what they could do better next time. According to a Gallup study, only 10% of employees whose manager’s feedback left them with negative feelings said they were engaged at work, and 80% of that group said they were looking for another job.
As a result, many leaders allow their own sense of threat to take over, leading them to dance around the feedback or, at the other extreme, deliver it too abrasively, without considering how the employee may feel. To give feedback that actually motivates employees and helps them change their behavior, NLI recommends leaders focus on minimizing threat through an easy three-step process.
Three simple steps to do better
Science suggests that in healthy cultures, people regularly ask for feedback. Our own research finds that asking for feedback, rather than receiving it unrequested, roughly halves the threat response for both the giver and receiver. However, sometimes leaders need to give unsolicited feedback, in which case a brain-friendly approach involves the following three steps:
- Ask the employee to give themselves feedback.
- Affirm what they did well.
- Offer advice on how they might improve in the future.
The first step, asking the person to give themselves feedback, immediately creates a sense of autonomy. In the SCARF® Model of social threat and reward, the “A” stands for autonomy because humans are strongly motivated by feeling in control. Feedback about someone’s performance is sensitive, and the person can quickly feel out of control and judged in the conversation.
Letting the employee go first puts them in control: It acknowledges they may already know where and why they got stuck. To reduce threat even further, a manager could avoid the word “feedback” altogether and ask questions like, “How do you think you’re doing in your new position?” or “How did that project go?”
Second, leaders can deliver another reward in the form of a status boost (the “S” in SCARF®). By affirming the parts of the job the person did well, the leader makes it clear that the feedback is specific to one or two aspects of the situation; the employee isn’t a bad performer or a bad person. Rather, there were strengths and weaknesses at play, and it’s important for lowering people’s sense of threat to acknowledge the strengths as well as the weaknesses.
Finally, it’s valuable for managers to share their perspectives on how the employee can improve going forward. Leaders enjoy a special vantage point in this regard. Employees are deep in their own work, so it often falls on the manager to lift the employee’s thinking and see the larger vision for the team. If they got the first two steps right, the employee should be in a calm state of mind to hear how they can do things better in the future.
Feedback in action
With those steps in mind, let’s consider a hypothetical feedback conversation. You’re the manager, and you’d like to go over a recent presentation your employee, Jon, gave to some senior members of the organization about a new initiative your team is piloting.
At one point during the presentation, Jon lost his place and stammered for a few moments. You’d like to keep trusting him with leading these presentations, so you set up a chat to discuss how it went. Prior to the meeting, you tell him you have some thoughts on the presentation, and you want to hear his thoughts, too.
In the meeting, you begin by asking Jon how he thought it went. He says he bombed it. He feels like a failure, which tells you he’s keenly aware of how he messed up. He says it was going well in the beginning, and he feels like it ended okay, but the middle portion was messy. He’s afraid he let the team down and that you don’t feel like you can trust him to lead future meetings.
Jon is clearly in a threat state, so you take a moment to reassure him that key portions of the presentation went great. He knew his numbers and articulated the vision clearly. You let him know you’re not here to put those parts under the microscope. You also tell him that the leaders in the meeting reached out to praise Jon’s courage for taking the lead. As you say this, Jon seems to relax a bit.
Finally, you concede that he did stumble a bit, and that it’s normal to feel nervous. To create an extra boost of autonomy, you ask Jon what he could do next time to build on the success from this meeting and avoid stumbling again. He thinks for a bit and admits he could have done more to prepare. Next time, he’ll make sure he knows the material so well he can give the presentation in his sleep.
Feeling lighter and set up for future success, Jon leaves the conversation without any feelings of threat, and he thanks you for creating the right conditions to have an important conversation.
Getting feedback right
Feedback conversations are the atomic unit for how organizations succeed. The feedback can’t always be positive, but often the constructive or negative feedback conversations are the ones that lead to the most growth. Each conversation increases the employee’s effectiveness and adds up to greater market advantage.
The catch, however, is that negative feedback only leads to growth when employees are in the right frame of mind to receive it. They have to be able to compare their undesired current actions with the more desirable future actions. When threat is low, employees are able to engage in this important mental process.
Creating those fertile conditions is a responsibility that falls to you, as the leader. Acknowledging the threats involved, minimizing them, and boosting social rewards in key ways will transform a scary, defensive conversation into an open-minded, productive one.
