How to handle the worst-case scenarios when giving feedback

These fears of someone, again, getting defensive or like turning it around, quitting or going to HR about us are a lot of times what has us hold back from giving feedback. And the reality is we never know how someone is going to react on the other end of it. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant.

Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, and most of all, stress. Doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes or a seasoned manager ready to up their game?

Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between. Let’s go. Welcome back to the show. I am on a feedback kick. Last episode, I talked about the emotional regulation we want to bring in as a leader before having a feedback conversation. Next time, I want to talk about how to remember feedback’s not all bad.

It’s not all constructive. Let’s talk a little bit more about recognition and gratitude and appreciation. But today, I’m going to get real, and I want to talk about what happens when a feedback conversation goes badly because that’s why we fear all of this. The unknown, the unexpected, we say something that we feel like was super clear and someone gets defensive or someone quits, or maybe they go to the scariest thing possible and they go to HR about you, even though, again, you thought you’re really fair.

These fears of someone getting defensive or turning it around, quitting, or going to HR about us are a lot of times what has us hold back from giving feedback. The reality is we never know how someone is going to react on the other end of it. When we pre-silence ourselves, we are holding that person back from getting a piece of information that really could help them improve their performance. All we can do is control our own approach, the way that we explain something, the empathy and compassion we bring in the conversation.

We never know what’s going to happen on the other end. But to be afraid of that and to avoid feedback and not really deliver direct tough messages, that’s going to degrade the whole quality of your team. That’s not an option. I really want to be clear about that because I think right now I hear from managers over and over in my workshops when I’m working with them individually, when I work with business owners, people are very afraid to give feedback because just tensions are high.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give feedback. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s going to always go well. It doesn’t mean the other person is right if they aren’t able to hear a hard message or course correct something and they don’t want to be in that team or they don’t want to be in the company. That’s again, it’s not a reason we don’t give a hard message. And I think there’s a lot of fear because maybe you’re working in corporate and you don’t get a backfill if somebody quits.

Maybe you’re running a small business and if somebody quits and walks to the door, that leaves you having to get in the weeds and solve that problem until you have time to even approach hiring the person. So it’s really, really scary. But the cost of not giving someone important feedback that they need is productivity on your team, right? So they’re not performing at their best and that’s over and over and over. But more than that, it sends a message to high performers and the other people that are doing really well that you tolerate like a subpar performance.

Maybe the person has behavioral issues and you’re tolerating that. Maybe they’re not finishing their stuff on time, you’re tolerating that. Maybe they’re not great with customers, you’re tolerating that. These things that you allow without giving feedback send everybody a message that we aren’t really concerned about like our employees output and our quality and whatever. And that’s going to take the team’s performance even worse. So I really, really have to urge you, if you’re struggling with giving feedback, get some support.

This is one of the main things that I do workshops and manager training and coaching on. So if you want support from me, you know how to get in touch, hello at leaguearver.com. And I talk about it at length in the new manager playbook because feedback is so important. If we’re not giving folks regular feedback, they don’t know where they stand. Both positive, I’m going to talk about that next time, and on a constructive basis, right?

They don’t know what they need to do better. What is an example of what’s the worst case? Well, I was managing a team member many years ago and she was missing deadlines. I was getting frustrated about it, but I didn’t really say anything because I was like, well, is it that bad? Or she always kind of had an excuse and was kind of valid. And then one day we’re in a team meeting her and two other team members, the four of us.

And I said, Hey, what’s the update with the project? And she said, well, you know, I, I kind of wasn’t able to get it done. I had this and this. And I said, Hey, you know, I’m getting pretty nervous about this project because the last few times I’ve asked you, it hasn’t been done. And the big deadline is coming up next week. So can you please have an update by the end of the week? And she looked at me and said, how dare you speak to me that way?

