How to Give Negative Feedback to Senior Colleagues

Ever been in a situation where you dont quite agree with something your boss said? Maybe you feel your manager could have dealt with a situation slightly differently? There will come a time in your career when you need to provide feedback to a boss or senior colleague. Good bosses will understand your feedback is coming from a good place, but starting the conversation can be tricky. This course—designed by Aimee Bateman, career expert and founder of Careercake—explains how you can develop the confidence and communication skills necessary to deliver productive feedback up the chain and have effective conversations with managers and senior colleagues. This course was created by Careercake, the careers content platform. 

Are they the right person?

So next, is it the right time, is it the right person to give this feedback to? So you could be feeling really unhappy at the moment about the direction that your boss is taking you in. Or maybe they're micromanaging you, and every day they're checking up on you and you just feel like they don't trust you. Now this situation's not going to change unless you have a discussion. But you have to have respectful discussion. So you'll need to be clear on why you want to give this feedback first off, so what will happen if you don't give this feedback? And what will happen if you do give this feedback? Then ask yourself who do I need to talk to about this, and it should be them ideally, not somebody above them. Shouldn't really go above them, talk to them about it in the first instance. Now they may not even know that what they're doing is making you feel a certain way. And delivered in the right way, by you, respectfully, they may be really open to hearing about it and really open to possibly changing something. But I suppose you really have to ask yourself, are they going to take onboard this feedback? Are they going to be open to receiving my thoughts? Now I've been in a situation before, I gave feedback to a previous boss about the way she communicated with the team. She was always sending people messages and emails in the evening that she was unhappy with something. But she would do it in the evening late at night, knowing that we'd all be checking our emails in the evening and it would upset some people and then actually then upset them in the evening into their personal time. It would have been so much better for her to just communicate this first thing in the morning, maybe face-to-face. So I decided to speak to her about the situation. And the response I got was, and I'll never forget it, "my management style has always worked for me, "I'm not about to change it now." And that's what she said to me. And when I think back, what I should have really thought about was the signs were all there. I should've thought about every time that anybody offered a different opinion to her, that was always the way. She'd just snap and shut them down. So what I'm saying is that you need to think about who you're giving the feedback to and decide, are they the type of personality to be open to receiving feedback? Now I have to say that this is a very, very rare example, I don't want to scare you. Because literally, four or five people have been like this out of 15 years of a career. I've worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and most of the people, most of us welcome feedback. Even if it can be a bit painful at times, but most of us want to be better. We want to know what other people think of us. We want to know what's upsetting someone or annoying somebody. Now I once gave feedback a different time but to a CEO of an organization I was working for. There was about three levels between me and him at the time. But I gave him some feedback about the fact that he needed to be more of a human, a bit more personal with people. People saw him walking around as a CEO, and. But I wanted him to show people who he was. Now he was surprised I gave him that feedback, it was on a night out. And with a meal, and I remember I was a bit nervous, but was he was really grateful. Rather than just dismiss it, he actively made some changes, and he said he hadn't thought about it like that. Now me giving him this feedback actually strengthened our relationship. And he was able to show the team who he was, give them something to buy into. Now I was slightly nervous I have to say, I really was, I'm not going to pretend it was easy. But I believed that I was doing the right thing because I knew he was a fabulous guy and I knew that the team just need to see that too. And it worked, and in fact sometimes he would come and ask me for advice. And yeah, our relationship was strengthened for that. And I think that that was the key though, the feedback has to come from a really kind place. It has to be hugely respectful and ultimately, it has to benefit that person.

When Is the best time?

