#163 - How to Manage Your Employee's Response to Tough Feedback

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Welcome to the Managing with Mind and Heart podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for being a listener of this show. Um, I'm Ethan Nash, uh, one of your co hosts for today. And with me I have da, da

Speaker A: da, the senior Nash. I'm Michael Nash. Nice to see you. Ah, Ethan. And great to be with everyone. Thanks for tuning in.

Speaker B: Yes, sir.

Speaker A: Yes, sir.

Speaker B: Um, so, folks, today we are going to talk more about having kind of hard conversations with employees, which, if you're in a management position and you manage people, this is, um, an unavoidable part of the job, or at least a part of the job that shouldn't be avoided because we have to feedback conversations, corrective conversations, things like that. Now, um, the last couple episodes we've talked about, um, giving feedback. We talked about the BIR method for giving feedback, Behavior impact, replacement behavior. Um, uh, the following episode we talked about the C.A.R.E acronym, which is about just kind of how, how you can stay connected relationally while still giving that corrective, uh, feedback. And so great tools, of course. And as we all very well know, feedback conversations don't go exactly how we hope them, uh, to go. Um, people have big feelings and emotions and it makes sense that they do. Um, getting feedback. Corrective feedback is hard, right where our brains interpret it as a threat. Um, and so, you know, you get some challenging responses at times and it's not simply like, great, thanks for the feedback. I'll make that change. Awesome. High five. Have a great day. It doesn't always go that way. Um, I remember in one of my, um, first management jobs out of college, it was, I would probably consider this the first time that I had to give someone, like, some pretty hard performance feedback. Um, you know, essentially our direct report. She wasn't sales job. She wasn't, um, making the amount of calls that were expected for us to make, you know, on a weekly basis. There was just kind of clear metrics and I, and I had to have a conversation with her about it after some previous conversations about, hey, we got to get on track with this. Um, and I remember I, as I do, I, I prepared for feedback, probably overly prepared. I wrote down my script, what I was going to say, and I, like, had this perfect plan. And, and as I was like, partway through giving the feedback, she just started crying, right? And started, started really crying. And um, I just remember in that moment I kind of froze and was just like, I don't have the tools for this. Like, I don't know what to go. Like, I've I've hurt her, I've upset her, and it makes sense that I have, but I don't know where to go from here. Um, and then in, you know, a later situation in that same job with somebody else, I, um, remember same thing, had my feedback written out, gave him the feedback. Um, and basically, as I was giving it to him, before I could even finish, he was like, uh, interrupting me, pushing back, arguing, like, pointing out why that doesn't make sense, why it's not, you know, it's wrong. And same thing. In that moment, I'm just like.

Speaker A: I thought this was gonna just, like,

Speaker B: land perfectly, and it didn't. And so all to say, there are these things that pop up, and it's important that we have some tools of how we can handle challenging responses from our employees when we give, um. When we're given this. This tough feedback. So let's talk about that today.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's. Those are great, um, examples of what we're talking about today. What, what are. What are some of the emotions that employees might be feeling as their boss is giving them corrective feedback? Let's list some of the things that might be going on for the employee emotionally at that moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, probably, uh, a core, core feeling is fear at some level. A lot of the challenging responses, whether it's crying, arguing, whatever comes from a place of fear, Again, somebody with a power differential that has some control over your livelihood, you know, is you're not in favor with them, is how it feels with this and that. That's. That can bring up fear.

Speaker A: Yeah. Fear of losing your job, fear of losing reputation, fear of losing status, fear of breaking the relationship, being broken, Fear of failure. Right. I think you're absolutely right. I think fear is probably core. Maybe embarrassment, maybe shame, um, maybe guilt. Yeah. Um, anger can certainly come in pretty quickly as a. As that secondary emotion. So I think it's important for us as managers to remember that these are human beings having human feelings that are absolutely normal. Um, like, this is what people feel in these sorts of situations. It's not immaturity. There's not something wrong with this person. That's. They feel what people would feel. And I think that's really helpful for me, at least as a manager, to remember that. Um, and so then that leads to the question as to what, okay, what do people need from me when they're feeling these things in a general sense? Right. And we can talk about, for example, empathy. They might need empathy. They might need some time. They might need some process time. What else. What else might somebody need from their manager as their grappling with all these really powerful but really normal feelings?