I can’t believe you would disrespect me that way. And I was caught off guard and the other folks in the team were too. And I said, I’m sorry that something I said struck a chord that way. And you know, I really do need the deadline. I mean, I need to know when this is going to be done. She said, I’m not speaking to you anymore without HR present. That’s literally what happened. And so I said, okay, that’s totally your business up to you.

Fine. We wrapped up the team meeting and afterwards she said, okay, I’m going to HR. And I want to say this for folks listening to us in the corporate world or from the corporate world. Someone’s saying they’re going to HR. I don’t know if it does this for you, but for me, it’s like someone saying, I’m going to call the police. You’re going to be arrested. You know, it’s like the scariest threat someone can make. Now when HR gets involved over a complaint like that, there’s nothing right.

Cause it’s not a violation of any sort of policy. You didn’t harass anybody. So I would say first of all, not to get sucked in. If a team member threatened something like that, that’s something that they’re using to kind of hold wield power over you. But you telling your team member, Hey, you know, the work’s got to get done on time is not a HRable offense. Right. And so I think for us as managers, not to get freaked out by that and stand our ground and say, Hey, you know, yeah, you’re welcome to get whatever support you want inside the company and talk through this and see, Hey, we can, we’re going to HR and talk to them about it.

Like kind of like a mediator. Right. That’s fine. I think, and you showing you’re not like rocked by that is actually really helpful for you to maintain control over the situation and also not get in your own head. Like, Oh my God, I told my team of her feedback and I’m gonna get fired. Because in that situation, HR never followed up with me. My manager who was her skit manager reached out and said, Hey, just want to check like where this is at.

They said, yeah, like people can ask HR question all the time, but this is not an HR issue. So we’re not doing anything with it. Right. So that was like an empty threat. I think another thing people can do is threaten after they hear something like, well, you know, you give a piece of feedback and they say, well, I’m going to quit. Like, no, I can’t believe that you said I had to work this other way or faster or get the center, like whatever I was bothered by whatever you said.

And I don’t want to be in this team anymore. And I would honestly ask you to think about if someone is not open to feedback now, just quick caveat. This is assuming you have given specific, actionable feedback with compassion that you’ve done all the expectation settings. So this is in circumstances, you’ve done everything kind of right. Let’s for lack of a better word. Right. So we’re on that plane, not that like, Oh shoot, I started yelling and I don’t know if that’s bad, right?

No, we were clear. We were direct. We were compassionate. We gave clear expectations. We’re talking about now, of course, correcting conversation. Let’s say they’ve been missing deadlines and you said, Hey, you know, this is the third deadline you missed. And I’m getting really worried about it. If something’s going to slip, can you let me know earlier so that we can get other people on board? Or if we keep missing deadlines, I’m going to have to put you on a different kind of project.

Cause this is really at risk. Let’s say you say something like that. And the person says, well, I don’t know if I want to be on this team anymore. If someone is not able to take responsibility for a place, they fell short. They are not someone that’s likely to be a good longterm fit on your team at all. Right? Because now you have no way to hold people accountable. And a lot of times when folks feel under pressure or like the spotlights on them, they can turn it around and they don’t really mean what they’re saying maybe, or they feel like that pushed them to the limit and they don’t actually want to take responsibility.

That person’s not a fit. So if someone is threatening quitting, we don’t want to be afraid of that. We want to take it as a relief that that person is going to opt out instead of not and continue to under deliver and be on our team. That’s a lot harder performance management. And again, I’m not an HR professional managing people out. That kind of thing is difficult, right? There’s a lot that goes into that. And so if someone wants to opt out, that’s actually helpful for you.

Even if it means there’s a gap on your team, because a low performer is always going to cost you so much more than having a gap to fill, because at least everyone can rally around and help kind of cover those responsibilities. Having someone that is negative, not open to feedback and not delivering, that’s always going to cost more. Right? So those are two situations that we get so afraid of. We don’t give feedback. And like, what is the worst case?

