Life is full of situations where we need to give negative feedback.
Unfortunately, we often end up avoiding giving negative feedback altogether because it’s uncomfortable. Or we end up acting impulsively and doing it in a way that’s unhelpful — even damaging.
Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise…
Focus on the behavior, not the person
People quickly get distracted from the actual issues and end up getting critical of each other.
Responding to a personal attack with your own personal attack is almost never helpful, even if you think it’s justified.
Unfortunately, we all get defensive sometimes. And worse, we end up acting on our defensiveness in unhelpful ways.
Which brings us to an important point:
Before giving negative feedback, prepare yourself for the likelihood that they will get defensive and consider how you would like to deal with it.
My theory is that the reason most of us end up getting defensive in response to other people’s defensiveness is that in large part we just get caught off guard and surprised. And this surprise and disappointment leads to some impulsive, rather than intentional, reactions.
On the other hand, if you anticipate that the person you’re giving negative feedback to will get defensive, and make a plan for how you would like to handle their defensiveness, you’ll be much more likely to succeed.
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