Giving Feedback: Growing Capabilities and Culture

As the fall begins, Human Resources and Principals leaders often begin our busiest season of preparing for annual reviews.  Many Firms chose the end of the year to host reviews with all team members, which typically consists of a self-evaluation, Project Manager feedback, and a sit down with the team member.  We see teams stockpile their issues, concerns, and often even their praise to discuss them during these annual reviews. I’ve sat in plenty of reviews where issues are brought to light months after the initial incident that caused concern even though the issues continued to nag Project Managers and drag down team performance.  Sometimes during these reviews, the employee can’t even recall the events that are outlined as examples.  And on the flip side, I’ve seen stellar employees leave after 3 or 4 months in part because they were never told that they are exceeding expectations. 

Fundamentally, relying solely on annual reviews for feedback means missed opportunities for learning and growth.  Busy Principals who are responsible for bringing in work as well as leading design and firm-wide initiatives need to delegate to Project Managers much of responsibility of providing feedback on a timely basis.  For Managers, learning to give feedback can be almost as hard as delegating production work with many Project Managers needing support to develop these skills. For the health of the office, it is critical that project managers learn to give clear, constructive feedback to their team members, both good and bad news. 

At the outset of giving feedback both positive or negative, there are a few key ground rules.  A mainstay is Brenè Brown’s, “Clear is kind” from Dare to Lead.  And conversely, “Unclear is unkind.”  Another is to not provide feedback while white hot with angry or frustration.  One from Kim Scott’s Radical Candor is, “Praise is public. Criticize in private.” It also helps to start with slight changes to how we say things, such as starting statements with “I felt…” rather than “You failed to….”  Finally and perhaps most importantly, it is helpful to approach the issues with growth and learning as the underlying intention when providing feedback.  This looks like: “The presentation is not ready for the client yet.  Here are a few things I see as needing improvement….”

Building on this example, let’s look at this common example of missed opportunity for feedback and how to correct it.  A PM opens her email at 5:30 in the evening to find the drawings a Designer produced for tomorrow’s meeting.  They are not finished in the mind of the PM and in fact, they are not ready for client review.  What happens next can take many different paths from rescheduling the client meeting, to the PM stays late to redo the drawings, to many other scenarios that could result as fallout from the subpar drawings.  Fallout may even include an angry voicemail or text. The problem gets fixed, but the root causes need to be addressed and not avoided or swept under the rug.  Worst case scenario, the PM tries to avoid working with the Designer, a problem that really can’t be tolerated in small and medium firms and creates another performance issue, this time on the part of the PM. Avoidance or only expressing anger or frustration is not helpful to anyone.  In fact, it is a disservice to the PM, the Designer, and the firm. 

At its essence, feedback needs to be clear, direct, and to point towards the specific type of work you hope this person achieves in the near future.  It is very hard to do this while angry, and so the feedback may need to be delivered the next day or shortly thereafter. Once things are calm, the PM needs to address the underlying issues with the Designer.  To do so, it is helpful to outline or bullet point some of the key issues before approaching the Designer.  For new PM’s, I find it helpful to walk through the issues and circle or highlight them and then to write out the bullet points of how these items need to be corrected or addressed.  The PM may need the help of a Principal or another PM to prepare and run through the bullet points to test for clarity.  The Designer should be shown some excellent examples, and the PM should go over the ways their drawings missed meeting the standards of the office.  Technical mistakes and weakness in design might also require mentorship with someone else in the office who is highly skilled in these areas. PMs also need to hear from feedback from the Designer.  For example, there may be an issue of not meeting regularly to show progress where the Designer may need help navigating the PM’s busy meeting schedule.

Another important action is setting time for the Principals to work with the Project Managers to support them and also to step in when things aren’t progressing positively. It helps to establish a guideline along the lines of: “if you are about to deliver the same feedback to someone for a 3^rd time, I would like to be looped in to support you.”  This helps to establish that everyone is on the same team and escalate issues or rewards.  When the Principal is also present for the 3rd meeting, it serves to reward when the feedback is positive, and it will also denote that the feedback is being taken seriously when it is negative.  If there are multiple issues being brought to light, it might also be time to put the team member on notice, letting know that there is a short timeline, usually 2-3 months, for improvement.  When putting someone on notice or creating a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), a midway check in should be scheduled to evaluate progress or lack of progress.  It is also important that Principals let the Project Managers know what types of problems should be brought to them immediately.  Defying explicit directions is one that comes to mind.  This might need direct support from the Principal so the team member knows that the behavior won’t be tolerated if it happens again.

There are other key pointers for giving feedback and we enjoy working with Principals and Project Managers on how to approach feedback with a growth mindset.  This often begins of an assessment of current state of affairs, moving from there to a workshop on specific pointers for improving feedback.  For our HR clients, we work with the Project Managers to rehearse giving feedback and we provide goals such as practicing giving feedback 4 times a week.  We also outline a framework for when someone else should be notified if issues persist and assist with preparing and sometimes executing those meetings with the team member. The topic of feedback underlies our inherent belief that the foundation of Human Resources and Culture are built on clear, direct communication and appeals to our core value of finding meaning in growth.