Don't take it personally | Why the C-Suite struggles to give and receive feedback

There’s no doubt that feedback plays an important role in the leadership journey. In today’s challenging work environment – and particularly with the tight labour market and competition for talent – not only is it important that you give the right feedback to your staff to help them grow and achieve, but also that you are receiving the feedback you need to ensure you’re the best leader you can be.

Receiving criticism can be difficult. It can be bruising to the ego, and crushing to internalise the idea that you’re not meeting up to expectations – but of course it’s also all too easy for criticism to be taken the wrong way, as wounding and personal, when the real intention is to identify weaknesses so that you can work on them. Writing for the Financial Times, Esther Bintliff suggested there are three stages to receiving negative feedback: “The first…with apologies for the language, is, “F** you.” The second is “I suck.” And the third is “Let’s make it better.”

Many managers hate giving criticism

Certainly, it can be difficult to work through the first two stages to get to the third – and most productive one. This is why many leaders struggle with giving negative feedback – to the point that some actively avoid doing so. A Harvard Business Review study found that, of 7,631 managers reviewed, 44% said that they found giving negative feedback stressful or difficult. In a separate study also conducted by Harvard Business Review, 21% said they avoided giving negative feedback altogether.

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But the author of ‘Radical Candor’, a former Google and Apple Executive named Kim Scott, describes this failure to be honest about colleagues’ weaknesses as “ruinous empathy.” "“The key in giving feedback, [Scott] writes in her book, is to “care personally” while “challenging directly”,” Bintliff writes for the FT.