Why Is Negative Feedback So Hard? - Part 1

Lots of managers - hundreds of thousand, and perhaps millions by now - start doing Manager Tools One On Ones, and they love them. They love them because they work, and they’re not as hard as the manager thought they would be. And very few managers who do Manager Tools One On Ones never stop.

But feedback is a different story. We would guess that around half of Manager Tools managers don’t ever fully implement feedback so that it’s second nature in a way that their directs know this is how their boss will talk to them about their performance. Why is it so hard?

Even though managers complain about not having time to do Manager Tools One On Ones, once they do them they love them and continue and sing their praises. But that doesn’t happen with feedback, even thought they know it’s the second most important thing they can do. Managers know they ought to give more feedback, but they don’t, despite the fact that with 10 directs that manager will spend 5 hours a week in One On Ones, and maybe a total of 15 minutes on feedback.

There are reasons. They’re not great reasons, but clearly managers think they’re good enough reasons not to deliver on a core part of their job. Why? And what can we do about it?