Easy, right?

The concept of giving feedback is simple to grasp: you want to let people know when they are doing a stellar job so that they can receive praise, and conversely, you want to let people know when they are not performing to your standards so that you can begin to help them improve.

The truth is that giving feedback well is very difficult to do. It’s easy to see why giving negative feedback is tough: it might not land well, it might upset the other party; it essentially creates conflict. Yet, giving positive feedback can also be challenging. It’s awkward telling people they’re amazing!

Mastering the art of giving feedback has a number of benefits. Your employees know where they stand, either as star performers or those that need to do better. Practiced regularly, it also strengthens the emotional bond between you and your staff because giving honest feedback requires honesty and trust.

What happens when you don’t give good feedback

Let’s start with an example. Susan is leading a team of engineers, and something seems to be up with one of her staff, Ann. It seems that Ann just doesn’t seem to be giving it her all in recent weeks. She’s been turning up slightly late every day, and a lot of the features that she’s worked on have had some gnarly bugs found in QA. Something’s not quite right.

In their next 1 to 1, Susan asks whether she’s OK as a way of trying to get her to open up about whatever is bothering her. “I’m doing fine” is Ann’s reply. The issue gets skirted this time. Fast forward to next week. Susan prods at the situation a little more by asking how her feature is going, as a way of getting her to open up about the recent issues that were found in QA. “It’s just been complicated to develop” is Ann’s reply.

Weeks go by, and the situation is getting worse. Other members of the team have approached Susan because they are finding it increasingly frustrating to rely on Ann to deliver to the expected standard, and progress in the team is slowing down as they move closer to their launch date.

In the next 1 to 1, Susan decides to ask whether Ann needs any additional support as she seems a bit under the weather. She uses this as a way to slowly steer towards the problem. “I’m OK, but I find working with the API difficult sometimes”. Susan decides to pair Ann up with a mentor within the team so that she can pair program on the parts of the work that build on the API.

One week on, and Ann’s mentor, Robert, sends Susan a message. “I’m finding it really frustrating trying to pair program with Ann. She seems really distracted and doesn’t seem to want to learn.” Now you have your team looking for answers.

As the end of the quarter approaches, Susan prepares Ann’s performance review. It isn’t great. She writes up all of the aspects of her role that haven’t been performed to the expected level, incorporating the feedback from the team. She sends over the performance review ahead of the meeting. Ann turns up to the meeting looking distraught. Susan asks if she has read the feedback. Ann gets extremely angry. “If I wasn’t performing well enough, why didn’t you tell me?”

People actually like feedback. Give it!

Good or bad, people want to hear how they’re doing. Get into the habit of giving good or bad feedback whenever you can. Your 1 to 1s are an obvious place to do this, but keeping it front of mind when having meetings or informal interactions can uncover many more places to fit feedback in. Positive feedback can be given pretty much anywhere and to anyone: an informal chat around the coffee machine can become an opportunity to congratulate a colleague on their recent feature launch and tell them how much you like it. However, frank and constructive criticism is best saved, initially, for those that you have a stronger and more open relationship with, such as your direct reports, peers and manager. (Yes, your manager too!)

Your best performers will want consistent feedback that they are doing well and that you appreciate the effort that they are putting in. Similar to how superstars in the classroom can become frustrated at the disruptive children that are getting all of the teacher’s negative attention, you will want to make sure that you are praising and pushing your stars to perform at the best of their ability. This will not only mean that they will be happier and feel appreciated, but it will keep them contributing at a higher level.

For staff that require improvement, they absolutely need to know. In the previous example, Susan was not tackling the problem with Ann directly. Instead, she was trying to gently approach the issue from different angles, but with little success; at review time, Ann was surprised that she had negative feedback. Instead, Susan should have been direct as early as possible. This can be challenging but becomes easier with experience.

Try to be direct, compassionate and open to solutions. Focus on the future improvement rather than dwelling for too long on past events.

1. Be direct: “Ann, I’d like to talk to you about your performance. I have noticed that recently it is not up to standard and one of your colleagues has also approached me about it.”
2. Be compassionate: “I really want you to be awesome in this role so that you are able to continue to level up in your career. You’re a very smart person, and I worry a lot if you’re not able to perform well.”
3. Be direct again: “If you’re unable to perform in your current role then we will have to look more formally at the options available for you. In the worst-case, this could be a conversation about whether this company is the right place for you to be.”
4. Be open: “How can we identify and work on what you need to improve?”

Radical candor

Kim Scott’s excellent book Radical Candor distills the traits of giving good feedback into two simple categories: “Care Personally” and “Challenge Directly“. When these two traits are combined in the relationship between a manager and their direct reports, the right atmosphere is in place to criticize, praise and push people to perform at a high level.

Being able to challenge directly requires an extremely high level of trust and emotional rapport between two people. Scott argues that the core of this trust is simply giving a damn, personally. Two people that care personally about each other can challenge each other directly with positive consequences. Think of a sports coach. This also works in both directions, since the direct report should have a level of trust that allows them to care and challenge upwards, as well.

The book is well worth reading. Kim is a smart author and has some great ideas.

Getting practice: an exercise

Here’s an exercise that you can try with your peer group. Depending on your organization, this will either be extremely positive or extremely awkward (shifting to positive, though, as people get more comfortable). One session I took part in began with everyone feeling very nervous, but by the end of it, we all felt much closer, and there were a lot of laughs too.

Book a meeting and invite your peer group along. Before the meeting, ask for each attendee to prepare one piece of praise and one area to improve for everyone attending. Then, in the meeting, pair everyone off and then each person can deliver these pieces of feedback. Swap the partners around every couple of minutes until all feedback has been delivered.

