Are you a manager who withholds feedback because your employees prefer gold stars to criticism? You are not alone.

Social Media Has Trained Us to Ignore Criticism

To understand the feedback challenge that you face, consider your own experience as a consumer.  A cashier, waiter, or hotel manager boldly asks you to post a glowing review on Google without asking you for direct feedback about their services.  If you comply, without offering candid feedback to the provider of the service, then you are complicit in what the Navigator calls a “skip-level endorsement”.  This increasingly common dynamic exists because society has cut out the middleperson on the way to advancement.  Why bother to ask for personal feedback when you can take a shortcut and lobby for an endorsement instead?

These expectations are causing a growing number of managers to take the path of least resistance by avoiding feedback; a dangerous implication for employees who have no idea of their workplace strengths or weaknesses. It is a slow and steady career killer.

Managers are Afraid of Providing Feedback for Many Reasons

Over a 17-year period, managers of all levels have confided to the Navigator that they are uncomfortable providing feedback for a host of reasons. 

• Fear of being accused of bias, especially in the current environment of identity politics with its actual and perceived disparities of manager / employee demographics

• Younger employees demand creative expression

• Fear of unanticipated reactions to feedback such as anger, crying, or silence

• Lack of skill at handling unanticipated reactions  

• Lack of skill at handling feedback that is challenged  

• Fear that negative feedback will demotivate the employee

• Fear of hurting the employee’s feelings

• The manager feels that that employee should not have to be told how to do their job

• If an employee receives positive feedback, they will expect a promotion  

 If you are a manager who indulges these fears, keep reading to learn of a simple approach that you can use to take the fear and guesswork out of providing feedback.  

OIS to the Rescue

If you want to provide effective feedback to your employee that will lead to sustainable improvement, use the OIS method.  Here is the acronym and an example:

• Observation

• Impact

• Suggestion

Effective OIS Feedback  

Manager: I’ve observed that you have dominated the last 3 meetings by using much more than your allotted time. (Observation)

Employee: I have a lot of important things to share with the team.  

Manager: The impact of taking more than your allotted time is that others don’t get a chance to share their important things (Impact)

Employee: Well, I don’t know how to say everything I need to say in only 10 minutes

Manager: Practice ahead of time to be more concise (Suggestion)

By using OIS, you have taken the time to provide a concrete observation which makes it difficult to refute.  You have also shared the impact of the behavior, an element often missing in feedback.  The impact provides gravity, or urgency to your message.  If there is no real impact, the feedback isn’t necessary. And finally, you are acting as a coach and collaborator by providing a suggestion, paving the way for the employee to come up with their own suggestions.  The OIS approach does a good job of diffusing employee resistance rooted in feelings of entitlement, suspicion of bias, or frustration because it provides concrete elements that most intellectually honest people will accept.

Now consider the same feedback in absence of OIS:

Ineffective OIS  Feedback  

Manager:            You talk way too much at meetings.

Employee:           I do not. Can you give me an example?

Manager:            I shouldn’t have to. You do this all the time. (No Observation)

Employee:           If others want to talk, why don’t they just jump in?

Manager:            Where not talking about others, only you (No Impact)

Employee:           I’m not sure when I should talk and when I shouldn’t.

Manager:            I shouldn’t have to spell everything out for you (No Suggestion)

Managers who take the time to deliver OIS feedback, will cut through these emotional barriers, because they will have offered an observation, articulate why it matters, and discuss suggestions for growing a life-long career.