During one of my very first consulting assignments, a colleague and I interviewed direct reports of the Chief Information Officer of a chemical company about improving project execution. We consistently heard that the CIO was autocratic and intimidating, and that his people were afraid to talk openly about mistakes. Knowing that this was an important issue for project success, we met with the CIO alone and, with some trepidation, gave him this feedback – direct and to the point. To our relief, he didn’t get angry with us. He just said “thank you” and that he’d take the feedback into consideration. At the next meeting with his direct reports, however, he started by saying, “I hear from the consultants that you’re afraid to be open with me. Is that true?” Of course, each person denied the allegation, after which the CIO turned to us and said: “See, I didn’t think that people were afraid of me.”
In hindsight, it’s easy to see that we should have been more adroit about the feedback process. For instance, we could have couched the feedback in positive terms (“Your team has so much respect for you that they don’t want to disappoint you with news about projects being off track…”). We could have coached the CIO about how to inquire into projects, and we could have suggested a more proactive approach for encouraging people to raise issues.
But we were too anxious to think about these alternatives. After hearing over and over that the CIO was intimidating, we were unconsciously terrified. So our approach to giving feedback was basically: Get it over with and get out of there. Our own anxiety got in the way of giving constructive feedback.
When left unchecked, anxiety-driven behaviors impair your judgment and prevent you from doing what’s in the best interests of the client. For example, you might worry that the client will disagree with you – and you won’t get a follow-up assignment – and so you’ll try to skirt or sugarcoat uncomfortable issues. This prevents real change from happening.
On the other hand, knowing things about the client’s blind spots or weaknesses can make you feel superior or smug, causing you to convey messages in callous ways. To prevent anxiety from causing poor decisions, consultants need to remove themselves from the feedback they’re giving. Remember that it’s not about you; it’s to help the client become a more effective manager. And while this seems like an obvious point, it’s one that often gets overlooked in the moment. In our case, if we had been more focused on helping the CIO deal with his need for control, rather than managing our fears, the feedback might have made more of a difference.
Besides dealing with your own anxiety, you also have to gauge a client’s readiness to hear your message – and his or her openness to change. Based on that, you can adjust how you deliver feedback accordingly. This requires versatility.
Not long ago, for example, I was working with a large division of a health care company that was struggling to meet its revenue targets. Based on lots of feedback and data, one of the keys to a turnaround was for the division head to be more demanding and to hold people accountable for deadlines and sales deliverables. This manager, however, saw herself as a nice person, and having only recently joined the company, wanted everyone to like her. It was clear that she did not want to come across as “tough.” This meant that I couldn’t just tell her to change her behaviors; rather, we had to explore what it would mean to be more demanding, and test out different ways for her to start being tougher. I walked her through the data until she reached the conclusion, on her own, that “people want me to hold them to deadlines in a more disciplined way.” Once this was her conclusion, we got into a problem-solving discussion about how she might do that, and we eventually came up with a structured weekly results forum, where she could ask her team about performance metrics and deadlines.
The bottom line is that consultants have many different ways to present feedback: You can dole it out in small doses and let the client reach his own conclusions, or you can lay out all the evidence at once and explain what action to take. You can give the client some advance warning about the key messages, or you can surprise her. You can list the next steps for moving forward, or you can collaborate with your client to develop an action plan. There are dozens of other variations in between.
No matter the approach, giving feedback to clients – like giving feedback to anyone, really – is a difficult dance that requires thought, preparation, and learning over time. On the one hand, you have to be aware of your own emotional balance and anxiety, which can cloud your judgment about what to do. On the other hand, you have to assess the client’s ability to listen and do something with the feedback. Then, based on both of these factors, you have to consciously look at the alternatives and decide how to proceed. If you’re too brutal, your message may be rejected or dismissed; if you’re too soft or nice, the client may not take it seriously. If you get this wrong, it could end your consulting relationship. If you get it right, however, it could be the beginning of a valuable partnership.
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