How to give staff negative feedback

Kamau is a customer service pod manager in Nairobi and has recently seen customer call times grow while customer complaint tickets pile up day by day.

Rather than asking questions to the agent with the most complaints, Mwende, who is the latest in a series of agents struggling to keep up with queues, Kamau remains silent, waiting and hoping for her metrics to self-correct.

However, weekly departmental dashboards keep flashing red, tensions rise in the team, and Mwende dreads every login as unmet expectations hover over her, and she feels like she has no direction on how to resolve the issues.

Whispers of restructuring on the management side start swirling around the office and employee morale takes a downward hit because the deafening silence speaks louder than words and sounds more like harsh judgment than uplifting support to resolve issues.

Nasieku, on the other hand, is in charge of a simultaneous pod on the floor below and hears Otieno lagging on quality standards in his first month. Nasieku optimistically requests an open dialogue to help Otieno resolve the issues as they start to emerge and before they pile up and become insurmountable.

The dialogue sets the stage for perfection, and leads Otieno to self-assess himself and make adjustments. He clearly outlines his poor product knowledge and requests Nasieku for paired coaching sessions from more experienced agents.

The result means that Otieno comes into the office with a learning sprint, carries out every day debriefs with his coach, and brings in the more experienced colleagues to attend a selection of his calls.

In three weeks, Otieno's average customer handle time drops, customer compliments rise, and coworkers celebrate his comeback by sharing chai and mandazi during break times.

Writer and professional coach Jenny Fernandez disapproves of a stereotypical manager that becomes fixated on nitpicking and overcorrecting their staff. On the flip side, avoiding confrontation never resolves issues and instead compounds problems.

The research shows that managers should come up with a script that includes intentional empathy with the supervisor showing that they understand with and sympathise with the employees struggle to achieve desired performance. That empathy unites the two.

Leaders must define success in shared unifying language that makes both sides think and use “we” statements to ground examples.

Managers should also incorporate real world examples taken from multiple stakeholders on how to improve, not just top-down theoretical explanations.

If managers also guide employees to base their performance development with dialogue that also bridges everyday small actions linked to that employee’s distant career aspirations, then layering in criticism of performance does not feel so negative and instead seems like a joint process of growth.

Managers would do well to recall the strategy of foretelling future outcomes instead of avoiding difficult conversations. Forecast harder situations, more efficient workflows, and build more trust that inspires leaders to call out early rather than wait and see.

The concept ties into last week's article on episodic future thinking as a bypass for bad habits to avoid, like communication avoidance. Pre-viewing office performance and outcomes that derive from honest conversation takes courage because managers have to act.

Read: Improvement tool: How effective feedback motivates workers and boosts productivity

Jenny Fernández's approach may be used by companies across Kenya with managers starting the discussion by issuing an invitation like, "Let us set your objectives together and create a plan towards mastery." Leaders then start listening, taking note of employee observations, and giving tangible examples like late deadlines or customer feedback.

Feedback from cross-functions opens eyes and demonstrates equity, and past success stories give positive contrast. Regular check-ins, records of employee actions in writing, and access to educational training material can sustain the momentum and reflect organisational employer commitment to the employee’s learning and improvement journey.

Logistically, managers can layer in three immediate practices. First, conduct monthly development coaching discussions with their staff rather than yearly reviews that make performance worse.

Second, require each direct report to draft an individual vision statement spanning their current roles and link them to their career aspirations.

Third, maintain a stakeholder notebook that stores a list of project partners and records bite-sized nuggets of feedback after collaboration has been finalised.

The practices guarantee growth discussions become the new norm of the employer’s ecosystem and prevents shock performance reviews that sink motivation.

Employees also possess agency and have a say in their own learning and improvement. Workers can ask actively for feedback, explain any perceived gaps they notice, and also recommend improvement experiments. Such actions help often overworked managers to know how to support their employees better.

Staff members expressing their personal values and career goals with managers makes task alignment with intrinsic motivation much easier to plan.

Workers can also directly seek mentorship outside of their direct reporting lines in order to expands scope and create a network of accountability instead of sitting around waiting for their supervisor or head of department to do the heavy lifting.

In conclusion, when Kenyan businesses use authentic and empathetic performance conversations, then subpar performance improves from passive resentment to shared advancement.

The research shows the power of shared dreams, visions of the future, and hard facts can turn things around. Managers who listen attentively while communicating clear objectives can build high-performing teams that are dedicated to adhering to shifting market realities. Employees who embrace such conversation build solutions quicker, feel valued, and commit more deeply to every project.

Have a management or leadership issue, question, or challenge? Reach out to Dr. Scott through @ScottProfessor on Twitter or on email [email protected]