Gather back together at the end. What did everyone find easy? What did they find difficult? How did they react to receiving the positive and negative feedback? Do they feel that their relationship has changed between everyone within the room?

So I’m getting someone else to do my work?

Delegation is very powerful.

Yet, for new managers, the process can feel really weird. A career spent as an individual contributor, where one is responsible for taking tasks and executing on them until they are finished, feels an entire galaxy away from this new role where tasks are often delegated to someone else. It’s especially challenging for those with perfectionist qualities in their own work: how will you even know it’s being done right? As strange and uncomfortable as it first appears, delegating is an absolutely essential tool for a manager. Mastering delegation, and thus building your team so that they can expertly carry out those delegated tasks, is the key to understanding and increasing your output.

Why is delegating so important?

Imagine starting your own small business. Let’s pretend that it’s a coffee shop. You have humble beginnings and a handful of customers. You’re able to take the orders, collect payment, make the drinks and serve them yourself. This endeavor is going well, and you’ve managed to break even (well done!). Then, a favorable review in a national newspaper shines the spotlight on your little coffee shop. Visitors come in droves and you’re overwhelmed with no additional staff. Now you can’t do this all by yourself. However, increased profits allow you to hire an additional member of staff who works the coffee machine, and you remain front of house, taking orders and payment and talking to customers. It is your coffee shop, after all; the review was particularly fond of your charisma and passion for what you do. As the business does better, you hire another member of staff to take orders and payment. You turn your focus to expanding the range of coffee beans the shop stocks, widening the selection of drinks that you serve, and beginning researching a menu of cakes and snacks. You spend more time orchestrating and less time turning the cogs in the machine.

The coffee shop example is easy to understand: the coffee shop is still yours, however, you, as the owner, are able to free yourself up from the tasks that can be replicated by others with training, allowing you to make more strategic decisions and plan for growth. This is exactly how management via delegation works, yet it is surprising how few technology managers grasp this concept!

How do I measure my output?

There is an equation that Andy Grove defined in High Output Management:

A manager’s output = the output of their organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under their influence.

It’s a very simple yet powerful way of understanding the essence of a manager’s job. Framing it in terms of our example above, your organization is the coffee shop. You, as the manager, are concerned with the quality of the coffee, the number of coffees sold, the number of visitors and the revenue that it generates. It’s easy to understand, and you can imagine the different levers that can be pulled to increase profit, speed, and quality. But what does equation mean for a manager in a knowledge-based industry such as software development?

It means that managers should stop measuring their output in how much work they, individually, get done each day. That’s not what a manager does as a core competency; that’s something for the individual contributors to worry about. If you are a team leader, your organization is your team. If you are a VP, this is your division. If you are a CTO, it’s the whole department. As a manager, you need to be concerned with, and actively trying to increase the output of, your own organization. You need to delegate effectively.

Delegating well

It’s worth highlighting that there are two things that delegation definitely is not.

Firstly, delegating is not a “fire and forget” activity. As Grove points out, it is not abdication. It’s not like receiving an email and then immediately forwarding it to someone else. You are accountable for all of the tasks that your organization has to complete, regardless of whether you are doing them yourself or not. You are required to monitor the tasks being done and make sure that they are being completed to the quality that you expect. You can raise this quality both technically and via inspiration: by coaching staff to become more skilled at activities, or by providing support and motivation to help them perform better.

Secondly, delegation is not micromanagement. You are required to use the right mix of instruction and coaching to get your direct reports to work independently. But how do you figure out the right amount?

Task Relevant Maturity

Each member of staff in your organization has a level of seniority in their area or as Grove describes it, “task-relevant maturity” (TRM). This is how skilled they are at getting tasks done to the required quality. Your approach to delegating is dependent on this skill level. Grove presents three levels of TRM: low, medium and high.

Low TRM: Here you will delegate a task, but you will need to provide specific instructions on how it is done, often following the progress closely along the way. Skilled direct reports will not stay at this stage for very long. This stage is also intensive on the manager’s time.

Medium TRM: Here, the direct report will understand how to do the task, so the manager’s focus isn’t about prescribing how to do it. Instead, the instructor role turns into a facilitator role: providing support, advice, and feedback as the delegated task is being done, often with the requests for feedback being driven by the member of staff doing it.

High TRM: At this level, the direct report needs very little support. An up-front discussion to confirm the expected outcome is all that is required. A manager’s responsibility here is to set the bar high to coach the skilled direct report to perform at the best of their ability.

High functioning teams

Given that direct reports have different levels of TRM, the manager’s responsibility is to instruct and then coach staff from low levels of TRM to high levels. A team full of high TRM staff can become almost hands-free for the manager. It then follows that the manager can then increase the number of staff in their organization and thus increase their output.

TRM shows how important it is to have your senior staff placed within teams where they can raise the TRM of others through mentorship. An obvious example that comes to mind is pairing junior developers with senior developers. In the long term, the junior developers will improve their skills and contribute more to the organization, and in turn will be able to coach other more junior staff. Everyone gets better together.

In summary

As a manager, you can only increase your own output so much: there are a set amount of hours in the day. However, your performance is measured on the output of your organization, not just your personal output. Therefore, delegating tasks with sensitivity and skill is not only a way for your own output to increase, but it is a way for your organization to become more skilled and autonomous. Continued practice in delegation can open the doors for further expansion of the organization that you lead. The CEO of a FTSE 500 company is a master delegator: she delegates her strategy to her whole organization.

Think about the TRM of your own organization. How could you increase it by delegating further?