How to give honest feedback (even when it’s difficult)
May 21, 2024
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Experts Joe Hirsch and Kim Scott share tips on giving honest feedback in the workplace, emphasizing partnership and radical candor. They discuss navigating feedback challenges, adapting styles for different generations, building respectful workplaces, fostering open communication with leaders, and valuing intergenerational perspectives.
Feedback should shift from a punitive act to a collaborative partnership for constructive conversations.
Managers should tailor feedback delivery based on individual preferences to create a comfortable growth environment.
Deep dives
Changing Feedback Mindset
Feedback at work often induces feelings of hopelessness due to focusing on past mistakes. To improve feedback, it needs to shift from a backward-looking act of punishment to a forward-looking act of service and partnership. Instead of fixing people, managers should aim to frame issues, encourage curiosity, and highlight strengths for constructive conversations.
Feedback for Different Employee Levels
Novices, like many in Gen Z, prefer feedback with context and coaching to establish purpose, while experts seek clarity on how to improve. Managers should adapt feedback delivery based on employee preferences, such as providing real-time feedback in informal settings to create a more comfortable environment for growth.
Creating Respectful Workplaces
Leaders play a crucial role in fostering respectful workplaces by addressing bias, prejudice, and bullying. Encouraging upstanders and setting consequences for disrespectful behavior can help maintain a collaborative and inclusive work environment. Respect should be a shared responsibility, with leaders paving the way for respectful interactions among team members.
Many managers hate giving feedback just as much as employees hate receiving it. So how can we give our colleagues pointers without upsetting them? Isabel speaks to Joe Hirsch, who helps CEOs and corporate clients design better feedback, to find out why a spirit of partnership is key to making the process more fluent. Later, she speaks to Kim Scott, a former Google and Apple executive, and author of ‘Radical Candor,’ one of the most influential business books of recent years. Kim explains why honest, straightforward feedback is so important – especially when issues of race and gender are involved.
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Credits:
Presented by Isabel Berwick, produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval, mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.