How to stop defensive reactions from derailing your feedback conversations

It can feel like you’re second guessing yourself when someone is defensive about feedback, but if you deliver it in a way where you’re specific, you give direct feedback, it’s actionable, it’s something that the person can action on and you use situation behavior impact, which is always what I recommend. 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. Today, I want to address something that I think happens to a lot of us, okay? And this is a question that a client had around, you know, she had a very casual laid back tone way of kind of communicating with her team.

And then she realized it got a little bit too casual. And when she gave feedback to a team member, they brush it off like, okay, cool, whatever. And this is something I think a lot of us face when we’ve worked with folks for a long time or we’ve really evolved our own leadership style. We were really young when we started as a manager with a certain team or started our business. And now we’ve evolved, we’ve really come into ourselves as a leader, we’ve grown our business or we’ve grown our team and we really need our team to meet us there.

So I think first and foremost, I want to reassure you that if you’re in this situation where you feel like, oh, I was a little bit too casual and now I’m kind of stuck here, that you’re not stuck. I think it is totally in your right to reset expectations. It’s also in your right to remind your team members that, hey, I am the boss and I want to create an open and compassionate and trusting environment. But at the end of the day, what I say is the way that we’re going to do things.

And it doesn’t have to be pushy, it doesn’t have to be like a dictator, but you do need to reinforce that. And so I want to share an example kind of related to what my client shared with me, which was she had a team member that messed something up. She didn’t do a certain task she was supposed to. And when this manager called her out or addressed it, the person got really defensive and she said, that’s not what you had said, or I didn’t do it wrong.

And she was really defensive about the feedback. And she said, hey, and the manager went back to her and she said, hey, I need to be able to give you feedback when something doesn’t go well. This thing was messed up and we have to be able to fix it for the future. And the team member responded, this was over Slack, with a long message saying, well, I don’t like how you gave feedback and you used to be so cool.

And where is this coming from? And it was really in a very unprofessional response that got my client, who’s managing this person, really wondering, did I do something wrong? Did I, you know, is it too late? What should I say? And she really wavered between, you know, wanting to take responsibility that she hadn’t totally set expectations around kind of communication norms, but then also feeling like, wait a second, something’s off here, like this doesn’t feel right.

And so that’s where I’m saying, you know, it can feel like you’re second guessing yourself when someone is defensive about feedback. But if you deliver it in a way where you’re specific, you give direct feedback, it’s actionable, it’s something that the person can action on and, you know, you use situation behavior impact, which is always what I recommend. So this person that done that, she said, hey, you know, in our chat conversation, when I addressed that this thing hadn’t gotten sent out to our client, you know, you acted, you know, you brushed it off and said it wasn’t a big deal.

And the result of that is I’m worried that we’re going to make that same mistake in the future. That’s essentially how this person delivered the feedback. So nothing really harsh in this situation. So if you use our skills that we talk about on the show all the time around how to deliver feedback and you’re still met with defensiveness, again, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It means it’s an opportunity to reset around norms for how we communicate respectfully within your team or your company.

Gotta say it, right? Like that’s what that signals because you should be able to give feedback and effective feedback is both the responsibility of the feedback giver and also the receiver. So I think folks, one thing to be coaching your team members around when the tensions are low and when it’s not a moment of giving feedback is how to make it safe for everyone to have type of feedback conversation, right? So for example, saying, Hey, um, how do you want to receive hard feedback?

Do you want me to send it to you in an email or in Slack or you want me to come talk to you directly? Do you want to have a meeting about it or do you want me to send you a chat about it so you know what we’re going to talk about so you can think about it and then come back later and talk about it. This essentially understanding someone’s sort of feedback communication preferences is going to help set up the conversation in the future.

So then when it does go a little bit sideways, you can say, Hey, you know, I’m, I’m really trying to honor the, the communication side we talked about. I sent you a message and now, now is the time we’re following up in the meeting, right? And so that allows, that sort of prevents, um, sort of the worst case where the person’s caught off guard and you really realize, well, I don’t really know how to best address these things.

But even if you haven’t had that conversation again, your team members should respond respectfully because you are the boss. Okay. And if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, well, yeah, I know, but that’s not what’s happening for me. That is why we have to reset. So I would do something like the following. I would have a conversation with your team member, you know, a few days after this has happened so that you let the emotions or whatever happened in that conversation where they were defensive, sort of fizzle out, sort of subside a little bit.

And then come to that team member and say, Hey, you know, I realized we had some miscommunications or some disconnects around the feedback that I shared. I gave you some feedback and I, and I understand that you, you know, you didn’t like how that was delivered or you didn’t agree with it or whatever. And, and then say, you know, to, to have an effective professional relationship where I can help you achieve the goals that you have in your career and we can do what’s best for this business.

And you can have a thriving career here in this company or this team. It’s really important that I can give you feedback. And sometimes, yeah, you’re not going to agree with it, but you know, this is all part of doing the job. And it’s one of the non-negotiables about working in this team is we have to have an openness to feedback. So are there certain ways that I can better deliver that to you so that you can hear it?

So first you’re in, you’re, you’re setting, you’re setting a clear parameter, like this is a non-negotiable. And then you’re inviting them into the conversation. If they come back to you and they’re like, yeah, like, well, you were mean and you said this and I didn’t like this. You say, Hey, I own that, that it may have caught you off guard. And so let’s try to, let’s try to do a, do a do-over and let’s try to have this conversation again.

And, and I got to ask you to please give me the benefit of the doubt. I have your best interest in mind. Sometimes I’m running really fast between things and I can only send you a short message. Sometimes I can only give you a one word answer, you know, and start to sort of explain some of the context. I think sometimes our team members don’t realize how much stuff we have going on and they write us a page long email and we read, okay.

