How to prevent a tough feedback conversation from going off the rails

Well, it is okay for people to feel emotion. It’s completely normal. It’s completely human. Someone might be disappointed. They might feel nervous about the future of their job. They might feel embarrassed, looking really uncomfortable and like, ah, like you want to avoid it. That’s going to make that person potentially feel worse. So just keeping your cool right. And saying, Hey, I understand this is hard to hear. I understand this is frustrating. Welcome to the managing made simple podcast where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease and 15 minutes or less.

I’m Lia 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?

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Welcome back to the show. So you tried to give some tough feedback and the conversation went sideways. We’ve all been there. This is why we dread giving feedback. Am I right? Because, I don’t know if I would say more often than not, but certainly often enough, feedback conversations are awkward. They’re uncomfortable. Someone gets defensive. Maybe someone starts crying. Maybe they threaten to quit. All of our worst fears come true. And we realize, okay, I knew this would happen.

I don’t want to give feedback anymore. And then, of course, we started avoiding giving feedback and any problems on our team get worse. If that resonates with you, you’re not alone. Hey, I’ve been there. That’s why I thought of that to say,  right? And if we’re feeling nervous about giving feedback, it’s because we’re dealing with people. Dealing with people is hard enough. That’s why in this show, I’m all about making it easier because we have to give feedback.

People have to know where they stand as leaders, as managers. It’s our responsibility to make sure our team members know, you know, what they could do differently or what they could do more of. Remember feedback’s not just constructive. It’s also recognition and appreciation, but people need to hear it. And so I want us to commit today to not avoiding it, not, you know, running the other way, not letting problems fester. If there’s something you need to address, because.

It’s in those moments, I think a couple of reasons, okay, first of all, in those moments that are really hard when your team member feels really frustrated or stuck or alone and you sit with them through it and you help them get through to the other side, that actually goes so far to build trust and build connection and really strengthen that relationship. And I’ve seen time and again, some of our best team members are ones who had a really tough feedback situation or were really falling short in some area, but they really committed to getting better.

And because we were there because we gave them the feedback and helped them through that tough thing, they ended up being some of our most loyal team members. So that’s one reason, but two, again, it is our responsibility as that leader to surface someone’s playing spots, to help someone see, Hey, if you make these little shifts, then you can get to where you want to be. Or this thing right here is getting in the way from these goals that I know you have, and I am committed to helping you achieve.

Or on the positive note, this thing that you’re doing, I want you to know exactly what it is so that you can keep doing it  so that you can keep thriving so that you keep developing the skill. Because this is in your zone of genius and you’re crushing it. Right? We want to know both things. And so when we’ve had a tough feedback conversation, again, it can be tempting to just want to avoid it forever. Okay.

We’re not gonna do that anymore, but today I want to talk about, well, how do we sort of recognize when, when the situation’s going in off the rails, how do we not get caught up in that? And what do we do in the moment? So that you are prepared next time going into feedback conversation. Okay. I’m going to do these things. So more often than not, I hear from my clients and folks that I work with, Um, that their start of feedback conversation, they have prepared.

Okay. You, as the manager, you were ready. You thought about it. You maybe got feedback on your feedback. You thought about how you could be empathetic with the message. You did all the right things with preparing. Okay. So I’m not gonna talk about preparing for feedback. I’ve actually talked about that a lot on the show, even just a couple weeks ago. So you get to the conversation and maybe just the tone is a little bit off.

Your team member is not making eye contact or they look irritated already. Or they’re like, yeah, what’s up? What, what do you need? And they’re there. It’s like,  this is going to go well. And you get that feeling. Okay. First and foremost,  when entering a difficult conversation, I think it’s important to kind of anchor yourself to, you know, here is my why, here’s what I’m doing. Honestly, I sit down for about five minutes and take, take some deep breaths, do some meditation going in.

Really feel grounded, really let go of any sort of nerves that I have. It’s kind of regulating your nervous system, taking slow, deep breaths, thinking about, okay, here’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to help this person. Here is how I’m going to really manage my own emotions. If anything comes up, my own frustrations and come to that conversation actually from a very grounded place. When you’re dreading a conversation and you’re nervous and your team member is like, what, what do you mean?

And you feel like, and you’re immediately frustrated by that. That is going to set the tone in a really off direction. When we come in instead and we’re really calm and centered and we say, hey, like I’m excited to have this conversation. There’s some, you know, there’s some things that are really going well, but there’s some things that I know could make this better and I want to support you. That tone, as opposed to, Hi, um, uh, I need to share some information with you that isn’t going well.