Speaker B: To put it in a nutshell, I would just say kind of going back to our last episode of.

Speaker A: Of.

Speaker B: Of Care. Both, like, yes, they need care, literally. And the acronym of care. Right. They probably need curiosity and affirmation, perhaps.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Which is ultimately about respect. They need respect in this conversation. Everybody deserves respect. And they might need, um, just someone that's willing to hear them out, to listen. You mentioned empathy, compassion, um, understanding. I like how you put it. Time, right? Just, like, time to process.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: yeah, but I think at the end of the day, what they need is respect and care, even when having hard conversations.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. They might need some reassurance. Um, they might need some more information. So all these things. We have a menu of things we can offer. So let's just take a moment and brainstorm real briefly. Uh, in our workshops, we actually ask people to get into small groups and list all the different challenging or, uh, difficult behaviors that they might get back from an employee during these conversations. And we usually end up with just a list of probably 30 things. Right. So you mentioned, uh, your stories. Uh, crying could be, uh, a behavior that would be great if we had some good responses for. I think your second one was about just pushing back. A lot of arguing.

Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of just interrupting, pushing back, just immediately defending themselves before I've even had a chance to kind of share the feedback fully. Right. You might get yelling. You might get a little. Raising the voice, the anger coming in.

Speaker A: Right. Yep, yep. Aggressive kind of responses. Right.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: You might get the opposite. You make a total shutdown. Just total. Not saying anything. Kind of just physically withdrawing. Emotionally withdrawing, not participating in the conversation.

Speaker B: Yep. You might get a variety of different responses that you maybe hoped you didn't get in our.

Speaker A: Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, blocking out. I've seen that. Getting up and leaving.

Speaker B: So I think what we want to do here for the next 10 minutes or so is just talk about some. Some tools. Right. Maybe just kind of give several tools that we can, um, keep with us, that we can kind of use when we have these different responses that kind of come our way. So we can handle those situations in a way that, you know, hopefully still demonstrates care and respect while still kind of being able to get to what you need to get to in these conversations or eventually get to them.

Speaker A: Okay, let's. Let's do an easy one. Someone starts crying, and I don't mean easy because that's really hard for me. But what are three things that somebody might need when they start crying? I mean, give me one.

Speaker B: Probably what we've already discussed, right? Like they need empathy. Right. And um, you know, I think this partly comes to knowing, knowing the person. But they, you know, first they might just need some time, right? Like hey, hey. Like being able to kind of either sit there with them and just kind of like let it happen or invite to kind of maybe just like, hey, you want to, do you want to take a break and just talk about this more tomorrow? That's totally fine.

Speaker A: So, uh, number three is like tissue. Okay. Those are the three things I want to have us be prepared for. A Kleenex some time, some care. I think that's, that's spot on.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: M. I talked to manager recently who, you know, his. Couple times he's had an employee cry during these conversations and it paralyzes him. And what helped him was to just kind of back to what we said a few minutes ago, just to be okay with what the other person is feeling, to not have to soak it in and take it on yourself. But let, let that be a real thing and an okay thing that helps me to stay, uh, you know, some differentiation not to get sucked in or panicked. Right. So that's, that's, that's. Yeah, that's it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Or, or really what, what happens to me at times when someone's expressing a lot of emotion like that, um, crying, you know, my. And this was kind of what you're saying, like my discomfort with that, if I'm not being careful, causes me to try to solve that so I don't have to feel the discomfort.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: The work here is like, this isn't really about me solving my discomfort. This is about kind of giving what they need in that situation.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Maybe let's talk about arguing and um, pushing back and all the different ways that somebody might, you know, not be willing to go down the path you want them to go down. And you know, what about the other person? Or you know, I did, it's not my fault or you're wrong or etc. Let's, let's maybe talk about a variety of different ways that we might, uh, be able to be effective in those situations.

