How To Handle Bad Manager Feedback: A Letter To Young Employees
By Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better and co-founder of Radical Candor, a company that helps people put the ideas in her books into practice.
File this under ‘bad manager feedback.” A few months into their very first job, a young person I know got this email from their boss on a Friday afternoon:
Hello! I hope your weekend is full of promise!
Confident, curious employees are often interested in hearing feedback about their work. You are confident, curious employees! Almost everyone at our end-of-year meetings said they would welcome more feedback. At our team meetings, our goal is to provide feedback from workplace observations as well as from encounters throughout the day, throughout the office.
I have noticed that the most common reaction to feedback is to quickly justify decisions/actions and to explain the choice you made in the moment. This stance often gets in the way of growth. This stance projects, “I don’t want to think about making a change. l don’t want to think deeply about my practice. I’d rather bring you around to my way of thinking.”
Trust that the feedback being offered is not criticism. It is an invitation to ask questions and to consider more effective ways.
When receiving feedback, please stop providing your rationale. Put your explanations to the side. Make room for considering how else you might approach the situation. Push yourself out of your comfort zone to think about how doing it another way might be valuable.”
I felt sick to my stomach when I read this. I felt sad for such a lousy experience this person was having in their very first job, and sad for their boss. This is what happens when a manager gets the job with absolutely no training about what managers do. They are tossed into the deep in, and when they sink, they drag all their direct reports down with them.
For the sake of all the managers out there who have been tossed into the deep end with no training, and for the sake of all their employees, I’d like to unpack the problems with this email.
Below is a guide to handling this difficult “bad manager feedback” situation, including how to prepare for crucial conversations, assess your options, and develop your conflict resolution skills.
1. Get It Before You Give It
A leader should not give feedback to employees without soliciting it first. The best way to teach employees not to be defensive is to solicit criticism, and then to reward the candor when you get it. The whole premise behind sending this email out is flawed. Telling employees how to respond to feedback when they get it is flawed.
Sometimes leaders reach out to us at Radical Candor to ask us to teach their employees not to be defensive when they get feedback. We do not accept such engagements.
Rather, we recommend that these leaders learn how to solicit feedback before giving it, to give specific, sincere praise, to give kind, clear criticism, and then to gauge how it lands. If an employee feels defensive, it is the manager’s job to learn how to challenge even more directly, to push through that defensiveness, and if emotions follow, to show they care personally and to remain present for those emotions.
Telling people not to feel those emotions is likely only to heighten them. If you tell a person, don’t be sad, they’re likely to feel more, not less sad. Telling a person, don’t be defensive is likely to make them feel more, not less defensive.
2. Start With Care Personally
Telling employees that “confident, curious employees are often interested in hearing feedback about their work” implies that if the employees disagree with the feedback, they are not confident or curious.
This implies that the feedback is always right-which is not possible. Feedback should be a conversation, not a monologue.
Then, telling everyone, “You are confident, curious employees!” is an example of insincere praise that focuses on personality attributes rather than CORE feedback:
C — Context (Cite the specific situation.)
O — Observation (Describe what was said or done.)
R — Result (What is the most meaningful consequence to you and to them?)
E — Explore nExt stEps (What are the next steps?)
3. You Can’t Control Other People’s Reactions
The very next sentence is, “I have noticed that the most common reaction to feedback is to quickly justify decisions/actions and to explain the choice you made in the moment.” This shows how insincere the writer was when they said, “You are confident, curious employees!”
By instructing employees to “stop providing your rationale,” the email discourages open dialogue and the exchange of perspectives. Radical Candor is about challenging directly while also being open to being challenged in return. It’s important to create an environment where employees feel safe to express their thoughts and reasoning, fostering a culture of mutual respect and learning.
4. Criticize In Private
It’s no wonder that people are not open to feedback as it seems to be offered in public. “At our team meetings, our goal is to provide feedback from workplace observations as well as from encounters throughout the day, throughout the office.”
Critical feedback should not be offered in a team meeting, it should be offered in a private conversation.
5. Being Precise With Words Matters
Then, there’s the line, “Trust that the feedback being offered is not criticism.” WHAT??? Feedback, or guidance as I prefer to think of it, consists of both praise and criticism. If you are telling a person about something they are doing wrong, it is criticism. It should be kind, and clear. But it’s still criticism. Saying it is not erodes trust. Starting that sentence with the word “trust” is a huge mistake.
Words matter. Being precise with words matters. Criticism is necessary and sometimes it stings. Saying it is not criticism won’t make it sting less. What helps it sting less is letting the person know you are there to help them fix whatever problem you’ve pointed out, that you are committed to their growth.
