After being requested to give feedback to people, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of them are not opened of receiving the negative one, no matter how well and nice I am preparing my speech. I’ve tried various ways but nothing worked out. In the meantime I found out that people don’t want feedback they want coaching. While Marcus Buckingham is pointing to coaching, I am coming with scenarios where coaching just doesn’t fit. But he’s right, people don’t want feedback (especially the negative one).
Let’s go through three concrete scenarios — real examples from my career.
1) You would like to reject a job offer and you have to explain why
When I did that, I tried to avoid giving feedback. But I was asked to and I could tell what would happen. I’ll let you go through the dialogue that I could recall it perfectly:
- recruiter: “Please enumerate your reasons why are you declining the offer.”
- me: “The technical interview seemed quite harsh, I was asked difficult and, I would say, unpractical questions that you don’t really use in…” [here I was interrupted]
- r:” You know, they are doing experiments and they want to see your limits and …” [some more irrelevant arguments goes here. I was interrupted and that really bothered me. However I tried to continue.]
- me: “Also you promised the offer to come earlier and …” [Again, I was interrupted]
- r: “We had a team-building in the meantime and we …”[The continuation of the reply is yet irrelevant. Even the beginning is moot and, I would say, silly.]
This was the point where I closed the conversation since I realized that I was wasting time talking to the hand. They tried to look good by contradicting my feedback. They knew that I accepted another offer, so I wouldn’t have changed my mind. I don’t think they would have changed their “interviewing culture” or hiring process anyway. Since my feedback was not even listened, for them I had no point whatsoever, that’s why I don’t understand what did they asked for.
2) You have to tell your boss that he is doing it wrong
His money his call, no doubt about that! However I was the “expert” (his word) in that field and I explained him that his decision will get things worse. I knew precisely which was the best solution but I didn’t have the approval of applying it. Who was responsible for the failure? My boss! Who was the scapegoat? Me!
How can you give feedback to such a person who is as stubborn as a mule? I strongly believe that you can’t. Even when I resigned he still didn’t understand the situation that I explained to him regarding the episode briefly described above.
3) Your co-workers don’t want feedback nor coaching at all
I do understand Marcus Buckingham’s point. But, there are tons of people who just don’t want to improve themselves. They know their way of doing things. They think they have their silver bullet that are ready to use it for decades.
So what’s the point of coaching in this case? Even more, what’s the point of feedback?
Good luck presenting them a better way of doing things. They will believe that you think their work is not good enough. They will either feel attacked or they will not understand your point. In either cases, your feedback is making no sense to them.
Conclusion
In all of these three concrete cases that I described above, people are taking the negative feedback as something bad that they must reject. Believe me, I’ve tried all sort of ways of providing feedback. I thought that there is something wrong with me since nobody is willing to accepted my negative but constructive remarks. If others concluded that feedback is something unwanted by people then I have nothing to be concerned of.
Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone. So far I met only one exception — me, looking forward for more. I recently received negative feedback without even demanding it. (I usually do.) First I was tempted to deny it, but then I remembered this article that I had it in mind for months. I kept my mouth shut and listened carefully. First, I did not agree. After a couple of days I realized the point of the reviewer and he was correct.