How to Give Feedback to Employees Who Can’t Handle Criticism

Giving employee feedback is important. It’s an essential part of effective communication and a key to helping employees improve. According to the Harvard Business Review, 72% of employees considered managers who provided critical feedback as important for their career development. What’s more, leaders who rank in the top 10% at giving honest feedback create teams that rank in the top 23% of engagement!

HR can help their organizations give better employee feedback. Below, we’ll explore our top tips for giving employee feedback and strategies for the sources of defensive attitudes and how we can overcome them when giving employee feedback.

The Fight or Flight Response to Employee Feedback

You’ve probably heard of the fight or flight response: when facing danger, the body releases adrenaline and cortisol, breathing and heart rate speed up, digestion stops, the stomach churns.

Corrective feedback can reassure employees that their organization wants them to change for the better and that this change is possible. But there’s always the potential for employees to interpret the correction as a threat to their basic needs and react accordingly.

This means that when it comes to giving employee feedback at work, no news isn’t always good news. Research also shows that elevated cortisol reinforces fight-or-flight, making it even easier to perceive threats and setting up recurring patterns of anxiety. Employees experiencing burnout or prolonged stress—whether at your organization or elsewhere in their lives—may interpret even small corrections as threats to their job security.

Taking the Threat Out of Giving Feedback

So, how do you help your managers give constructive feedback when some employees see it as a threat? Here are three employee feedback tips you can take to promote a culture of feedback in your organization.

Make it Frequent

According to a recent Gallup survey, half (48%) of employees are more likely to be engaged when they get feedback from their manager a few times a week or more.

In fact, it’s harder for an employee to take a correction as a personal slight from a manager if everyone in your organization regularly goes through the same process.

You can help ease anxiety about feedback with regular performance reviews, frequent feedback sessions, and one-on-one meetings between employees and managers.

Make It Goal-Based

As your managers lead feedback sessions with your employees, getting each employee involved in setting personal goals helps remove this reaction barrier. Effective feedback isn’t just about what a manager wants an employee to do; it’s about the steps that the employee and the manager can take toward reaching a well-defined goal. When both parties agree on the goal, it opens up space for an effective conversation on how to achieve it.

Make It a Conversation

Sometimes working toward a goal requires managers to implement feedback from their employees, especially when employees need to communicate with another department or if they need additional resources for one of their projects. Managers can’t react defensively to employee feedback and expect employees to remain open to feedback.

If your feedback system is going to overcome the fear of giving feedback, it needs to apply to everyone. When employees see that managers act on their feedback, it goes beyond making them feel like they’re being heard; it provides solid evidence that their ideas and decisions matter.

What to Avoid When Giving Employee Feedback

Establishing a frequent and goal-based feedback process that applies to everyone will help you reach even those employees who are resistant to criticism. But an important part of knowing how to give effective employee feedback is also knowing what  not  to do. Here are some common communication mistakes to avoid, especially when you’re dealing with an employee who takes everything personally.

Being Too General or Vague

For employee feedback to have a positive impact, it needs to be specific. Employees can make concrete changes when they know what specific behavior or results need improvement, or what in particular you’d like to see more of. General feedback doesn’t give employees enough information to confidently move forward and improve.

Negative Body Language or Tone of Voice

A large part of communication isn’t in the actual words we say. How we say it (tone) and the way our body moves (body language) play a role, too. When giving feedback to employees, it’s important to be aware of your nonverbal cues as well. According to Forbes, a mind-blowing 93% of communication is nonverbal, with body language accounting for 55% of the message we convey.

For example, speaking curtly can make the sincerest compliments feel inauthentic. Likewise, crossing your arms creates a barrier between you and the person you’re giving feedback to, while fidgeting can give the impression that you’re anxious to be done with the conversation. Make sure your body language and tone match the message you’re trying to communicate.

Giving Too Much Feedback

If you give someone a long list of feedback, chances are they are only going to remember some of it. They might also feel overwhelmed. Be succinct in the feedback you provide. And, if you’re following our advice to conduct frequent feedback sessions, only address a few things at a time in each session.

Ending on a Negative Note

Helping employees improve should always be the goal of feedback and constructive criticism. Going over past mistakes or rehashing problems as your closing comments will leave people with a negative impression of the meeting. And, chances are, they will forget any words of encouragement you gave earlier. Ending on a positive note, like sincerely expressing your appreciation, is much more effective.

It All Boils Down to Workplace Culture

Creating a culture where everyone feels comfortable giving feedback might seem like a challenge. But when you take the time to develop effective feedback practices throughout your organization, it gets around the individual issues that hold your workforce back from effective collaboration, making it easier to reach your full potential.

For more on how to make effective employee feedback a part of your performance management process, download our Definitive Guide to Performance Management.