6. Feedback is a Conversation Not a Monologue
The last paragraph is basically telling employees to shut up. “When receiving feedback, please stop providing your rationale.” Good feedback is a conversation not a monologue. But this manager was never taught that.
You Got Bad Manager Feedback-So, Now What?
Here is my advice for navigating workplace conflict and handling difficult management feedback in your first job.
Whether you’re facing inappropriate criticism, poor communication, or questionable leadership practices, these steps will help you maintain your professionalism while protecting your career growth and mental wellbeing.
From documenting problematic interactions to building workplace solidarity and understanding your employee rights, you can transform this challenging situation into an opportunity for professional development.
While management training gaps often lead to poor feedback delivery, you can still take control of workplace communications and create positive outcomes.
1. Take a Deep Breath
I share the outrage that getting such an email is likely to produce. Feel the feelings. And remember that you have agency. There are a bunch of things you can do, and I’ll share some ideas. I bet you have others. Try to extend whoever sent you this email a little bit of grace.
Remember, most bad managers are not evil people. Management is rarely taught. It’s not a surprise that there are so many managers who don’t even know what managers do, let alone how to be good at it.
When I’ve been in analogous situations I’ve found that writing this person off as evil robbed me of a sense of agency.
2. Document
Write down the things that bothered you about this email. I just did that for myself, and I felt a lot calmer after I did it. Jot down some of the more unfortunate things that happened in the team meetings where feedback was given publicly.
Send this documentation to someone you trust. Even if you have no intention of using this documentation in a lawsuit, just writing it down will make you feel less gaslit.
And that email was one gas-lighty document. It’s important to be clear in your own mind about what the problems were before talking to the person.
3. Build Solidarity
Talk to other people about feedback so that you are clear on what it’s supposed to be like. Find a leader whom you respect. I wrote a whole on it, but you’re probably busy and don’t have time to read a whole book. Here is a 6 minute version . Here is a . There’s also a 50-minute LIT videobook and a Masterclass and a LinkedIn Learning class .
Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant has also written and talked about feedback. The book Crucial Conversations is great, too. You don’t need to spend tons of time. Just take a look at the resources that are out there.
You can also join the Radical Candor Community and use the accompanying app that’s full of tools and resources to help you practice Radical Candor on your own or with other community members.
4. Locate the Exit Nearest You
I’m about to recommend that you go talk to the person who sent this email. You will have a better conversation if you know what your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). It’s easy to feel trapped in a job, especially early in your career. One is rarely as trapped as one feels.
Think about what you’d do if the conversation goes badly. If you think that there is another job you could get fairly easily, or a person’s couch you could sleep on, then you’ll go into that conversation feeling more confident.
If you are well and truly stuck, then your degrees of freedom are more limited and you’ll need to be more careful. But it’s important to know that.
5. Have a Conversation
Have some direct conversations with the person who sent this email. Start by (aka criticism-you’re not fishing for compliments here) from them. This is important for a few reasons. One, you want to know where you stand with them. Two, they might actually have some good advice. When you get the feedback, manage your own defensiveness and try to reward the candor.
Next, take a beat to remember the things you like about this person and give voice to them. Praising your boss isn’t always kissing up. The purpose of praise is to let the person know what to do more of. There is tons of research showing that expressing gratitude and appreciation can help you have a better experience at work.
Now comes the hard part. Let this person know that you don’t think their email landed the way they intended, and ask them if they’d like to discuss it with you. If the answer is no, polish up the old resume and get out of there! But hopefully the answer will be yes.
Start gently. Say that you’d like to continue receiving feedback, but that it will likely be easier for you and others to receive it well if it’s given in private not public. Gauge your feedback . Pay attention to how the person responds.
If they seem sad or mad, take a beat to address their emotions. If they brush you off, you may have to say it again, more directly.
More often than we expect, these conversations can get things back on track.
If you understand the importance of receiving feedback in the workplace, then you need The Feedback Loop (think Groundhog Day meets The Office), a 5-episode workplace comedy series starring David Alan Grier that brings to life Radical Candor’s simple framework for navigating candid conversations.
You’ll get an hour of hilarious content about a team whose feedback fails are costing them business; improv-inspired exercises to teach everyone the skills they need to work better together; and after-episode action plans you can put into practice immediately to up your helpful feedback EQ.
We’re offering Radical Candor readers 10% off the self-paced e-course. Follow this link and enter the promo code FEEDBACK at checkout.
Originally published at https://www.radicalcandor.com on October 22, 2024.
