Giving critical feedback to someone who is doing well

Of the eight scenarios on the Management Lab list this is the one that looks easiest on paper. The person is good, they know they are good, and the thing you need to say is small. It still sits on the list for weeks, because the manager does not want to dent something that is working.

This is a made-up version of it, played the way the Management Lab would play it. The people are invented and so is the firm.

The situation

Priya manages a team of nine at a mid-sized firm. Callum has been on the team for two years and is the best she has. Clients ask for him by name, his work comes in early, and when something goes wrong he is the one who sorts it. He also rewrites other people's work. Last Tuesday Amira's section of a client report went to Callum for a read-through and came back rewritten from the first line to the last, at eleven at night, the day before it was due. It was better. Amira has not offered to write anything since. Priya has booked twenty minutes with Callum on Thursday, and she has had the conversation three times in her head and lost it each time.

The first line most managers use with a high performer

Priya opens the way most managers open. "First of all, I want to say you're doing a brilliant job, and this is a really small thing, so don't read too much into it."

In the Lab I would stop the scene there, because that is where it has started to go wrong. Callum has never had bad news from this manager, so when the praise comes first, and comes as a run-up, he hears that something is on its way and braces. Then "a really small thing" tells him he can relax, and "don't read too much into it" tells him not to change anything. She has put him on guard and let him off again before she has said what she came to say, and whatever comes next he has already been told not to take seriously. The cushioning made the sentence easier for Priya to start, and it did nothing for Callum.

The line that replaces it

The same pair pick it up from that point and try something different. "Callum, I want to talk about the Tuesday report. You rewrote Amira's section, all of it, the night before it went out. I want you to stop doing that. Read it, mark it up, send it back to her." Then she stops talking.

The praise has gone. He knows the work is good, Priya tells him so most weeks, and putting it here would only water down the thing she came to say. What is left is a specific instance, a specific behaviour and a specific alternative, and there is nothing to argue with because it is a description of Tuesday. The silence at the end hands him the conversation. He might say Amira's draft wasn't good enough to go out, and if he does, they are now talking about what he does when a draft isn't good enough, which is a conversation Priya can have.

A high performer can take a direct sentence. Managers cushion it because they are afraid the person can't, and the cushioning is what stops the sentence landing.

What the swap shows

Then the pair change sides. Priya plays Callum, and the other manager plays Priya and gives her the first line back, the brilliant-job one, word for word.

She hears "first of all" and finds she has stopped listening to the praise, because she is waiting to find out what it is the run-up to. She hears "really small thing" and feels herself relax, and knows she shouldn't. By the time the point arrives she is half out of the conversation. She has now heard the line from the chair it was aimed at, which is a different thing from having said it.

Sitting in Callum's chair being handled is also insulting, in a small way. Being told a thing is small, by a manager who has clearly rehearsed it, tells you they don't think you can take it. The direct version treats you as somebody who can, and for a person who is doing well that is the version that fits.

What the Lab does with it

The rule in the room is that we talk about lines, never people. Feedback is on the sentence and what it did, and nobody's manner gets discussed. The pair look at what a line did and try a different one, and that covers most of the conversations managers are putting off. This scenario is one of eight and the group picks its own on the day. At the close each manager writes down the conversation they are going to have and when they are going to have it. If there is a Callum on your team and a Priya managing him, the Lab is where she has Thursday's conversation once before she has it for real, and the price of three hours is on the rate card.