Mastering the Art of Delivering Hard Feedback

Whether it’s between colleagues, leaders and their employees, or even at home, we’re all eventually faced with hard conversations. Most of us would admit if someone had important information that could help us be better leaders, friends, professionals, or parents, we’d want to hear it no matter how painful. But given the opportunity to deliver hard truths to someone important to us, that’s a different story. It’s not hard to see why most people shy away. But being brave enough to speak up pays dividends for your whole organization.

Why we’d rather not:

• We fear bad feelings – None of us like feeling the tension of estranged relationships, so we avoid them at all cost. We rationalize withholding hard information as not wanting to hurt others’ feelings. We minimize the impact of bad behavior. “They didn’t mean it,” “they’re under a lot of stress,” “It’s not my place to tell them how to do their job.” But withholding information that could lead to another’s transformation isn’t kind, it’s cruel and selfish, no matter how difficult it may be to do.
• We fear others’ defensiveness – We’ve seen others react when they get hard messages.  They erupt in angry defensiveness and sometimes shoot the messenger.  If they are someone in authority, we fear such reactions that much more. anxious about such perceived risk is understandable. Sometimes fighting for someone means fighting with them, and trusting that you, and the relationship, can withstand the heat, and even grow stronger as a result.
• We can’t find the words – Some of us bumble our words under stress. We fear things wrong, rambling incoherently.  If that’s your concern, write out what to say and rehearse. Yes, that takes time, but important relationships are worth the time to prepare for important conversations.

When you’re in a leadership position, withholding hard truths has particularly damaging consequences. Others will take their cues from you, also choosing to withhold from one another – not to mention you. That creates a fabric of pleasantries and deception underneath your organization. If you want those you lead to courageously say what’s on their minds and directly exchange important feedback without putting you in the middle, you have to go first. Once they see you making truthfulness the standard, they are likely to follow. While the spate of books and formulas on hard conversations has proliferated, building relationships that can bear brutal honesty more than technique. It demands deeper investment and generosity.

Preparing to be generous

Every person you lead is hard-wired with a desire to excel. Sometimes that’s hidden under what looks like indifference or aloofness. For the most part, we all want to get better, and we all want to know how. A question I frequently ask my clients is, “If you and a significant other left a dinner party early and they turned to you and said, “Honey, you’ve got a big thing hanging off your nose, get it off, it’s been there all night.” Your natural first response is, “YOU TELL ME NOW?” Everyone has things hanging off behavior they can’t see and if you don’t tell them, you hinder ability to excel.

Here are four generous ways to share hard feedback.

Care deeply, don’t judge or harm. When it comes to relationships of enduring regard, you can’t fake it. If your feedback is in their best interest, they will know it. Even if hearing it pinches, they will still “get” your caring intent.  If there’s a hint of judgment or or any reason to wonder about your “gotcha” motive, the message will fail the credibility test, and you with it. Scrutinize your own triggers. If your private justification is “I’m feeling insecure, so I’ll feel better by making you feel bad,” it’s not truth you’re sharing, it’s malice. Be bigger than that.

Embrace their inner “me-we” conflict. Many things we do to annoy others stem from between our innate need for individuality and our deep desire for community. Sometimes I want to be “me” while other times I want to be “we.” These needs seem contradictory, and make knowing when to join others and when to stay separate from them particularly challenging. British philosopher David Watson describes humans like porcupines on a cold winter’s night. They huddle together for warmth, jabbing each other, quickly pulling apart, later to reattempt getting close. Once close, we struggle with our differences, compete to showcase our uniqueness, then realize we need others’ help. Leaders who can lead within this cyclical conflict know how to position hard messages in ways that honor both needs.

Build relationships that hold tensions. You can’t jump right an unformed relationship with hard feedback – “Hi, nice to meet you – here’s something you suck at.” Great relationships are built to bear hard truths. Test relationships with exchanges of increasingly difficult views of your experience of one another. Start off safely to ensure you don’t leap too far too quickly. Set ground rules about building honesty into your relationship, and how you will practice it. Recognize that you may be two or three conversations away from offering hard feedback.

Always keep transformation in sight. Your words have profound weight. They can shape deep, lasting change.  The perspectives you offer, however painful to initially hear, could set others on paths to dramatic transformation they don’t yet see. Offering hard truths is a leadership privilege to be used liberally and conscientiously.

Get past your reluctance. Courageously invest in the future of your organization by calling forth the potential in those you lead. Not only will you discover one of the most transformative acts of generosity, but one of the most gratifying as well.

Originally published at Forbes.