Speaker B: Okay, so someone's arguing with, with you pushing back. You know, one thing you might just do in that situation is maybe just listen to start with. Right? Like listen by, like. Okay, so if I'm hearing you correctly, I think, I think you're saying that that's not a big deal because so and so does it as well. Is that, is that right? Yeah, that's right. All right. Um, and then maybe this is kind of just asking questions. Well, okay, yeah, you see it differently. Tell me more about that then. Like how do you see it differently? Um, where do you see it showing up in a different way? Or maybe why do you care for the why questions? But yeah, why do you think it's maybe not as big of a deal as I see it. What might I be missing then? Here, here.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: Curious and listening.

Speaker A: That's the secret. That's kind of the superpower. Right there is when you can not get sucked into the argument. Because remember when someone starts arguing with you, our temptation is to argue back because. And the goal of an argument is to win. Right. And so we want to push back against their pushback. And this is counterintuitive, but it's so powerful when they start pushing back to just go into curiosity mode with sincerity. And I really want to understand what you're saying. Help me understand, ask some questions. So it's a great response and I would like to see managers do that more often as opposed to immediately pushing back.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah.

Speaker A: Now let's say that, that, you know, let's say you've done that. Let's say you've, you know, now in many cases that's going to, I think, de escalate and you're eventually going to be able to have the conversation. But let's say it doesn't work and the person is not responsive to that and they just continue to push back and they continue to go down rabbit trails. Um, maybe there's some other ways we might be able to get the conversation back on track. Um, one, one way would be to maybe bookmark the thing that they're now bringing up. Hey, you know, this, this, this thing that, let's say they've brought it up a couple times and you've had the listening conversation. You've been open. Hey, you know what? I really do want to talk about that. Um, let's, let's save that. Let's, let's finish this part of the conversation and then we'll circle back to that at the end. Or you know what, I'm going to write that down. I think that's, I can understand why that's something that's concerning you. Let's talk about that next week when

Speaker B: we have our one on one.

Speaker A: So it's just another Option, Right. To be able to sort of bookmark.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so this is. This is kind of, um, uh, maybe a cousin of arguing, but, like, what you're talking about is a strategy for, like, this happens. Right. You're giving feedback on something, and they're kind of changing the topic to talk about other things that are going wrong or, you know, it's kind of getting off topic. So you're saying to be able to bookmark that, like, yeah, we will talk about that, but let's talk about what we're talking about now. That's when that would come. Right.

Speaker A: Well, also, they might be right on topic, but they're. They're still doing the argument things. For example, they're making, you know, the reason they're doing this thing is because you haven't been clear about policies, and we've already had this conversation and you've listened and you've been open, but they still want to stay on that, or it's someone else's fault or, you know, so they're still on the same topic, but they're arguing. And so sometimes you can take that, uh, sort of the central piece of their argument and bookmark that. Let's talk about policies and clarity, um, when we get together next week, and we'll work on that. But let's go back to. This is what I need you to do.

Speaker B: Yeah, right. You're kind of saying, like, we'll. Yeah, we'll talk about policies, and we still need to figure out, you know, how to. How to make an adjustment here to these kind of behaviors that are showing up. Right. Like, regardless of that, and it may be a valid issue.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: We still gotta solve this.

Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yep. And what you just said reminds me of another important skill, uh, for the manager is to kind of remember who's in charge and that. I mean, you. Right. Meaning what. What actually do I want to see here? I want to see, obviously, a, uh, change in behavior. Right. I want to see the work be done this way and not that way. Or I want to see, you know, you do less of this behavior and more of that behavior. That's the bottom line. And sometimes it's time to just go right back to that, you know, to be able to say, I hear what you're saying. I understand your concerns. This is what I need going forward. And so if you can remember, that's your target. And you might have to go back to that if they're not willing to go there with you, you might at some Point need to stop the conversations about the other person and about the other, you know, factors and the mitigating things and go right to what you actually need. So again, it's just another option when it's time to get a little bit more direct, a little bit more clear with what you're looking for. Mhm.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Good.

