What’s the hardest part of giving feedback?

As a manager, giving feedback is a key part of your job. Get it right and you can have a transformative impact on your teams – building people’s resilience, mobilising untapped skills and inspiring them to reach further.

But it can be tough to get right. If handled badly, feedback won’t encourage growth. It may simply harm people’s self-esteem and wellbeing, as well as their trust in you as a manager. 

When we tackled this subject in a recent online poll, one commenter, Paul Kette, expressed his surprise at “how many leaders and managers have had no formal training or qualifications in this area”. 

He added: “There are exceptions, of course, but most people are not born with these skills.”

What’s the biggest challenge when giving feedback?

Feedback blockers

In our poll, 48% of respondents said that, when giving feedback, finding the right words is the biggest challenge. 

“Feedback delivered in the right way is nearly always received well,” James H commented, adding that this applies “even if the feedback is negative”.

For 28% of respondents, the biggest challenge was fear of conflict. For Shanthi Samy CMgr MCMI, the task of feedback is to “convey the message truthfully without hurting, and inspire improvement rather than defensiveness”. This may link to finding the right words, which is likely to reduce the risk of conflict. 

A further 22% of respondents said the biggest challenge is timing the feedback well.