The situation:
A few months back I was invited by the folks at LinkedIn to write a brief article on how to give team members corrective feedback without demotivating them. This subject is close to my heart as a leadership trainer, and I was happy to try to sum up my approach in a few words. Here is the piece (updated lightly) that I passed on to LinkedIn’s education portal…
“When providing corrective feedback be clear on your purpose – usually to solve the immediate problem – and prevent its recurrence – without demotivating your team member. Defensiveness is often a key challenge. But you can pre-empt defensiveness by using what I call “no-fault problem-solving.” Start by taking responsibility for your part in allowing the problem to occur (e.g. were you guilty of “drive-by delegation?” or?) and by asking for your team member’s help in solving it. (Key point: It’s hard to be defensive when the boss has taken at least a share of responsibility, rather than blaming, and is asking for your help). The idea is to attack the problem, not the person. This enables you to engage them fully in collaborative problem-solving – so they own the solution and are likely to follow through – while strengthening rather than weakening the relationship.”
Obviously there is much more to this topic but for this week let’s focus on defensiveness – the #1 challenge in providing corrective feedback.
Dealing with defensiveness: The origin story behind no-fault problem solving
A bit of history. In my 40+ years as “The Turnaround Guy” – working with small and mid-size companies facing bankruptcy – I was on a constant search for ways to help clients prevent and resolve destructive conflict. This was essential for practical reasons. For example, in these turnaround cases we always engaged everyone in brainstorming ideas – typically low-cost, fast-acting guerrilla marketing ideas – and people had to be able to toss out even their wildest ideas, without fear of being shot down. But. People at war with each other are not good at brainstorming together. So. The wars had to end – right now. People blaming each other for the crisis had to stop – immediately. People engaged in old feuds had to bury the axe – now. Cheap shots and sarcasm? No more (really?). Boss needs something done? Please and thank you every time. Owners and bosses’ fault-finding, blaming and criticizing when mistakes were made? Done. (But not easily).
We always had to move quickly in these turnaround projects – and there was no time or money for formal leadership training, so we developed a different approach that went like this: “Let’s just figure out what drives destructive conflict – as we go along – and figure out how to stop it and prevent it from recurring.” This approach enabled us to focus all our time and energy on building and executing a successful turnaround plan. (Yes, It helped immensely that they were in an existential crisis – and literally had no choice but to change.)
Bottom line: The approach worked.
We came up with dozens of insights and innovations – like “No-fault problem solving,” and “Attack the problem not the person” – that helped the managers we worked with become more effective leaders – virtually overnight. Here are some of the lessons we learned and taught around defensiveness – the greatest leadership challenge we faced – both for those providing and those receiving corrective feedback.
If you don’t want me to defend, don’t attack!
Defensiveness is like body armor for the mind. It protects us when we’re attacked – and ‘attack’ is the key word. We (my clients and I) learned early on that all criticism – no matter how well-intentioned – is received as an attack by the other person. And, of course, it’s human nature – the fight or flight response, the drive to survive – to defend when attacked. Criticism can bring up bad childhood memories. We (almost) all have memories of being blamed, shamed and criticized as children. How did we react? Typically by defending – avoiding, denying, blaming others (or circumstances supposedly beyond our control.) And, if we were lectured again and again, we tended to tune out. Do adults do the same thing at work? Yes. I have watched owners and managers routinely criticize, lecture (even threaten) team members whose eye rolls and body language made it crystal clear that they had turned off and tuned out.
Putting a stop to this incredibly destructive behavior was easy and fast. I would hold a one on one meeting with the manager and do a replay of what had just happened when they lectured a team member. Once they connected the dots, most were embarrassed and contrite; some were resistant, blaming team members for not paying attention and not being open to feedback. In just a few minutes of brainstorming the contrite leaders would develop a new playbook using the strategies we’re talking about here. Others needed more time and attention.
