Forget the sh*t sandwich (feedback the right way!)
A piece of feedback advice dished out to leaders and people managers way too often is to deliver it in this format:
Give some positive feedback
then the bad/constructive stuff
and end with something positive again (aka the "sh*t sandwich"!!)
I really don't like this advice and here's why.
It assumes that your team members really aren't that intelligent, or their emotional intelligence can be tricked.
That as long as you start and end on a high note, they'll forget they felt bad in the middle!
This advice is often taken up by managers who feel super awkward about saying something the other person doesn't really want to hear (which let's face it, is most of us at the beginning).
The problem is that the delivery ends up being really muddled and vague, with the awkward manager rushing through the middle bit to get to the nice bit again.
We just need to act like grown ups and treat our staff like the grown ups they are too.
That means being super clear about the feedback, making it constructive and not rushing it to save people's feelings.
It's so much kinder to be honest as it means:
They are really clear on where they stand and what they need to work on - so you're giving them the chance to develop and grow
Should things go pear shaped in future and you end up in performance management, you know you have done everything you can to give them the best chance to succeed (important for HR processes and for your mental wellbeing)
So here’s a better way:
1.Raise the topic asap
As soon as is practical, let them know what you'd like to discuss in broad terms. Feedback should never be a surprise sprung in a one to one, or a performance meeting. It should be given as close as possible to the time the event provoking the feedback has happened. If you wait a month for a one to one, they’ll have forgotten the details by then and missed opportunities to improve.
eg
Manager: I’d like to talk about how the client meeting went yesterday
2.Ask them what they think
By asking them their thoughts first, they may well cover your feedback for you. So often they will have realised something didn’t go well and have already made a plan for improving it, which means you don’t even need to give any feedback - you can just agree with their observations!
It also gives them a chance to let you know about any circumstances which meant they weren’t performing at their best, perhaps a personal problem you had no idea about.
eg
Manager: What do you think went well, and what do you think could be improved?
This is actually a great question after situations that went well too - giving the team member a chance to reflect on their performance helps them to consolidate anything they learned and recognise their own wins - making it easier to repeat things that went well!
If they cover the same things that didn’t go well as you had wanted to cover in your feedback, you can simply agree and skip to point 4.
3.Add anything they haven’t covered
eg
Team member: I think I described our service really clearly and the client obviously understood as they didn’t ask any questions at all.
Manager: I agree that the way you summarised our service with the client was clear and concise. I noticed that when they asked if they could raise questions, you asked them not to until the end of the meeting. What was behind that decision?
Team member: I didn’t want to lose track of my place in the presentation.
Manager: What do you think the client’s experience of that was?
Team member: I guess they could have been annoyed or frustrated?
Manager: Possibly. They may also have forgotten the questions by the time you got to the end of the meeting.
I noticed they asked a lot of questions by email afterwards. If they had been able to ask questions as they came up in the meeting, they may have had a clearer understanding sooner and felt able to agree a way forward in the meeting, what do you think?
Team member: I see your point, I wasn’t really thinking about that, I was just a bit stressed about presenting.
Your feedback should include enough information that if you gave it to five different people, they'd all understand the same message.
There is a lot of checking in with what the other person thinks as you want to really understand what goes into their decision making.
It could be that there is something you hadn’t considered that means their decision was the right one. And if not, giving them insight into your decision making helps them to think things through more thoroughly in future.
4.Show understanding and ask for improvement ideas
Manager: I understand the nerves about presenting, I still get them myself, but we do need to make sure we are putting the client’s experience first wherever possible. They’ll feel more at ease and it also gives us an increased chance of them agreeing there and then. How do you think this could be improved for future meetings?
Team member: I think I need to give myself some more time to prepare next time. I left it a little late to prepare my slides so I didn’t get much chance to practice.
Manager: Sounds good. If you need any support with finding the time for that just let me know. Also, it will get easier over time. The more you present, the more natural it will feel. Pushing yourself to do this will really help with your career goals of bla bla bla so it’s great you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
I think another tweak you could make is letting the client know at the start of the meeting when and how they can raise questions, so they know exactly what their options are. Anything we can do to make their experience effortless is a win.
Agree a plan for what is happening and when by.
Ask them to think it through to see if there’s anything you’ve both missed and to add a summary of the plan to wherever you usually document meeting actions.
As a side note, getting the team member to summarise what was agreed and not doing it yourself has several benefits:
it gives them a chance to think back through the event yet again and consolidate what you have both discussed, possibly coming up with more ideas
by writing down the actions and not just saying them they use a different part of their brain and further consolidate learning
they take responsibility and ownership for what they decide to do (autonomy is what employees crave, not being told what to do!)
you can check that they really did understand what was discussed and you have a chance to correct misunderstandings
if you were to take on the task of writing up notes after every meeting for each of your team, you’d have another huge admin task to do - and you need to concentrate on leading the team!
Let me know your thoughts over on Linkedin, I’d love to know how you get on with this or if you have anything to add.
