While the research makes it clear that asking for feedback tends to create healthier, higher-performing cultures than waiting for feedback, sometimes a manager has no choice but to give their employee some tough news about their performance.
The challenge is our brains are highly sensitive to negative information that may feel like a threat to our status or standing in a group. That’s why criticizing a person’s performance — even if it includes direction on how to do better next time — seldom leads to lasting behavior change. And if it does, it will be negative reinforcement; it won’t be the healthy kind of learning and development that keeps a person engaged in their work.
To change employees’ behavior and keep them motivated over the long term, NLI proposes a three-step process for minimizing threat and delivering feedback in a brain-friendly way, which we wrote about recently in Fast Company.
1. Ask the employee to give themselves feedback.
In NLI’s SCARF® Model of social threat and reward, the “A” stands for autonomy. Humans are strongly motivated by feeling in control. If you’re a manager giving someone feedback, it’s very easy for the employee to feel a lack of control: They have less power and authority than you, and they’re being reprimanded for poor performance.
If you don’t boost their sense of autonomy somehow, the feeling of threat could shut down the person’s thinking, rendering the feedback useless. One technique is to let the employee give themselves feedback first, thereby putting them in control of the conversation. Plus, they probably already know where they messed up, so this gives them a chance to show some self-awareness before you offer your thoughts.
2. Affirm what they did well.
Another way to combat feelings of threat is to rely on the “S” in SCARF®, which stands for status. You can do this by acknowledging what the person did well before you get into the constructive feedback.
You don’t have to give a full-on feedback sandwich and overly cushion the negative information. But, it’s easy for the brain to leap to conclusions and think that negative feedback in one area reflects a poor reputation in many other aspects of work. Highlighting what’s going well can reassure the person of the overall value they bring.
3. Offer advice on how they might improve in the future.
As the employee’s manager, you enjoy a special vantage point over their work and trajectory within the company. You have an opportunity (and a responsibility) to share your opinions on how the person can do better next time.
If the person has been given boosts of autonomy and status, they will hopefully feel rewarded enough, or at least minimally threatened, to hear your advice. Virtually every employee needs and craves this clear guidance on how to do their jobs well.
As a manager, you know the goals your team needs to hit. The harder part is helping people stay in a frame of mind to hear and absorb that information when things go wrong. However, by relying on a brain-friendly approach to giving negative feedback, which turns down feelings of threat and emphasizes reward, you should find feedback conversations get easier and more effective with time.
A version of this article appears in Fast Company. To read the full article, click here.