So now we're going to look at how quickly and when you should give this feedback. So you've decided that you're going to give the feedback to your senior and you believe that your organization has got that culture which encourages open discussions, which is fantastic. But how soon after the observation should you give that feedback to them? Well ideally it should be within 48 hours of the event. Now the reason for this is that the longer you leave the feedback the more chance there is of us and them having a different memory of what happened. The sooner we can give the feedback, the better chance there is that everyone in the conversation, everybody involved can remember the event clearly, and they're able to talk about the situation. Now it also eliminates the amount of stuff that they have taken on their plate and their brainpower because every day, every hour, they're probably going to be having issues thrown at them, things crop up and it's easier for you and them to digest and discuss it if it's recent. It also makes it a bit more relevant really, you're not bringing up something that happened weeks and weeks ago, and then you can avoid them being dismissive and saying, why are you bringing this up now, why didn't you just tell about it then, and just batting it away. So how many of us can say that we actually give feedback within 48 hours? I can definitely hold my hand up and say that I've been guilty of not doing that, in my mind I'm too busy to give the feedback. Although if I'm completely honest, there've just been times when I didn't want to, and I didn't want to tell somebody something that I might thought they didn't' want to hear, so I put it off and then I put it off and before I know it, we're two, three, four weeks down the line, the situation is still the same, hasn't got any better. But now I've left it too long, and I can't really remember what happened, so now I feel like I can't give my manager that feedback. That said though, unless you're really well rehearsed with giving feedback and you're totally in control of your emotions, which may be the case, but usually it comes with experience, you may not want to give this feedback there and then on the spot. But the reason being is that you're likely to be feeling strongly about what's just happened, I don't what it is, but you might be feeling quite intense, the chances are that it won't go well if you just start giving feedback. What you want to do is have more of a planned, calm conversation. So it's best just to take a couple of hours to reflect when you're out of the situation, maybe write some things down in a journal and read it back yourself without the emotion. I know that there have been times when something that's really annoyed me, and when I've taken time to think about it, write it down, read it back, I knew that maybe I was just having a bad day. And actually if that exact thing happened on a different day, I probably wouldn't even of noticed it. And that's why you need that little bit of reflection time. You can ask yourself, do you still want to give this feedback? You may not, and the great thing about writing this down is that in the future if this situation happens again, you can always go back and you've got that document, and if you do share the feedback with your manager or your leader, and you can actually say well this has happened previously, and you can recall other things. You might think, I'm just going to leave it there and at least I've noted it, or you might reflect and think, no I still want to do this. In which case, carry on watching this course and we're going to tackle that and tell you how to best do that with confidence.

