Once upon a time, I was charged with implementing talent management for the company where I worked.
I eagerly took on the task and, with the help of a crafty consultant; we built an elegant competency-driven program.
As with any good talent management program, this one required managers to engage in a competency assessment for each of their people. And, as you probably know, talent assessment requires feedback discussions.
Since this was the first time we’d ever done anything like this at the company, we decided to do the logical thing (he says jokingly) and start with the executives. Our thinking was that surely the executives, with all of their years of experience, would be masters at giving feedback.
We launched the program. The executives, to their credit, embraced the process and did their part. They completed assessments, participated in talent calibration meetings, and most importantly, carried back the feedback to each of their people. Many of the people on the receiving end of the feedback, despite being Vice Presidents and Directors with the organization, had never been given any feedback like this.
It was a train wreck.
People freaked out. As we discovered, when you’ve only been told throughout your career at the company that you were doing great, and suddenly you were given some less than sparkling feedback, the immediate reaction is not one of gratitude.
Executives were shell shocked by the reaction. Those on the receiving end of the feedback went into a frenzy. Everyone was suddenly less sure about the value of this whole talent management thing.
And we were given a tremendous learning experience. Here’s what we discovered.
So, we adapted and decided to train people on how to receive feedback. Here are a few of the lessons we shared with our employees.
Each of these decisions comes with a consequence, positive or negative. Empowering people with the idea that they have a choice to accept or reject their feedback helped them be more open to receiving it. And more times than not, the employees chose option 3.
Once we began to teach our employees how to receive feedback constructively, our elegant process began to work as we had expected. Managers and employees had much more productive conversations and the employees reacted far more appropriately to the feedback they received—hardly any freak-outs.
So, the moral of this story is that when it comes to feedback, teach people how to receive it rather than spending so much time worrying about the way in which your managers deliver it. Your managers will give more feedback once they aren’t afraid of the freak-out. And your employees will better embrace the feedback when it comes. Win, win.
This was originally published on Jason Lauritsen’s blog at JasonLauritsen.com.