Navigating the minefield of secondhand feedback

You manage a team of five people. One morning, you’re on a call with Nadia, one of your direct reports, and she says some troubling things about Eric, another member of your team. Nadia says Eric is rude and disrespectful to clients.

“He’s so aggressive when he talks to people. I think people are frustrated and client relationships could be at risk because of him. You don’t see this side of him because he wants to impress you. I really think you need to talk to him.”

You haven’t seen the things Nadia is describing, but you’ve worked with her for a long time and trust and value what she says.

What would you do next?

• Encourage Nadia to share her feedback directly with Eric
• Meet with Nadia and Eric together and facilitate a feedback conversation
• Meet with Eric and tell him you want to share some feedback you got about the way he works with clients; you don’t tell him who the feedback came from
• Gather more information by asking other team members about Eric’s client interactions
• Reach out privately to a few of the clients Eric manages who you have a relationship with and ask them how things are going
• Ask Eric to CC you on his emails to clients so you can see how he talks to them
• Ask Eric about how he interacts with clients, and see if he brings up any communication challenges or client frustrations

If you chose one or more of the strategies above, you’re in good company. Those strategies – or some combination of them – are the ones managers use most often when they get secondhand feedback about a team member. All of those strategies can be useful, though the most appropriate and effective ones will depend on the specific situation and the people involved.

But here’s the thing: in this scenario, you shouldn’t use any of these strategies – not yet, anyway. Why? Because you don’t have good quality feedback. And if you use what Nadia’s given you, you’re going to create problems.

What is poor quality feedback?

Nadia gave us a good example of bad feedback.

• She judged: “Eric is rude, disrespectful, aggressive, and bad with clients.”
• She speculated: “I think people are frustrated and client relationships could be at risk.”
• She assumed: “You don’t see this side of him because he wants to impress you.”

If you or Nadia share this poor-quality feedback with Eric, he will likely get defensive – and rightly so. Eric will feel his character is being attacked. He will feel that Nadia’s – or some unnamed colleague’s – opinion of him is being accepted as fact. He’ll ask for examples of when he was rude, disrespectful, aggressive, etc. He’ll want to know when, where, and with whom this happened. And he’ll defend his character by giving examples of times he was told he was friendly, respectful, and easy going. Does any of this sound familiar?

Sharing poor quality secondhand feedback will make it impossible for you to engage in a productive, 2-way conversation with Eric about how he works with clients. The result: you’ve lost an important opportunity to partner with Eric and figure out what’s working and what’s not, and help him correct the things he’s doing wrong and acknowledge the things he’s doing right. In other words, you’ve failed to do an essential part of your job as a manager.

Oh, and if you decide not to give the poor-quality feedback to Eric right away, and instead try first to corroborate it with colleagues and clients, you’re likely to create more problems. Consider this: if you ask people if they think Eric is “rude, aggressive, bad with clients, etc.” you perpetuate – or possibly create – a negative narrative about him. And if you’re less direct and ask people what they think of Eric, you will get more judgements, which may or may not match with Nadia’s, but will be equally subjective. People will also probably start talking about the fact that you’re asking questions about Eric’s work, which can encourage gossip and speculation.

The bottom line: don’t act on poor quality feedback.

What is good quality feedback?

Good quality feedback includes:

• facts about when or where the person said or did something
• a description – based on observation – of what a person said or did
• details about the actual or likely impact of the person’s behavior

It doesn’t include judgment, speculation, assumption, or accusation.

The elements of good feedback that I’m describing come from the Situation-Behavior-Impact Model (SBI™) developed by The Center for Creative Leadership. CCL developed this model as a tool to deliver effective feedback that would “reduce the anxiety of delivering feedback and also reduce the defensiveness of the recipient.” I love this model for its simplicity, its structure, and its emphasis on objectivity. Using it taught me how to keep judgement out of my feedback, and see the difference between poor quality and good quality feedback.

Let’s take a closer look at the SBI™ model.

• Situation: Describe when and where the behaviors happened
• Behavior: Describe what you observed the person say or do
• Impact: Describe how the person’s behaviors affected you, others, a project, etc.

For example:

• S: The other day during our all-staff meeting,
• B: you pointed to me and said in a raised voice, “We never hear from you.”
• I: 60 people turned and looked at me. I felt criticized and put on the spot, and I didn’t know how to respond.

It’s important to point out that an SBI™ statement is part of a bigger feedback conversation. SBI™ offers us a way to structure and give positive and critical feedback, but there are things you need to do and say before and after an SBI™ statement if you’re going to have an effective 2-way feedback conversation. More on that to come in future blog posts.

Now that you know the elements of good quality feedback, let’s look at how to get it secondhand.

