Learning leads to results: The best way to give employees constructive criticism

Providing feedback to employees, both positive and negative, is an integral aspect of any manager, boss, or leader’s job. That being said, there’s a big difference between those two varieties of feedback. Most supervisors have no problem at all heaping positive praise upon their employees after a job well done or big sale. After all, who doesn’t enjoy spreading a bit of happiness and optimism around the office?

Negative feedback, on the other hand, is a far trickier task for countless managers. Different people, personalities, and dispositions react in myriad ways when confronted with a critique or assessment they may not want to hear. Put another way, plenty of people don’t deal with constructive criticism all that gracefully. While there’s no singular, universal way to best deliver a bit of performance-based bad news to workers, there is a helpful, science-backed tip bosses the world over may want to keep in mind the next time they find themselves providing negative feedback. Let’s take a look at one of the best ways to give employees constructive criticism. 

Negativity tends to make a lasting impression

Turns out the old saying bad news travels fast rings especially true in the office, and we’re not just talking about water cooler gossip. As much as we would all prefer a good day to an awful afternoon, fascinating scientific research published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology actually revealed that in comparison to a positive interaction, the average employee reacts six times more intensely to a negative interaction with their immediate supervisor. In other words, while compliments and gold stars are certainly nice, most people tend to spend far more time ruminating over criticism or reprovals.

Constructive criticism: A helpful tool or necessary evil?

Of course, there’s no avoiding constructive criticism, both in and out of the boardroom. Sure, one or two mistakes is one thing, but at a certain point any manager worth their salt needs to start doling out negative feedback in pursuit of improved performances and more success all around.

A recent study conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University and published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory examined the different ways employees react to negative feedback, as well as how such critiques influence subsequent job performance. The research initiative arrived at a number of noteworthy conclusions, chief among them being the revelation that just because an employee may react poorly to criticism, that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t take the advice to heart and perform better next time. 

Feedback orientation

To fully grasp the project’s conclusions it’s key to understand the concept of feedback orientation. Similar to personality or taste in music, everyone has their own unique feedback orientation. Certain people with stronger feedback orientations are much more receptive to constructive criticism and potentially negative feedback than others who may have a weak feedback orientation. Generally speaking, the weaker one’s feedback orientation, the less willing they are to hear any evaluation that isn’t absolutely glowing. 

Crucially, however, researchers discovered that even workers with paper thin feedback orientation aren’t immune to the benefits of constructive criticism. The crux of the matter is how that criticism is delivered. 

Emphasize learning over pure performance

Researchers at VCU explain the success or failure of feedback and constructive criticism at work largely hinges on the manager or supervisor’s delivery style. While offering up advice or a correction, bosses of all kinds should remember to stress learning over pure performance. So, less of a focus on “getting it right” and more of an emphasis on “learning how to get it right”. The feedback shouldn’t be so much about the end result as it is the helpful skills the worker can learn along the way. 

When constructive feedback is framed in this manner, it’s much easier for employees to digest and eventually incorporate the advice into future tasks – even if they may react poorly to the negative feedback at first.

“Managers should emphasize learning goals—that is, the importance of learning how to do a task—rather than performance goals, which stresses the importance of being accurate,” Lindsay M. Andiola, Ph.D., an associate professor of accounting in the VCU School of Business, says in a university release. “Importantly, supervisors should also be aware that even when they emphasize learning, subordinates with weaker feedback orientations may initially react poorly to feedback. But the benefits will materialize when they work to address subsequent work.”

Extra tips to keep in mind

Besides the illuminating findings of that study, a few extra tips to keep in mind while providing constructive criticism include:

• Always avoid singling out an employee in public among other coworkers if possible. It’s a better idea to have such conversations privately in a one-on-one manner.

• It can be difficult at times, but criticism should always be delivered in a neutral, non-patronizing tone. The last thing any manager should want is for their employees to feel personally attacked by a piece of feedback.

• Ending the conversation with some positive feedback can help make the preceding negative feedback much more palatable for many employees.