Someone makes an empty threat. They go to HR. HR’s like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, get back to work. Or they leave. And it was someone that wasn’t a good long-term fit. Now, the third thing I said, which kind of happens a lot, right? Is you give someone feedback and they’re defensive. They’re giving you the third degree. They’re interrogating you. Like, when did that happen? Why did they say I didn’t say that? And they’re getting super defensive.

And it’s just like an awkward, uncomfortable conversation. You can survive that too. That happens all the time. Right? It might happen with your kids. If you’re a parent of teenagers, I have a six-year-old daughter. I’m terrified to that when she turns 12, 13. Right? It brings up all this stuff. Like, we don’t want to be talked to that way. We feel like, well, I can’t make my case when someone’s coming back at me. Defensive. All you can do again, be clear, compassionate, direct, set expectations, follow up, matter of fact.

And if the conversation starts to detour and you feel like it’s getting too heated saying, Hey, I shared the feedback. I can feel the tensions rising. Let’s come back together later today or tomorrow and talk about this again. I want to support you. I am here to help you close the gaps. Let’s come back together in another time. Those are the tools that you have at your disposal. Right? And again, like I say this because I don’t want to pretend that this stuff’s easy and I don’t want to pretend that feedback’s always going to go well.

Just because you use my favorite framework situation, behavior impact. No, actually a lot of times it’s really hard and you might be scared on the other side of that someone is going to quit or make a threat or get defensive. But when you are compassionate, when you are direct, when you have set clear expectations and you’re fair and you’re showing up the way you said you did, right? These are all things that I talk about in the new manager playbook around setting an intention as a manager and showing up in accordance with that.

When you do that, the consequences are a lot lower, right? Someone makes a throw, they go to HR and that doesn’t matter. Or this person sort of threatens quitting and it kind of shows that, Hey, they may not be the right member of the team or the person you have a sort of escalated defensive conversation. You break it up, you come back together. And the person’s actually reflected a little bit. And they said, yeah, you know, I was thrown off because I was working really hard on that project.

It was really hard to hear that it didn’t hit the mark. And that really made me feel bad, but I see the feedback and I can take that in, right? A lot of times with those defensive conversations, someone, once they get the chance to step away and think about it, they’re a lot more open to kind of having that dialogue when they come back together. So I think just naming it and saying, yeah, this stuff’s going to be hard sometimes and owning it and preparing yourself by using the frameworks and setting expectations.

Because when you have established what is the expectation, what you want to see, what is a company policy procedure, whatever it looks like. And that person knows that they know when they haven’t hit the mark. And it’s not confusing and it’s not a debate, right? Even if it seems like that at first, when you come back together, it’s really straightforward. And that’s the biggest tool that you have. And that’s why I talk about expectation setting so much time when it’s about feedback.

Because when you’ve done that, you have covered yourself in being fair and diplomatic and making sure everyone’s on the same page. Okay. So this is a lot, right? To think about. And I think just to reflect your homework after listening to this, I invite you to think about what is your biggest fear when it comes to feedback? Is it that someone will quit? That’ll be a really uncomfortable conversation that the person might turn it around and say, you’re a bad manager.

Like what is it? And thinking about how can you de-risk that specifically so that you can keep giving feedback because your team will never be as high performing as its full potential could if you’re not giving folks feedback, especially the constructive feedback, positive recognition, all that stuff is equally important. That keeps us sustaining high performance. If we have constructive feedback that has to be given, that’s what’s going to kind of create this leaky bucket and high turnover in your team.

So you got to deal with it, but I invite you. And again, reach out helloatleaguerover.com. If you want to talk about that, what is the fear there so that we can de-risk that. And then it makes giving feedback so much easier. Okay. Like I said, my goal is to make managing the easiest part of your job. This stuff is hard, but figuring out how to approach it doesn’t have to be okay. And if you’re ever stuck, reach out and I’m here to help you anytime.

See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the managing made simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.