Giving Feedback – How Compassionate Leaders Can Be Assertive Without Being Confrontational

As a follow-up to our post on receiving feedback, this post takes a look at giving feedback in a way that balances your compassion and assertiveness. That is, a path to follow that enables you to offer a performance critique in a non-confrontational, helpful way; reducing the odds that team members will become defensive and/or retreat into themselves.

Giving feedback requires you to be assertive without being confrontational. Your goal is not to sound overly judgmental and upset people. That will likely cause some team members to overcompensate, overwork, and overextend, in an effort to make up for under performing team members. No, instead, you should work to challenge team members to explain what is not working well and offer suggestions for fixing the problem.

In other words, you do NOT want to initiate an antagonistic “What the heck is wrong with you?” type of dialogue. Rather, you should strive to have a challenging conversation that leads to positive changes for the individual and the team.

In fact, the more you embrace the idea of giving feedback, the easier it’ll be to provide it. Giving feedback, in fact, is a great opportunity to increase your influence, minimize emotional turmoil in yourself and your team, and take strategic action steps that lead to long term outcomes.

Be Assertive Without Being Aggressive or Emotional

So, how do you create consistent assertive behavior without becoming too aggressive, overly emotional or confrontational? That takes some practice.

When you’re in a situation when someone is not doing their job, there’s space to work with it. In other words, you have established relationships and trust, AND it’s actually your responsibility to work with it… to WORK with it. Don’t wait just because giving feedback makes you uncomfortable. Don’t stall and HOPE they improve on their own. (Yes, they might, but that will likely be temporary.)

Even if things do get better in the short term, if you deferred giving challenging feedback, chances are the person will have never learned how to improve and you run the risk of having that person repeat the behaviour that required the challenging feedback in the first place. The price you and your team will pay the next time will be higher. This doesn’t serve you, your team, or the person needing the feedback because you have already missed the learning opportunity.

To change this pattern schedule individual sessions with your team in advance and commit to giving feedback during these meetings. Start with acknowledging what’s working. Then, move into problem areas.

BTW… It’s fine if you don’t have any challenging feedback. But, if you do, establishing this structure keeps yourself accountable. If you give feedback on a regular basis, you train yourself and your team so that it won’t come as a “huge surprise” or “performance review shock” once in 6 to 12 months. Instead, these sessions will be seen as a “normal” part of their work experience and all of you will come to accept and appreciate them for the valuable interaction they are.

Stepping Up in Critical Situations

Of course, regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings are great for addressing problem areas and team building. But, what if something urgent happens that can’t wait; something urgent and critical?

If you feel like you need to give corrective feedback immediately, go for it. It’s always a good idea to process this with the person later, explaining what was going on, why you needed to jump in to make sure they were on the same page, your perspective, and your thinking process.

I also encourage you to prepare notes before having a challenging meeting. When you’re stressed, it’s difficult to remember things, even if you’ve rehearsed them before. Structure is the key to a successful meeting in a critical situation like this: first you have the introduction, then the main part, and finally the wrap up.

For more detail on how to structure this type of meeting in an urgent situation, watch my video on giving feedback. In it, I even go through an example of how the dialogue might progress!

Remember, the recipient might get upset and have an emotional response. Stay mindful of how you react. Provide a safe space while giving feedback. Yes, difficult emotions can be unpleasant. But all emotions come and go. Giving challenging feedback is a valuable experience even if the recipient is experiencing difficult emotions.

Being a compassionate leader means that you have the courage and ability to be with difficult emotions, hold the space for them, and move forward guided by values, mutual trust, and goals.

If you’re interested in learning more strategies for training assertiveness and handling difficult conversations, including feedback, with ease – sign up for my free 1-hour training: How to Succeed as an Overgiver without Becoming Resentful or Losing the Passion for Your Work, by clicking on the link in the description, or go to my website ExecutiveCraft.com .

For more details and insight on this, watch my latest video. You can also subscribe to my channel to receive notification when new episodes are released. Then, if you have more questions, feel free to contact me for answers.