And then they feel frustrated or like we blew them off. Do you want some hands-on support for all of the topics I talk about on this show? Like a team expert who has worked within tech giants like Apple and Google, as well as small businesses on hand to help you delegate and get out of the weeds, handle tough conversations with team members, put in your hiring strategy and get your teams to help bring in more revenue.

Then it’s time to sign up for my Team Whisperer Consulting Sprint. For 90 days, you have me in your back pocket to help you navigate any and every issue happening on your team. DM me the word sprint on Instagram or email me at hello at leahgarvin.com and let’s build your unstoppable team. Another thing that I want to address, and this was the case with this client and it happens to me. And so I wanted to share that, invite you to think, well, maybe this is happening to you.

So I am a pretty casual communicator, as you can see as a listener of the show. And I’ve noticed that when I get serious, people kind of get thrown off like, whoa, like she’s really upset. And I’m not upset. It’s just, I’m not kind of joking around. And so the difference is very strong though, right? So that can be alarming to our team members. And so knowing that about ourselves, if that resonates for you saying something like, Hey, I want to have a really casual and fun way of communicating on this team.

That’s my personality. That’s my style. And I have to know that it’s safe for me to be serious or have a bad day or be frustrated. And I want you all to know that I’m not mad at you, that no one did anything wrong. But if I’m addressing something seriously, you know, I really do expect you to listen to it and take action. And I think teeing that up in advance, that really goes a long way.

I have noticed because this is a trap, like I said, I’ve fallen into where the kind of casual to the serious is alarming for folks. When I’ve said to people that I noticed that, that has really helped diffuse some of the fears around, Oh God, like, did I really screw up? Am I getting fired? No. Like I could have a day where I’m serious. And so I think we have to just manage this and be proactive and upfront about this because then our team members will feel okay.

So that’s what I’ve got to say is if you know, there’s certain things about your communication style, like you might have sort of more often than not a little bit more casual. So when you’re serious, like I said, it’s alarming for folks. That might be something you want to mention. And then again, to really reset that, Hey, we’re going to have feedback on this team. I want to do it as, you know, I want to make sure that it’s as, you know, as useful and effective as possible, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it.

And I think too, to talk about your team members shared their career goals so that you have these shared goals in mind, you know, and saying, and always anchoring feedback to that. That’s another way that you’re going to really mitigate some of this defensiveness because your team was going to say, okay, like, yeah, this is something that I want to get better at. And that is why they’re addressing it. And the last thing is always to use something like an SBI situation, behavior, impact, be very specific about the feedback, not talking about generalizations, not bringing up 10, 10 different examples at once.

Give one example, be specific. Talk about the behavior in question. This thing got missed, or you said this thing, or, you know, the meeting wasn’t run, you know, we ran out of time before making a decision, whatever it was. And then the impact of that thing. The impact is not because the person sucks. It’s not because they’re a bad team member. It’s not because they’re not good at their job. It’s not because they don’t care. It’s not because they’re not working hard enough.

No. The impact is in this instance, this thing didn’t go as well as we want it to. Now SBI is great for positive feedback. This conversation is not around positive feedback, so I won’t dive into that too, but you can see how, you know, talking about the impact of something and saying, even if it’s, Hey, the impact is I was really worried that, you know, can I trust you to handle this project in the future? That is an impact and it can be personal and it can just say, Hey, this is where I’m feeling.

This is, this is what’s coming up for me. And I know you usually don’t make this kind of mistake in the future. So what’s going on? Can I set clear expectations or was there something else that I can do to help you, you know, not miss this kind of thing again? So the more we just humanize the conversation, I think another thing, pulling it out of text, pulling it out of Slack, have a conversation either with voice notes, if you can’t have a meeting or have a meeting is going to go a really long way.

So much gets lost in, in written communication, in texting, right? Because we can’t, we can’t tell the person’s tone, right? Saying like, Hey, can I give you some quick feedback versus, Hey, can I give you some feedback is completely different, but the words are completely the same, right? So someone can be really caught off guard by what’s written because they’re spiraling begins and they don’t realize that you actually weren’t even upset about this thing at all.

So that’s why I think, especially if you have a team member that’s been, um, has a bit of a track record of getting defensive or being a little bit scared about feedback. You really want to talk to them in person directly. It brings our guard down. And again, it doesn’t have to be in person, like face to face, but use voice, voice note, send them a video. Maybe if you can’t send them, you know, a loom video or, or get on a video conference, something like that’s going to go a really long way.

It’s also going to shorten the conversation because you lessen the back and forth. I’ve seen so many folks get in this back and forth. I’ve been there too, where you’re like texting back and forth, it’s getting out of control. You’re emailing and you’re like, what are we even talking about here? One five minute meeting would resolve the whole thing. And I’m always kicking myself for not just doing that. Not just going, okay, wait a second. We ought to move to voice or video because it just makes things so much easier.

Okay. So this is my advice to you again. If you’re in a situation where you are delivering feedback and your team member is kind of like defensive and you realize, gosh, I think I need to reset this whole context and communication norms around feedback. Then this is what you do. All right. Give it a try. And if you’re stuck with this kind of thing, this is something a lot of us get stuck with. That’s why I talk about feedback all the time.

So don’t hesitate to reach out. Send me an email at helloatleahgarver.com and we can talk about where you’re getting stuck with giving feedback to your team. And if you want to have a workshop on your team to work through it, if it’s really on both sides or if you want to get some training for your managers or whatever that looks like, because this is something that with a few key strategies, it gets so much easier for everyone.

All right. 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.