How Managers Self-Sabotage When Giving Negative Feedback

Communication gaps between managers and their employees widen when delivering criticism. Studies show that managers consistently fail to communicate corrective feedback clearly. This failure often leads to misunderstanding, negatively affects performance and is a major source of frustration for employees and HR professionals.

- Professor Roderick Swaab And Professor Michael Schaerer

DELIVERING NEGATIVE FEEDBACK CAN BE UNCOMFORTABLE AND DIFFICULT FOR MANAGERS

Prior research has found that managers often cloud criticism in a favourable light, leading employees to interpret feedback more positively than expected. The predominant assumption regarding this phenomenon, referred to as ‘feedback inflation’, is that managers intentionally sugar coat criticism to avoid interpersonal conflict. Consequently, commonly used interventions for reducing feedback inflation tend to focus on relieving managers’ discomfort about communicating negative feedback.

However, our research shows that feedback inflation is largely due to a cognitive bias called the illusion of transparency, in which people tend to believe that their internal dialogue is more apparent to other people than it actually is. The assumption that their own intentions are easily discernible by others prevents them from making the effort required to communicate their thoughts in clear, direct and understandable ways.

Negative emotions, in particular, tend to have a very strong impact on internal states since people feel the effects of negative thoughts in a more pronounced way than positive ones. It follows that distortive effects of the illusion of transparency become more dominant when expressing negative information. In other words, the more negative the message, the less likely it is that people will put in the effort required to communicate with clarity.