I’ve previously talked about how you can teach your team soft skills, which are typically harder to teach than hard skills.
But what about you? How do you learn soft skills so you can do your job effectively?
One of the most impactful places where soft skills are important for a manager is feedback. This could be a range of scenarios such as:
- Telling someone that they are underperforming.
- Delivering the news that someone isn’t getting a promotion or payrise.
- Letting someone go from their role.
None of these conversations are fun to have. You can approach them in a structured, organised and methodical way which can make things easier, but you still need a strong approach when it comes to the softer side of them, such as:
- Displaying empathy without making it about you.
- Being kind, yet clear about your message.
- Having patience but knowing when to push.
I’ll be honest – none of these things are easy to learn and typically take many interactions to get comfortable with. Sure, some people are more natural than others, but generally, no one is ever perfect.
In fact, it’s a good thing to have a default position that you’re never “done” with these kinds of skills. You may get to a point where the hard skills feel so natural that you barely think about them and have learned 95% of what you need to.
However when it comes to soft skills, never assume that you’ve got it all figured out.
The reason is that everyone you manage is different and the scenarios that you face can present you with different challenges. You’ll learn from each of these and carry that experience forward, but don’t ever assume that you have nothing more to learn on soft skills.
So on that note, how can you actually improve your own soft skills?
Let’s focus on feedback and how you can improve the soft skills that surround delivering difficult feedback.
How would you feel in their position?
One way to improve empathy in any setting is actually fairly simple – imagine yourself in their position and ask yourself how you would feel and respond.
Some people (me included) do this very naturally, so it’s not something that is actively thought about. But for many others, it’s worth taking a few minutes before a difficult conversation to put yourself in their position.
- How would you feel if someone told you you were underperforming?
- What immediate questions would come to mind for you?
- What would you want to hear in terms of fixing issues?
You also need to think about the context surrounding the conversation, which can include things such as:
- How experienced are they in their role?
- Could they actually be expecting this negative feedback? Or will it be a surprise?
- Is the feedback that you’re delivering debatable at all? Are there any grey areas that they could argue about?
All these questions are aimed at trying to understand one big question – how will they respond?
Having a better idea of how someone will respond to a conversation can help you do two things much better:
- Plan how you deliver the conversation to account for these responses, minimising any overly negative responses.
- Have your own responses planned to any questions or comments that may otherwise have caught you off guard.
Of course, you can never predict everything 100%, but the better you know a member of your team, the more likely it is that you plan for most scenarios.
These scenarios, especially very bad ones, may never happen. But it’s better to be prepared.
Strike a balance between kindness and clarity
Negative feedback can be hard to hear no matter what. But if it’s clear, then you’re in a good position to move forward.
The worst case scenario is when you deliver negative feedback and the person receiving it knows that it’s bad, but isn’t particularly clear on just how bad it is, or what they need to do next, or why the feedback is being delivered in the first place.
Even feedback that isn’t that negative can feel much worse than there is a lack of clarity on it.
So, whilst we want to be kind with how we deliver feedback, we need to also ensure that we’re being clear about what we say.
Some would call this “firm but fair” which is a good way of thinking about this as well.
A good place to start with this is being clear on the core points that you’re trying to make when delivering feedback. This usually means thinking carefully about:
- What the feedback actually is.
- Why it’s important for you to deliver this feedback.
- How you’d like them to improve moving forward.
The SBIA framework is pretty good for this because it forces you to structure a conversation in a clear, succinct way.
Being clear is actually very closely tied to kindness because the last thing you want is for someone to be upset and confused at the same time. Becoming upset may be inevitable for some, but accompanying this with clarity is really important because it can lead to a resolution.
Focus on why you’re delivering feedback at all
No matter how it feels during the moment, feedback is designed to help someone fix a problem and improve how they do something.
At least, that should be the intention!
If it’s not, then you should reconsider why you’re delivering the feedback in the first place.
Thinking about this can also alter how you deliver the feedback. For example, if your intention is just to “tell someone off” then this is exactly how the feedback will be received. Most people don’t respond well to the feeling of being told off by their manager if there isn’t much more to the conversation.
Sure, if someone has done something wrong, you must tell them.
But it’s not enough to simply tell them this. You need to help them with how they can prevent it from happening again and showing that you’re there to support them.
There will be times, particularly when you’re managing more experienced people, when you don’t need to say much more than what they did wrong.
For example, one of my direct reports once made a pretty silly, obvious mistake during a presentation to a client. Afterwards on the walk to the train, I raised it and she immediately knew what she’d done wrong and apologised.
I didn’t need to explain much more than that because she was experienced enough to recognise the mistake and knew that she needed to not let it happen again. It was a minor “telling off” without much more feedback, but in this context, that was totally fine.
But generally, ensure that you know why you’re delivering the feedback and using this to shape how you deliver it as well.
