The 7-Step Guide To Delivering Difficult Feedback...

...So You Build Trust, Feel Confident and Make the Other Person Feel Heard and Understood

In this 7-step guide to delivering difficult feedback, I’m going to share a simple process that will make you feel confident and ensure the other person feels valued, heard, and appreciated.

A word of caution. I must also let you know that the guide is only part of the answer. One of the steps is so critical to your success as a leader, I’ve expanded upon it in the article. If you follow me down this rabbit hole, you’ll discover a whole new way to communicate with your team to engage with them so clear and powerful, “They’ll walk through walls for you”.

But before we get to that, here’s the guide to delivering feedback to an employee or team.

Most leaders don’t enjoy giving feedback and wait until the last minute to give it, and sometimes they wait too long.

It doesn’t have to be that way. This 7-step guide to delivering feedback will give you a way to prepare yourself going into those types of conversations. If you follow the steps, you’ll build trust and feel confident the person you are speaking to will feel you've heard and understood them, even in the most challenging of examples.

Step 1. What’s my level of trust with this person?
Without trust, individuals are afraid to communicate honestly and openly. And, people are not open to hearing what someone thinks of their performance when there’s no confidence in the intent of the feedback. It is likely to hurt the relationship and hinder their learning. Trust happens when others feel heard, understood, valued, safe, and connected.

Step 2. What’s the individual’s expectation around this feedback?
Is the individual anticipating appreciation, coaching, or evaluation? Without a clear agreement of what success means to an individual, the conversation can go wrong very quickly. Setting clear agreements and expectations set the stage for a rich conversation that will help an individual to thrive and excel.

Step 3. How does this person like to communicate?
At Institute Success, we believe that 80% of conversations fail when using the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you). Instead, we believe 100% of conversations can succeed by asking the Golden Questions: “Who are you communicating with?” and “How can you adapt to be successful with them?” 

By understanding someone’s communication preferences, you can match their pace, tone, body language, and even use specific words that resonate with them.

Step 4. What truth do I need to share with them?
Choose your words carefully. Beginning conversations with phrases like, “I have some bad news,” “I need to give you some feedback,” and “We have a problem,” can immediately trigger negative responses and activate the amygdala, the primitive part of our brain that causes us to “freeze, flee or appease.” Instead, use neutral statements like, “Here’s my reaction, “This is how it came across to me”, “This is how I felt,” and “I appreciate it when you.”

Step 5. What have I noticed them doing right?

Buckingham and Goodall share an example in their recent HBR article. “There’s a story about how legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry turned around his struggling team. While the other teams were reviewing missed tackles and dropped balls, Landry instead combed through footage of previous games and created for each player a highlight reel of when he had done something easily, naturally, and effectively. Landry reasoned that while the number of wrong ways to do something was infinite, the number of right ways, for any particular player, was not. It was knowable, and the best way to discover it was to look at plays where that person had done it excellently.”


Step 6. What’s my “why” in giving this feedback?
In their book, Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen, explain, “Cross-transactions happen when the giver and the receiver are misaligned. Discuss the purpose of the feedback explicitly. It seems obvious, but even competent, well-meaning people can go their whole lives without ever having this part of the conversation.” They recommend asking yourself these three questions: “What’s my purpose in giving this feedback?" “Is it the right purpose from my point of view?," and “Is the right purpose from the other person’s point of view?”

Step 7. How will we walk away with the same understanding?
How many times have you left a meeting and thought you were on the same page with others—only to realize later that each person walked away with their own idea of what happened? Asking important questions like, “What are you taking away?" “What can we do to make you more successful?," and “What agreements should we be making together?" can help to clearly define takeaways, next steps, and expectations about who is doing what.
By preparing and asking yourself these powerful questions before your next feedback meeting, you can change what could have been a challenging encounter into a meaningful conversation that helps to build trust, improve learning and excel someone forward.

How to make these steps work for you:

The most impactful step of these seven is “How does this person like to communicate?”

If you don’t have total clarity on this, they’ll never hear your message in the way you need it to be understood. And, as I’ll explain below, discovering the answer to this question is simple.

As a leader, it’s easy to assume everyone on your team likes to communicate in the same way you do. That assumption immediately traps us and makes conflict inevitable, especially if you need to give challenging feedback.

Think about your friends and family. Are they all the same? Do you communicate with them all in the same way?

How well do you communicate with them? Is there ever any miscommunication?

A friend of mine has two sons. They come from the same parents and are 22 months apart but a WORLD apart in character.

One, when he was small, would stop immediately if his shoe lace became slightly loose. He’d have to stop to fix it and make it perfect. The other son probably wouldn’t even notice if his shoe had fallen off! He’d be too busy focusing on something else entirely.

My point is we all see the world differently. We all communicate differently.

Research shows there are 4 main ways people communicate. If you communicate with someone who has the same style as you, then communication is easy and feels natural.

However, if they are a different style (and there’s a 75% chance they are a different style) then they simply WON'T HEAR YOUR MESSAGE.

It’s not your fault, and nor is it their fault.

This is where ALL communication becomes difficult. Even a simple conversation about “What are your plans for the weekend?” can leave too much room for ambiguity because of the different styles…

...so imagine how much conflict, resentment, and challenge can be generated by a “difficult conversation”.

Although the 7-Step guide to giving feedback will help you, the ONLY way to have a clear, “I built trust and they truly felt heard, understood, and will do what I need them to do” conversation is to understand their communication style (and, of course, your own).

I’m going to show you how to identify your own communication style in a moment… Just be aware it gets addictive working out other people’s styles! You’ll constantly be thinking, “Oh, that’s why they do that…”