Why Do Leaders Fear Giving Constructive Feedback? And What Do About It.

Feedback is crucial for our very survival.  Humans have used their five senses for millennia, to good effect, to interpret and avoid what is painful and move towards what is pleasurable, not just to survive but to thrive.

Yet, in leader’s search of creating thriving teams and business’, many are barely surviving. 

A leader’s fear of giving constructive feedback to their employees is one of the significant contributors to this inability to flourish.

In 1859, Charles Darwin set out his theory of evolution.  The concept was simple yet powerful: individuals best adapted to their environments are more likely to survive and reproduce.

In the business world, we all need continuous feedback to reinforce or adapt behaviours to meet the needs of our ever-changing working environments.

The cost of this fear results is a workforce that, instead of trusting and collaborating as high-performing teams, are paranoid, self-interested and focusing on trying to protect themselves.  Doesn’t make for a ripe environment for cultivating results!

So where did this fear come from?  I believe there are five major contributors:

• Development of social skills
• Imposter syndrome
• Safety in the tribe
• The diffusion of danger
• The technical revolution and social skill decline

Development of social skills

Let’s go back to the beginning.  For millions of years, majestic animals of the land and sea, like lions and sharks, were at the top of the food chain.  Over this time, they evolved a self-confidence that made them fear no other animal. 

Homo sapiens were perched somewhere in the middle of the food chain before we rapidly developed language skills and social skills.  The rapid development of these social skills allowed us to work together in packs or tribes to develop strategies to conquer even the most majestic animals. 

Within a matter of a few thousand years, we went from the middle of the food chain to the very top.

Imposter syndrome

However, this rapid rise to the top of the food chain only 100,000 years ago was not sufficient time to develop the fearless courage and confidence of those majestic animals.  Because of the insufficient time to create the same level of confidence, we are still wired to fear the danger of being attacked by these majestic animals. 

After being so recently an underdog in the food chain, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position.  When you hear new leaders say they feel like an ‘imposter,’ they’re really saying I’m afraid of my perceived dangers. 

Safety in the tribe

So why the history lesson?  For thousands of years, we have used these newly developed social skills to be accepted as part of the tribe.  If you’re part of the tribe, then you’re safe.  You can trust that those in the tribe will alert you of danger if you’re sleeping and you would do the same for them.  It was this system of trust and collaboration to create a safe environment from external dangers that helped homo sapiens rise to the top of the animal kingdom.

However, if you were to do anything to impair that trust, or you were seen as not collaborating, you were susceptible of being ignored, isolated, ridiculed or worse…rejected from the tribe.  If this were to happen, then your very survival was in danger. 

Acceptance as part of the tribe was critical for survival!

The diffusion of danger

Our brains haven’t evolved as fast as our environment, and we mistake many of the perceived dangers and threats of today’s work environment to the perceived dangers we have for the creatures that were above us in the food chain. 

Your brain is associating your boss with the dangers of the outside environment.  The person responsible for keeping you and the tribe in a safe environment, protected from outside danger is now the threat!

A typical internal dialogue that many employees have shared with me during coaching sessions goes something like this:

“What if I don’t hit my targets, or that report I submitted didn’t hit the mark?  What if I don’t get that bonus, that promotion, or I get fired?”

What they’re saying at a deeper level is:

“I don’t feel safe!  I need to protect myself!”

And just like that, the fight or flight response kicks in.  The ‘what if’ questions often enter our minds because we are not receiving feedback on the value we offer the tribe.

The fact is, most leaders start out as subject matter experts or technical experts.  They are followers.  This expertise presents emerging leaders with competing needs. 

The first is the need to overcome the imposter syndrome of being at the top of the food chain, responsible for creating a safe environment for the tribe.  

The second is the conflicting need for being accepted by the tribe and avoiding ridicule or rejection, leading to perceived isolation and a risk to survival.

The technical revolution and decline of social skills

The technology revolution, that grew significant momentum since the 1500s, has resulted in less need for interactive, face-to-face debate and discussion.  Instead of experimental learning, like the priests, philosophers, and poets, pre-1500 AD, people are learning ideas in isolation.  We have lost the ability to interact and socialise with other members of our tribes.  

This social isolation has increased exponentially in the last decade with the advent of social media and mobile devices!  To put this into perspective, Apple released the first iPhone on 29^th June 2007, and Facebook became the most popular social media platform in December 2009.

