How to Give Feedback Without Crushing Confidence

Giving tough feedback can feel nerve-wracking, especially if you’re like me and don’t love conflict.

In this Two-Minute Tip, I’m sharing two simple strategies I give my own coaching clients to help them deliver difficult feedback without crushing someone’s confidence.

You’ll learn how to keep the discussion future-focused so your employee feels supported, not defeated, and how to be crystal-clear about behaviors and next steps so nobody leaves guessing.

These are the same tools I use myself to turn hard conversations into hopeful ones. If you’re a leader who wants to coach up without tearing down, this will help you feel more confident, too.

• Read the video transcript

  Today I want to give you two strategies for delivering difficult feedback without crushing confidence.

  One of my clients recently was sharing about some feedback she needed to go give to an employee, and she's fairly conflict-averse, so she was nervous about the conversation, and these were two strategies we discussed.

  The first is to keep the conversation forward-looking. If they believe that you believe in their hope for the future, you want to see them excel and succeed in the future, you want to help them get from point A to point B, they will feel so much more positive about where the conversation is heading. They will feel like, okay, I can commit to moving forward to this hope for the future.

  The second thing is to be clear, and this is clarity around two things. The first is being very clear around the specific behaviors that you need to see more of or less of from them. Sometimes when we are nervous about these conversations, we tend to be kind of vague. We shy away from being clear and they leave not really understanding what it is they need to do differently moving forward. And that sets both parties up for failure. So be very clear about the specific behaviors you need to see more of or less of moving forward.

  And the second piece of clarity is to get very clear about what happens from here. When are we going to check in on progress on this issue? How often will we check in on progress? What is the responsibility to prepare for those conversations? If you leave that feedback conversation with both parties knowing what happens from here and when and how will we check in on it, it will feel so much easier to follow up and reinforce positive change and also correct things that maybe are not going in the direction they need to head.

  So keep the conversation focused on the on the future with a hope for the future and be painfully clear in the feedback and in the follow-up steps.