Planning the conversation

So when you're planning any conversation where you're giving feedback I personally like to use AID. Now this is a really good structure for you to plan out the conversation. I was really lucky really early on in my career to work for a company that allowed me to do an Institute of Leadership & Management qualification, an ILM, and as part of that I learnt all about AID. There were very few online video training content and tutorials so this was massive for me, and I soaked it all up like a sponge. And AID is actually Actions, Impact, Desired. So this format allowed me to structure the conversation. So I'm going to give you an example that happened in the same job that I was just talking about where I learnt my ILM. Now I observed a senior manager speaking quite rudely to one of the receptionists in the company, her name was Laura. And it was a really open-plan office, and he just burst in screaming and shouting and told her off because she transferred a call and he spoke to someone he didn't want to speak to. And he said that she should never have transferred that person through to his phone. Now Laura didn't know what to do and it was really uncomfortable, none of us knew what to do to be honest. We all stayed silent, she just went bright red, the senior manager left as quickly as he'd come in, and everybody just kind of sat there a bit stunned, and I felt really sorry for her, we all did. So I checked that she was okay, and I spoke to her about it, and I asked her questions about it which is what he should have done really. Turns out that this person was trying to sell something, knew that there was no way he could get through so he said it was a personal call. When she said, "Who's calling?" he said, "It's personal." Totally lied, so she thought it was a family member and put him through. She didn't know that he was fibbing. Now, what I would say is that if she'd been given a bit more training around how to handle these calls and screen these calls, this wouldn't have happened. And this is why I felt like I needed to give him the feedback. So I planned out the feedback using AID, and it went something like this. I wrote down what had happened. I wrote down the impact it had had on the receptionist, and the rest of the office actually. And suggested that maybe things could have been done differently in future. So I made sure that I focused on my feelings. And this is what you need to do. I focused on my feelings because it was my feedback and I used I rather than you, as I didn't want the manager to feel like I was attacking him. I used my feelings, and my perspective, and I explained that I wanted to talk about the conversation in the office between him and the receptionist that I had witnessed. So Actions, I was in the office when you told the receptionist that you weren't happy that a call was transferred through to you. It was in an open-plan office and the conversation in my opinion seemed very loud and angry and I'd really like to talk to you about this. Impact, I felt very uncomfortable which is why I feel like I need to say something. I could see a lot of people that were watching and Laura didn't really say anything and she went bright red from what I noticed. Now I didn't think that Laura knew in that moment what she he'd done wrong or what she should do differently in future. Desired, if the feedback does need to be given, maybe it could be given in a kinder way so that Laura's got a chance to maybe explain to you why she put the call through, and of course hear from you why the call shouldn't have been put through. So that she's got a good understanding of what to do differently in future and make sure it doesn't happen again. Now that all sounds great, but even with a structure in place, where you can go away and actually use that format, it's still worth practicing it and going over it at least in your head. The reason being is that when you're in the company of people more senior than you, sometimes, sometimes, and not for everyone, we can just get a little bit nervous. I remember the first time I ever delivered feedback, a few years before that incident, I was actually quite confident and went into the room and thought I knew what I was going to say, and then the second I was in that room I crumbled, everything in my head just disappeared, and I just rambled and mumbled and I didn't have the effect that I wanted it to have, because when I was sat there with somebody more senior to me it just kind of changed the dynamics and I got a bit nervous. So just practice it in your head, out loud, just so that if you are in that situation, and when you are faced with that person that you look up to, that's your boss, and you might start feeling a bit nervous, the words will come naturally. Okay so practice it, make sure that you're coming across, your tone is coming across respectful, kind, and that you just generally want to help that person, and that it's coming from a good place.

How to deliver the message

How we deliver this feedback is going to influence how the other person feels about receiving that message. So firstly, never ever send your feedback via an email. Emails are a terrible idea. When you send an email, you can do it with all of the best intentions and it can still be read in completely the wrong tone. So you don't want to be damaging any relationships or making any relationships worse than they were before. Also, never give feedback in front of other people. You don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. You don't want to embarrass them. You don't want to make them feel like they can't do their job or they're a rubbish manager. You don't want to be making anybody feel uncomfortable or vulnerable. We're all humans. We could all do things better. None of us are perfect, that's a fact. So wherever possible, face-to-face feedback is best and privately. Now, I completely understand that sometimes, especially if you don't work in the office with somebody and it's a remote team, you don't get the opportunity to see people face to face very often. I was going to say very often, but sometimes, at all. You really need to have that feedback ideally rather than on the phone, with a video call. That would be best, but if you have to, obviously on the phone. But if you can, video call would be best. And you need to plan this out. This can't just be something where you just grab somebody in the corridor and just have a word with them. Book a meeting room. Make sure you've got a confidential environment where nobody can overhear you. You can both be really comfortable as possible and have a conversation, a discussion that nobody else is going to interrupt. Now, we can sometimes go around the houses and begin to ramble a little bit when we give feedback. I know this because I've been guilty of it in the past. We're in the room, we're psyching ourselves up to give that feedback, and we're not quite ready, so we're just rambling. But when you're giving feedback, use language that's really specific and to-the-point, language that can be easily understood and not taken the wrong way. Don't ramble and ideally, get to the point sooner rather than later, so quite early on in the conversation. Also, don't ever say that you know something about that other person, like you know what they were thinking, you know what they were feeling, you know what they were doing. You were thinking this. I know that you believe this. I know you were feeling that I didn't know. I mean, that's an assumption, don't do that. You can assume what somebody else is thinking. You can assume what someone else is feeling, but you cannot be sure, so don't tell them about them. You just focus on what you know, what you think, what you feel. Otherwise, it might get their back up. So this is a great little tip for you that I actually learned James Altucher who is a entrepreneur, a podcaster, a thought leader, best-selling author, super cool. You should totally check out his stuff. And he talks about giving feedback, but by asking somebody for advice. Now, this is lovely 'cause he was talking about how he's got a teenage daughter who really wants to go to college and he wanted her to think about other things. So she was like, "Shut up, dad, don't want to hear it." So he actually approached her by saying, "Can I ask you advice on how I can "best communicate that with you?" And that kind of broke through the defensiveness. So this is best used when you're dealing with somebody internally who doesn't want to hear the feedback. You know, they're the people that don't usually have conversations about their performance, their behavior. They're quite dismissive of that kind of stuff. Or you've tried to give them feedback. You've done everything that we've said in this video that you should do and it hasn't quite worked out the way that you want it. You can just take a step back and just say, "Excuse me, Mark, can I ask for your advice on something? "There's something that I'm feeling "and it's playing on my mind "and I would love to communicate that with you. "How would you best want me to do that? "Can I ask you advice on how would you want me to deliver "something that I'm feeling about with you? "I've got a bit of feedback. "How should I deliver that "so that you would best understand?" And then you've put the power back with them. What you've done now is that they're back in control. They know that you want to give them feedback on something, you want to discuss something with them, but the power's with them. Yeah, they don't feel so vulnerable. And then ultimately, it's their job to allow you and to facilitate you in an environment to share that feedback.

