Page 188 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Can Take Bad News • 169

Give Feedback Well

Give it on a regular basis, not sporadically—in an honest, low-key, con-
sistent manner during the good times and the bad. Explain it to make it
meaningful and relatable.
You aren’t helping the person if you aren’t observant or withhold
information necessary for their improvement, so criticize as much as
needed and praise as much as possible. Make certain not to make it into
an ear bashing or a “drive-by colonoscopy,” as one person put it.
Don’t stall, avoid, or withhold.
One CEO told me, “I’d rather be the one criticized than the one
doing the criticizing. It helps me live with fewer regrets.”
Discourage bad behavior in a good way. Keep it between you two.
Give the person a chance and time to change his or her behavior. Don’t
talk to others about the individual; talk to the individual. Give criticism
directly to the person in need; if you speak to someone else about it, you
are just spreading gossip. (Trashing someone behind his or her back while
smiling in his or her face says more about you than about that person.)
Don’t lash out emotionally, pound fists, scream, or shout. Don’t
insinuate, imply, insult, make a dig, peck away, or give innuendo. Great
insults last a long time.
Don’t let one person get away with a certain behavior and the next
one not.
Think back to when you’ve been on the receiving end. Did you
listen, appreciate, value, and change from it, or did you resent, fight, retal-
iate, and avenge? It likely depends on how the feedback was given.
One young manager told me this story: “My boss called me into the
boardroom and pulled out two chairs from the table so that we would
face each other. She sat down in her Prada pants suit, legs spread, hands
on her knees, elbows out, hunched shoulders, and bored into my eyes and
peeled my face off with seething critique. Right then she sealed the keg
as to not getting support from me in the future. It just will never happen.”
“I do everything I can to make sure that I don’t batter, bruise, or
bloody the person.”