How to get good quality secondhand feedback

In an ideal world, all secondhand feedback would be good quality feedback. Team members would come to you with carefully thought out statements that objectively describe what someone did, when and where they did it, and how things are affected by what they did. Clear. Concrete. Useable.

In the real world, most secondhand feedback is pretty bad quality. It’s usually full of judgments, accusations, and ideas for how to fix the problem. To make matters worse, personal opinion is often presented as a truth – instead of saying “I think Eric is bad with clients” a person will say, “Eric is bad with clients.” This can make it hard to see judgements for what they are.

In the real world, when a team member comes to you with urgent and serious feedback, it’s natural to get drawn into what they’re saying, take their feedback at face value, and think about what to do. It’s normal to react without stopping first to think about the quality of the feedback. Normal – but as I pointed out earlier – very damaging. It’s a habit we need to unlearn. Here’s how:

#1 Identify your bad habits

In my experience, feedback and action go hand-in-hand for most managers. Consciously and unconsciously, managers hear feedback about a team member and automatically start thinking about what should be done.

This is particularly true with critical feedback. This focus on action makes it hard for managers to pause and think critically about the quality of the feedback they’re hearing. If this sounds like something you struggle with, try the strategies below:

• When someone gives you secondhand feedback, pay attention to how you react. How quickly do you start thinking about what you should do? Do you jump directly from feedback to action without assessing the quality of feedback? Do you unconsciously accept certain people’s opinions as truth? Can you identify a judgement when you hear one?
• Discuss your reflections with a colleague or friend or write them down. Being more aware of your habits will help you recognize when you’re using them. Recognition is the first step to unlearning a bad habit.

#2 Use the SBI™ model

The SBI™ Model defines what information goes into good quality feedback:  situation, behavior, impact. It’s your job to assess whether or not you’re getting good quality feedback, and the SBI™ Model can help you make that assessment. Use these strategies to help you:

• Listen for the S, B, and I. Each part needs to be there for you to have good quality feedback.
• If any part is missing, ask some of these questions to help get more information:

• • When did this happen?
  • Where did this happen?
  • You mentioned this has happened a few times. Can you be more specific?
  • You said he is “aggressive.” Specifically, what did he do or say?
  • If I had been in the room, what would I have seen or heard?
  • How did what he did affect you?
  • What effects did his behavior have on you, others, the project?
  • Describe any impacts you’ve seen as a result of what he did.

#3 Explain what else you need before you can act

When one person gives you feedback about another person, it’s their responsibility to give you good quality information. Unfortunately, the person giving feedback may not know how to give good quality feedback – that’s why those SBI questions are so helpful.

But sometimes, even when you ask all the right questions, the person giving feedback can’t give you what you need. They can’t give it to you because they don’t have it. They have strong feelings and harsh judgments and lots of suggestions for what you should do, but they don’t have specific, objective details about what another person actually did or said. If this happens, embrace it as a teachable moment. Here’s how:

• Explain what good quality feedback is and why you need it. Use the SBI™ Model to help you. Then diplomatically point out what’s lacking from their feedback, and any judgments it may include. Encourage the person to reflect more on the situation, behavior, and impact, and come back to you with better quality feedback. Reassure them that you take their concerns seriously and that once you have specific, objective information you will think seriously about how to respond to their feedback.

You’ve got what you need – now what?

Once you’ve got good quality secondhand feedback, you have to decide what to do with it. Now you’re ready to use the strategies that were listed at the beginning of this post:

• Encourage person A to share their feedback directly with person B
• Meet with person A and B together and facilitate a feedback conversation
• Deliver the secondhand feedback to person B; don’t name person A as the feedback source
• Gather more information by asking other team members about person B’s behavior
• Reach out confidentially to people you have a personal relationship with who might be affected by person B’s behavior and ask them for their insights on the situation
• Ask person B to involve you more in work or communications so you can observe them
• Ask questions to prompt person B to talk about the situation you heard about, and use that as a way to explore what happened from his perspective

The specific situation and people involved should influence which strategies you use. Just remember that the purpose of giving feedback – whether it’s firsthand or secondhand feedback – is to encourage effective performance. This means that any strategy you choose should be used to help you achieve that goal.

Final thoughts

Secondhand feedback is a fact of life, and when dealt with properly it can be a gift – for you and for your direct reports. Good quality secondhand feedback – the kind that tells you when or where something happened, objectively what a person said or did, and what the impact was – gives you insights into a person’s performance.

These insights are particularly valuable when you manage people remotely and when team members have a high level of autonomy and you have limited oversight over their day-to-day work.

The keys though, are to manage the tendency to react to secondhand feedback at face value, analyze the quality of the feedback, and use the SBI model to gather what’s lacking. Managers must also teach colleagues and team members what good quality feedback looks like so that over time the quality of secondhand feedback improves.