Speaker B: And then there's also just, you know, what we, what we sometimes just call kind of like general argument busters. Right. So someone is really just kind of pushing back. Well, like, yeah, but you know, the, the policies don't even make any sense so you know, yada, yada, yada. And it's just saying, again, not arguing but just saying that's probably true. There are some gaps in our policies and I still need for you to follow this protocol for, you know, for uh, the time being. Right. So you're, you're, you're acknowledging that. Yeah, okay. There might be some other things going on and let's still talk about what, what's, what's, what we're talking about.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that, that we, I like to rephrase that. Those are argument busters because we're not disagreeing, we're just commenting on the thing you said. Probably. Yep, that's probably true. I understand you feel that way. And bringing them right back, that's, that's really good. Um, another thing we might remember in these conversations is to make sure that we are in sort of de escalation mode with our way. We show up our tone of voice, that we don't match them if they start to get riled. But we, we keep our voice low, we keep our volume lower, we keep our body language relaxed. There's a, there's a, you know, people are super unconsciously sensitive to body language and tone and they read it whether they know they're reading it or not, and they tend to follow it. And so we can, we can escalate by trying to match them, make uh, things worse, or we can de escalate by remaining calm and quiet and careful.

Speaker B: Yeah, Chris Voss, who, um, has a great book on conflict resolution as well as, um, uh, negotiations, he talks about this as using your radio FM voice. Right. Which really kind of brings it down. So it's kind of like, you know, a low but mellow tone. Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying there. I hear you. And let's talk about the matter at hand. Right, so you're radio FM voice, kind of, kind of, kind of calm, kind of chill. So yeah, de escalate that way.

Speaker A: I think that your npr, Your NPR classical station, maybe the last thing I'll

Speaker B: say at least is just, um, you know, offering help. I mean, I think this comes back to just general showing care and respect. But, like, they're really struggling. They're arguing. It's like, well, hey, how can I help? Like, how can.

Speaker A: How can.

Speaker B: How could. How could I help here? Right? So it's actually saying, like, I hear you, and I hear you have resistance to this and problems with this, and. And so let's problem solve then, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that could even lead to, again, back to earlier on in this conversation, being willing to go where they want to go and do some problem solving around this other thing that they say is a mitigating factor. Okay, let's talk about that right now. Let's talk about how we can maybe improve this or that and then be sure to bring it back to what you need from them. Um, the person who shuts down, doesn't respond, gets kind of quiet. We have our fight flight freeze or fawn. And this would be more around kind of the freeze. Um, it's good maybe to ask what's happening for you, invite them in to explain, to talk to you about what's going on for them. You could ask people if they need some time. And remember, needing some time could literally mean, hey, maybe we pick this up tomorrow. Right. Give you some time to process kind of what we've talked about. Um, if they just really don't want to participate, you can always go back to, well, my bottom line is I need to communicate some things and communicate them. Right. And you don't want to pile on and get louder and wait for a response and try to rile them up to get something. Just be okay with them not responding. Um, and that even reminds me of, you know, the person who rolls their eyes or, you know, looks upset and maybe sighs and we could get triggered by that sometimes. And we got to remember, we're not here to talk about eye rolling. Who cares if the employee rolls their eyes? They're feeling. They're feeling something. It's okay that they're feeling something. And, you know, again, you can ask what's happening for them, or you can just ignore the eye rolling. Right. We don't have to get wrapped up in things like that.

Speaker B: That's a really good point. And I, you know, I'll just build on that and then we close out.

Speaker A: Is

Speaker B: having conversation about the conversation in that conversation usually doesn't go well. Right. And it's the same thing in with your, your partners or in marriages and things like that. If we're having a feedback conversation and then that feedback conversation doesn't feel like it's going well, and then you start talking about how this person doesn't, you know, have a good, you know, doesn't receive feedback well in that moment while

Speaker A: they're not doing it well.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's just like, yeah, okay, so they rolled their eyes at you, they sight at you. If it feels wise, maybe later you have a conversation about how that impacts you. Maybe. But really, let's just stay focused on what we're talking about here. Right? Because then we got to get multiple layers deep into what we're actually talking about. We're no longer talking about the thing anymore. We're staying on track.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker B: All right. Anything else?

Speaker A: Well, there's. Yeah, lots more. But you know what? We are committed to 20ish minute episodes right now. So some other time.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that was, that was a wide ranging conversation. I think the crux here, folks, is just that, like, have some tools in mind when you go into these conversations, Right. Recognize that there's, you know, some, some different ways to handle arguing, to handle your own emotions when someone's showing a lot of emotion and just kind of come prepared with some of these. Um, and you. I think we'll all be better off for it. All right, thanks, everybody.

Speaker A: Thank you.