The same skill we developed to rapidly rise to the top of the food chain is being compromised.  Where we once feared being ignored, isolated, ridiculed or rejected from the tribe, we have built an environment where we are generating the very thing we fear.  We are evolving to survive in an environment of isolation. 

We have a learned fear of confrontation and conflict because it triggers the fight or flight response.  We have associated giving feedback with confrontation, and we fear the reaction of those receiving the feedback and the long term implications.

What’s the cost?

In an attempt to build a tribe and protect ourselves from the external dangers, our lack of feedback on performance has created a sense of perceived hazards within the work environment.  Employees are afraid that they are not contributing enough value to the tribe and feel unsafe about their capacity to be accepted.

As soon as we have a subconscious feeling of being unsafe, our survival instincts kick in, and we release cortisol into the body.  Prolonged periods of feeling unsafe creates stress and anxiety. 

Biologically, if you work in a high-stress environment, where you don’t feel safe, you are biologically less empathetic and generous.  Instead, you become more disengaged and selfish.   You will see people criticising others, deflecting blame and complaining – this is a signal of self-protection behaviour! 

Supposing your goal is to be a high-performing leader with a high-performing team; this mindset is the polar opposite of developing the environment for achieving what you want.

So What Do We Do About It?

Since trust is one of your most precious assets, you must start building it.  No one enjoys spending time with or listening to someone they don’t trust.

Start with empathy

Once you understand that we are all wired to have a fear of not being accepted by the tribe or feeling like we are an imposter, you can empathise and appreciate why some of our behaviours could come from a desire to survive in our environment. Instead of being critical of your employee’s actions, first, share with them what you’ve noticed and ask them if they are ok.

Understand their challenges

As a leader, the more you care for your team’s emotional wellbeing, the more they trust you.  The more they trust you, the more they trust the working environment and the safer they feel. 

Check-in with your team members regularly. 

Pay specific attention to people’s mood, body language and behaviour.  Most of the time, they don’t need to tell you they have a challenge.  They will ‘show’ you.  It’s your job as a leader to perceive the non-verbal signals.

Servant Leadership

The more leaders look after their teams, the safer they feel, the more they feel a sense of belonging, and the more they work together to confront the dangers outside and generate high-performance.

Create an environment of trust and cooperation

People like and trust people like themselves.  Schedule time in your day or week to genuinely connect with your team members.  Ask them questions with curiosity and sincerity to find out about what’s important for them.  Listen intently to their responses.  You might surprise yourself with how much common ground you have.

Before you criticise, recognise

Look out for what people are doing well and reinforce it.  Every time you reinforce positive behaviour, your employee gets a chemical dose of happy hormones.  The first is dopamine, which makes them feels a sense of achievement. 

The second is oxytocin, and it increases the feeling of trust and friendship with those that have delivered the recognition.  

The third is serotonin, giving them a sense of self self-pride and an increase in their feeling of status within the team or tribe.  The cool thing is that by doing nice things for people, like recognising them, you also get a dose of serotonin when you give it.  The shot of serotonin you both receive reinforces your relationship.

Create a contract

Once you have spent time building this foundation of trust and cooperation, you are now in a position to create a verbal upfront contract with your employees for giving them constructive feedback.  Simply put, share with every one of your employees that your goal is to sincerely help each of them to learn and grow into the best version of themselves so that they can move into their next level in the organisation.

With this intent established, share that you will be looking for positive behaviours that you will recognise.  Then share that if they permit you, you would like to offer them constructive feedback on actions that might be holding them back or negatively impacting their progress. 

Then ask them ”Do I have your permission to give you constructive feedback if I feel like it will help you to learn and grow?” 

In almost every case where you have built the upfront trust, they will say “yes.” Once they give you their permission, you now have an engaged audience that will be open to hearing and acting on your constructive feedback instead of putting up their guard and triggering the fight or flight response.  Then a whole new world of performance potential opens up for you.

What will you do?

If you genuinely want to create a culture of learning and high-performance, you must start with trust and cooperation.

My challenge to you, as a high-performing leader, is to start creating a safe environment for your employees. 

Schedule time every single day to build trust, to understand your employees, to recognise them and then to contract with them. 

Set daily reminders on your phone or your calendar.

Reflect at the end of the week on how you did against each of the categories above.  Then consider how you can do even better the following week.

If you got some value from this post, go ahead, scroll down and give it a thumbs up and share with me in the comments below what your biggest distraction is at work.

Until next time, keep doing the basics with consistency and discipline, and you will be a world-class leader.

Marty