By Peter Agnew  |  4 April 2018

Tips for addressing problems in an open, productive way

Giving productive feedback in the workplace is a crucial skill for effective leadership. It involves balancing two opposing human needs – the need to learn and grow as a person versus the need to be accepted just the way we are.

When addressing a problem, balancing these competing needs can be challenging both for the person giving and the person receiving the feedback – we’ve all heard of the horror stories of feedback that’s gone wrong and the consequences; resentment, disengagement and anger.

So how do you walk this fine line and give feedback that allows people to grow while ensuring that you accept them, their unique traits and some of their flaws?

Addressing problems comes easy to some people; they roll their sleeves up and show tough love leadership when required. For others, it is difficult. It means disrupting the harmony of the workplace. Many leaders want to avoid confrontation or hurt feelings; it’s easy to understand the temptation to smooth it all over. The Work of Leaders research (a multi-year project that analysed leadership research over the last three decades) found that leaders are more than twice as likely to consider themselves very good at giving praise as they are at addressing problems.

Here are some tips for providing effective negative feedback:

• Develop an open culture where candid conversations are encouraged, such as daily feedback.
• Decide if the problem really does need to be addressed or if you need to alter your expectations – don’t sweat the small stuff.
• Clearly identify the problem, is it about missing a deadline or is it really about letting the team down and damaging their reputation?
• Consider a feedback sandwich (positive, negative, positive), but be aware of flowering negative feedback with positive feedback that masks the negative. Don’t make up positive feedback if there is none.
• Use Situation, Behaviour, Impact – describe the situation, the behaviour that you are concerned about and what the impact this behaviour has on you or your team.
• Be solution focused – focus on the problem or solution, and not the person.