“Better an open reprimand than concealed love. The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive.” (Proverbs 27:5-6)
Many leaders, both in ministry and the marketplace, struggle with providing feedback to team members. Someone displays a deficiency in the execution of his or her role, and leaders fail to address the problem. Instead, under the false pretense of compassion, leaders either ignore the deficiency or develop a workaround—creating an unnecessary step in a process or passing on additional work to others to compensate.
Not providing feedback hurts the team and the organization, but it also hurts the person. According to the above proverb, it is kind to provide corrective feedback to those you love. The goal of corrective feedback is NOT to be right or make a point, but to encourage and help the person receiving the feedback. Feedback is not unloving; not providing feedback is unloving because feedback helps someone grow.
Feedback is intertwined with development because feedback attacks the biggest hindrance to one’s growth—a lack of self-awareness. And yet we all struggle with self-awareness. Ben Franklin wrote, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” When we lack self-awareness, we don’t have visibility to see what needs to be developed within us, our weaknesses, and our strengths.
The goal of a leader’s feedback must be to equip and prepare, not crush and demoralize. A leader who critiques haphazardly is likely to harm team members and not help them. Here are five ways to offer helpful feedback to those you lead:
1. Check your motivation.
Before you have a feedback conversation, check your own motivations. Do you want to prove that you are right or that you are smarter? Or do you really want to help the person? Do you want to unload on someone or do you want to develop them? If you want to blow someone up, just know that you are really offering critique for your sake and not those you lead.
2. Affirm what is affirmable.
When giving difficult feedback, be sure to affirm what is affirmable. Point out the person’s gifting and areas the person is thriving in with the goal of building his or her confidence. Be sincere. Don’t affirm something that you don’t really appreciate. But if you do not offer any affirmation, you risk crushing the person with the belief that they are doing nothing right at all.
3. Be immediate.
Real-time feedback helps people process and evaluate their actions with the added benefit of your feedback. Delayed feedback is not nearly as effective as the person has moved on to other actions. If you store up critical feedback for one long session, you will crush the person and others on the team, and the person will always wonder if a new list is being formed. The more immediate, the more helpful the feedback.
4. Be specific.
If you just say, “Get better,” “Lead stronger,” or, “Here is what I am sensing,” without offering specificity, you crush the person with the lack of clarity. Without specificity in feedback, there is no way for the person to adjust. If you only speak in generalities when giving feedback, you crush people with expectations they cannot meet because they don’t even know what the expectations are. The more specific, the more helpful the feedback.
5. Dialogue on next steps.
A feedback conversation should be a dialogue, not a monologue. Work with the person to discuss action items and next steps. Without clarity about what is next, the young or emerging leader leaves the conversation with uncertainty about what to do. Action steps provide a path forward.
Feedback is an acquired taste, but once you develop the taste for it, you crave it. Help those you lead acquire the taste for feedback by giving great feedback. Their ability to give and receive feedback will make them better leaders for the rest of their lives.