What if your boss asks you for feedback?

So what if your boss or your manager has asked you for feedback? Well firstly this is epic, the fact that they know they're not perfect, they're totally into self-developing and looking at their behaviors is a great thing. They value your opinion which is wonderful, but the best thing is that they value you as a person enough to change, to develop, and be better for you to be a better boss or manager for you. I love that. So it could just be conversational, which is fine you could just give your feedback and just have that sort of friendly dialog, but if it's a little bit more formal, then the best thing to do is to follow these steps. Firstly, ask them specifically what they want feedback on. So if they say can I have some feedback on my leadership style, you specifically want to ask them is it your communication skills, is it the way you motivate us, is it the way that you communicate with us. Yeah, then I want you to basically say how do you want this delivered, so what structure do you want this in? It could be a report it could be just a verbal conversation, it could be I don't know it could be anything, how would you like me to structure this feedback, how would you best want to hear this? And then the next thing is that you really want to ask if you can have a little bit of time, so when do you want that feedback, you shouldn't be expected to just there and then on the spot come up with stuff. No you want to show that you value this enough giving feedback is a huge responsibility and you're really pleased to do this, so kind of go and think about it, should we have a catch up later, should we maybe have a meeting tomorrow, find out when they can have that feedback, but ideally you want to have a little bit of time. And can I just say this as well, can you thank them for it. So if they ask you for feedback, can you just say oh thank you for asking my opinion, that means a lot I'd love to give you feedback. So make them feel good about asking, and hopefully in the future this will happen more often and they'll be open to asking 'cause it can be you know no matter what your job title is, no matter who you are, how senior you are, asking somebody for feedback can put you in sometimes a little bit of a vulnerable position. But they've done a really brave thing and that's super cool so you want to thank them for it.

Summary

Firstly, ask yourself, is it the right person? Is it the right time? Ideally within 48 hours and you should really take some time to reflect on it first. Plan out the conversation and the structure and the way that you're going to deliver it, ideally face-to-face and if you can, one-to-one. And remember that if you've got a particularly scary colleague or maybe you've got to deliver something to somebody that you know is a little bit defensive at times or maybe you've tried to deliver this feedback and it went wrong. Ask them for advice. How should I best deliver this feedback to you? And if your boss asks you for feedback, that's amazing, but find out exactly what they need, in what structure they want to hear it, and when they want to hear it. And I just want to leave on this, because giving feedback is a good thing. Nine out of 10 people are really open to it. They welcome it. And if you do it well, if you do it respectfully and they know that it's coming from a good place, your relationships, your professional relationships, can actually be improved and not damaged. They could actually end up being better. So good luck!

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