Even a gentle, nurturing approach can spark defense
Fault-finding, blame and criticism are (almost) always received as attacks because we can’t criticize without first sitting in judgment and making a negative assumption about the ‘offenders’ intention – and their level of care, competence or commitment. And, in my experience, most of us tend to let that negative judgment show in the way we approach.
Even a gentle, ‘nurturing’ approach can be received as an attack that triggers the fight, flight, (or submit) response. For example, “Pat, let’s go over this again and this time I want you to pay just a little more attention to this piece…okay?” This approach can be ineffective because it’s presumptuous. It presumes that Pat wasn’t paying full attention in the first place. But, if Pat were a keen new recruit they may have been paying very close attention, yet are now being (gently) accused of not doing so. Worse, if Pat was making notes, and can’t find any reference to the issue they’re dealing with, this could indicate that the leader may actually be at fault – in this case for having skipped of skimped over that part of their instruction (perhaps the leader was called away?) If this happens the trainee may feel injured and resentful but is not in a position to defend. (Ouch. Could this mark the beginning of the end of what could have been a great working relationship?)
Why not just tackle the problem?
How simple. Knowing these dynamics at a conscious level all we had to do was brainstorm how to approach ‘safely’ when we needed to provide corrective feedback. Over time, a simple mantra emerged: “Attack the problem, not the person.” Was this approach permissive or laissez-faire? Hardly. We were tough, tenacious, relentless – in attacking problems – without damaging relationships and demotivating people.
A key aspect of this approach involves taking responsibility. If we rush to judgment and blame we don’t allow space to look for our own responsibility for what has happened. If we are able to identify even a grain of self-responsibility it will be relatively easy to approach with a little humility – without feeling blameful and letting it show. For example, were we guilty of drive-by delegation? Or hit and run coaching and problem-solving? Did we fail to provide the time and/or other supports needed? Was the ‘offender’ pulled in other directions? We may not have been responsible for ‘causing’ the problem, but we certainly are responsible for solving it.
Fault-finding, blame and criticism destroy engagement
One key consequence of the fault-finding approach is that it destroys employee engagement – an essential ingredient for success in these turnaround cases (and I would argue, an essential ingredient for success in any team endeavor.)
Revealing the scope of the problem, the Gallup organization has been surveying hundreds of thousands of employees across North America every year since 2005, to measure their level of engagement at work. Their findings are horrific. Here is an edited excerpt from their latest survey report:
About one-third of all employees are engaged at work. They love their jobs; they feel respected, and they actively contribute to the betterment of the organization. At the other end, 16% of employees are “actively disengaged” — they are miserable at work and seek to destroy what the most engaged employees contribute. The remaining 51% of employees are not engaged, “they’re just there” (just trading time for money as I put it). In related surveys, Gallup finds that roughly 50 of employees who quit do so because of a toxic relationship with their boss. Ouch.
Your call to action
The Gallup findings are alarming – particularly because they haven’t shown any improvement over the years. But do their findings hold true for you and your organization? No matter what role you play, this week I encourage you to think about how corrective feedback is handled by owners, managers and supervisors in your own business or organization.
Conduct a mental survey. Think about each person who plays a leadership role – including yourself – and how you would rate their performance in terms of delivering corrective feedback. This is a consciousness-raising exercise…a warm-up to next week’s post where we’ll talk about how-to’s, step by step.
See you next week.
Welcome to This Week with Neil Godin – a free coaching service that brings you leadership and communication tips, tricks and tutorials every week – along with a call to action: to put each week’s insight, idea or skill into practice. This program took shape as I began to wrap up my 45-year career as a business development and leadership trainer, speaker and writer. I needed a ‘culmination project’ – a way to share many of the unique insights and skills developed with my clients over the years – particularly in the trial-by-fire of my business turnaround work with companies facing bankruptcy – where people had to learn to work together as never before. I invite you to subscribe and receive an email notice when each new article lands. Subscription is free of charge.
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