Like, it is totally different. So we want to set the tone. And sometimes that has to be through re centering ourselves. So that means planning ahead, taking a few minutes, carving out time in your calendar. Sometimes we’re running from one thing to the next and we don’t even have time to really plan that accordingly. So we’re rushed, we’re five minutes late to have a hard conversation, our team members irritated because we’re late, the whole thing, not good.

So show up on time, have that, even if it’s 30 seconds between meetings, to take some deep breaths, re anchor yourself. Okay, so that’s first, kind of the prep phase. Did you know that I do team workshops on all of the stuff that I talk about on this show with large companies like Google and also with startups and small businesses like marketing agencies, law firms, and med spas? Whether it’s making those feedback conversations a little less awkward, how to support your team through all of the change and uncertainty making us all, well, a little on edge right now, or delegating to empower your team to step up as owners.

I come into your teams and give you the tools you need to wrestle with all this tough stuff and feel like you’ve got it handled. Reach out at hello at Liagarvin. com or pass my info along to the decision maker in your company and let’s make all this team stuff easier and a lot more fun. When you get into the conversation, let’s say your team member gets defensive or says, tell me when that happened. I don’t think that happened.

Like give me examples. And they start giving you the third degree that happened to me and I get really thrown off by that. Like spoiler. If you ever get a conversation with me, that throws me real bad. So, um, I, I, no matter how many examples I had in my mind, I get really stuck. Okay. And I know that about myself. So when I’m giving feedback as a manager, I have to have a technique ready. And so for example, I will have thought about or made notes of examples.

First of all, so that I’m not just winging it and guessing. I might have a document and say, Hey, here’s an example or two. Um, but you know, I’m really, I’m not here to debate the examples. I want to actually more talk about what are some tweaks we can make that that are going to make this better for the next time. So I would not engage in the defensive conversation. Um, I want, I really try to move it out of that.

I’m giving enough evidence so that it’s a real like specific situation, but if they are kind of pressing and demanding, getting in that defensive, and you know what that looks like. Um, then saying, you know, I’m not, you know, this conversation is not about debating it. I, let’s, you know, we’re here to talk about how to move forward, right? Um, if your team member starts crying, okay, this is something that can,  Make us feel uncomfortable, potentially we don’t like being around strong emotions or we feel really We don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or the whole thing, you know, well, it is okay for people to feel emotions It’s completely normal.

It’s completely human. Someone might be disappointed. They might feel nervous about the future of their job They might feel embarrassed looking really uncomfortable and like God like you want to avoid it That’s going to make that person potentially feel worse. So just keeping your cool Right. And saying, Hey, I understand this is hard to hear. I understand this is frustrating. Giving someone the news that they didn’t get a promotion, that they didn’t get the raise they wanted, that the bonus is different this year, that the thing that they were going for, it didn’t quite meet the mark.

That can bring up a lot of emotions  and saying to someone, Hey, I, I recognize this is a really tough conversation. I in the same situation, I would feel really upset too. It’s completely okay to feel what you’re feeling. Validating that goes such a long way. And I mentioned already, this is something that we can really build closeness and trust with our team members. These are the moments that does that. So if someone experiences strong emotions, not to be like, ah, get me out of here, actually sit with it and be okay with it.

Um, let’s say someone starts threatening to quit. Okay. That’s another thing that happens. Well, like, well, if this is what I’m going to hear, I didn’t want to be here. Like, look what you’re doing. Or they’re turning it around and they’re accusing you of, you know, well, like you’re a bad manager. That’s why this happened, right? It’s getting really heightened. On maybe like the attack mode or say there to quit. This is what I suggest really in any scenario is saying, Hey, I understand.

This is frustrating. I understand. You know, there’s a lot to think about lots of process. Um, you know, I I’ve shared the feedback. I’d love you to, for you to sit with this and let’s come back together later this week, or let’s come back together in our next one on one and. Um, we can talk about, you know, any questions that you have and talk about the plan for working through this. I’m here to support you.

Um, and, and, you know, I want you to know that. And it seems like we maybe need a little bit of time to process. Okay. So not letting the conversation escalate and spin out into something where potentially your team member says something that they regret or they don’t actually want, or the whole thing kind of goes too far, it escalates in the wrong direction. Okay. Giving them the opportunity to hit pause, hit timeout and come back together later.

