Need to Give Negative Feedback? Practice Out Loud.
Need to give negative feedback? Practice out loud. The words you say in your head while driving to work will not be what comes out of your mouth when you give the actual feedback. Ask a friend, family member, or even your pet (aka someone you don’t work with) to listen to you deliver the feedback. If people outside of your industry and organization understand the feedback, the feedback recipient will be clear, too.
Giving feedback is stressful for both the person giving the feedback and the feedback recipient. The best way to manage the stress of giving feedback is to be prepared.
Here are three ways to prepare for difficult feedback conversations:
- Write out the feedback, save your notes, and walk away. Read your notes later and ask yourself, “Have I been clear?” Then see if you can cut the notes in half. Shorter feedback is better.
- Practice out loud. Use our 8- step Feedback Formula as a guide. The Formula will ensure you give clear, specific, and succinct feedback without emotion.
- Bring type-written notes to your feedback conversations. When the feedback recipient becomes defensive (and they will) or you become flustered (and you might), your notes will help you keep the conversation on track.
During every feedback training I teach, I am asked how to reduce feedback recipient’s defensiveness. Defensiveness is a normal, healthy response to feedback. When you give someone negative feedback, you (subtly) tell the person they did something wrong. No one wants to hear that, so the brain goes on the defensive. It’s a normal survival mechanism. Instead of avoiding and dreading defensiveness during feedback conversations, prepare for it. And the best way to prepare is to practice what you want to say out loud. Speaking a message is not the same as practicing the conversation silently in your head. Speaking out loud is more stressful and takes more time. So, if a conversation is particularly difficult or awkward, practice out loud!
I’d like to give a huge shout out to Angela Fusaro of Physician 360 for sharing this video with us. Angela practiced my eight-step Feedback Formula on her dog, Thor. I thought it was so funny and thought you would, too.
Practice feedback conversations out loud!