How to Offer Feedback in a Fragile World

Grant employs just over 200 people at his firm and is a friend of mine. He called me recently in a moment of frustration. He said his team was about to go to market on a new product that week when he got a text from one of his employees. The message? “I won’t be at work today and tomorrow. I’m just not my best self this week.”

Grant was disappointed but also felt he owed his teammate some hard truth. When he saw the young woman later, Grant pulled her aside and explained, “You can’t excuse yourself from your tasks because you’re not your best self. If you’re sick, I certainly understand but our GTM week is huge for us. I suggest you figure out a way to gather your strength and show up even on tough days.” It was at that point his team member gasped as if Grant had assaulted her. She replied that she felt triggered and could not continue the conversation. She left for the restroom and didn’t return to her workstation for almost twenty minutes.

This seemed to be the end of the discussion.

Two days later, however, Grant received an email from the young woman’s mother explaining that her daughter was “stressed out” and asking him to “lighten up.”

Feedback to Fragile Students

Offering hard feedback has never been easy but today it is tougher than ever. Certainly, not every young professional is this fragile, but HR execs I speak with say the number is higher among Gen Z and Millennial staff. We seemed to have caved to the idea that youth are fragile and need lots of warning and preparation for tough situations. If that’s true, it is we who’ve created this monster. Kids are naturally “anti-fragile.” Toddlers hop back up when they learn to walk; kids forgive wrongs easier than adults do, and they have immune systems that organically combat disease and germs. These all signal what comes naturally for us. I believe we’ve caused this fragility today. Consider what’s happening on school campuses:

• They must provide trigger warnings to students.
• They must remove certain books from libraries.
• They must curb free speech and ideas at schools.

This assumption that people are fragile is relatively new. A hundred years ago, we believed kids and adults were robust and resilient—and it’s a good thing. They were equipped to face the Great Depression and World War II. Life prepared them to become agile, not fragile. Greg Lukianoff, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, writes:

?Many university students today are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.?

—GREG LUKIANOFF

So, let me offer some action steps to offer feedback.

How Do We Offer Feedback to a Fragile Generation?

1. Gain permission by earning the right to give input. Today, relationships mean far more than positions or badges. We earn the right to offer hard feedback by cultivating a personal and authentic relationship with a young staff person. In short, genuine connection should precede critical input. We must connect before we correct. Then, asking permission to have a tough conversation earns a receptive ear.
2. Be targeted with your approach. Our feedback has little chance of transforming them if it’s a general attack on their work. We must target one area we’d like to see improvement and focus our input on that. Being targeted means we emulate a doctor performing surgery. Surgeons almost always target their operation on one area (a tumor, a bone, an organ) instead of carving up the patient’s entire body.
3. Offer input with belief?and expectation. The key is to offer any feedback from a context of belief. You expect a lot from them because you believe a lot in them. Studies from Ivy League schools prove that student effort improves dramatically when leaders communicate this sentiment: “I’m giving you this feedback because I have high expectations of you, and I know you can reach them.”
4. Communicate progress with your words. I have found I gain a more positive response from someone receiving my feedback if I clarify I see their current progress. Some time ago, I challenged a leader to improve, and she became preoccupied with the fact that I failed to show I noticed she was doing better than before. Once I began acknowledging her progress, she was willing to push further.
5. Do it in a timely fashion. Forget the annual review or the yearly parent updates. People need real-time feedback for it to feel authentic. Don’t let pent-up frustration build until you vomit emotionally on a teammate. Wait a day until you get over your own emotions but set up a time to meet quickly.
6. Give them the opportunity to practice and implement the feedback. When people receive feedback, they’ll be frustrated unless they have a path to improve. In a broader sense, think about where the teammate is going, how they’re doing now, and what the next step is. If you tell them they must do better, furnish a plan for them to do just that.

We owe our people this gift of feedback. Don’t run from it in the name of comfort or popularity. Winston Churchill said:

?Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.?

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

The growth and development of our students and young employees?is our highest calling.

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