Now in this time where they are thinking about it and coming back later, this is a very critical piece of time. Ideally, your team member comes to you with a plan for how they’re going to fix this thing. This is where you know this thing can turn around. I have an example of a client who shared really tough feedback with a team member a couple weeks ago and they left it as. He would come, they would come back together in a few weeks.

This is at a, uh, a branding agency that I work with. And she said to me today, like, well, it’s been about two weeks and he hasn’t come back and we’re going to meet later. You know, I’m hoping he comes with a plan. And I said, that’s exactly, that’s exactly right. This is an opportunity if, especially if the feedback was about someone not being proactive or needing to be more proactive or stepping up more or. You know, needing to take more of a leadership role.

This is a moment where that person, they got to come back with a plan. And if they don’t, and they come like, okay, like, yeah, I don’t know. You gave me that feedback. What? And they don’t have this sort of internal accountability to want to fix something about it. Then that’s not the greatest sign. We really want our team members to come back and say, okay, I thought about it. It was hard to hear. And here’s some things that I’m doing to mitigate it.

This is how they show leadership. This is how they continue to build your trust. Okay. This is how they show again, that personal accountability. And when there’s something that they need to fine tune and change in order to do their role better. This is a moment we’re going to see right away, like how close they are to hitting that. Now, if you’re hearing this and you’re worried, well, I don’t know if someone’s going to realize to make that plan.

Okay. Schedule the next one. I don’t want to follow up and say, Hey, um, I know we had that hard feedback conversation. Let’s regroup in that meeting. Please come with a plan to talk through. We’ll talk about your ideas, some feedback on that plan and how I’m here to support you. You can give them a little loose agenda if you feel like that’s necessary. But they still got to come with that plan  and this is where it doesn’t go from.

Feedback is just you sharing it, them hearing it, no one actioning it. And then a cycle continuing where you get through these tough conversations and it doesn’t sound pointless because it doesn’t go anywhere. Your team members got to take the ball and run with it when there’s feedback on that. So this is the way that we move from avoiding it and dreading it because we feel like, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen and how I’m going to deal with it.

We show up grounded and prepared. We take that 30 seconds or that minute or whatever it is. Five minutes. I would hope we get a little buffer. Regulate our nervous system. Take some deep breaths. Remember anchor yourself. Okay. I’m here to help this person be successful. This is how I’m going to do that. You have the conversation, you  avoid getting in a defensive sort of escalated conversation, right? You hold space for emotions. You say, it’s okay to be frustrated.

I understand. I’m here for you. You pause, take a time out if things are escalating, come back together. And then you hold that person accountable to bringing in a plan and actually actioning that feedback. So I’m hoping that this gives you a little bit more feeling solid going into a feedback conversation because it is hard. I always say, feedback is like the worst part about, about being in the workplace. It is so intimidating and scary. And I know we all need feedback.

We know it’s a gift, but it’s a, feels like a punch in the gut a lot of the time, right? Because it’s, it can go so uncomfortable, but when we, when we do it this way, we start to see, okay, more often than not, our team members are going to meet us right there. It’s okay if people are frustrated or disappointed about an outcome. It doesn’t mean we’re a bad manager, a bad leader. It doesn’t mean we do something wrong.

So we have to also hold those multiple realities together that someone can be disappointed with an outcome and still know it was the right decision or they can disagree with the outcome or it’s still think we’re a good manager, a good leader, or still want to work in our team, right? Those things don’t cancel each other out. And this is something that is one of those things. Feedback. That can make us feel really stuck. So, and, and this is one of the areas that I work with teams the most on because of that, right?

So I work with managers on helping give and receive feedback, but also with broader teams. So if feedback is a challenge that you’re wrestling with on your team, that Folks are saying everything’s fine, but they’re not sharing feedback with each other as peers. If you’re struggling to deliver feedback and have it received, you know, an action by your team members, please reach out, DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram or email me at hello at Lia Garvin.

com because this is something that with very specific skills and tools and practice, your team can actually be fantastic at. And when we get better at feedback, everything starts to open up, especially that sense of personal accountability, which is what puts your business and your team on a rocket ship. Because when people feel personally accountable to always being bettering themselves. Literally, the sky is the limit. All right. So do not hesitate to reach out if you’re feeling stuck.

Feedback’s hard, but I got some tools for you that are going to turn things around. 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.