12 Negative Feedback Examples And How To Give It
I have some bad news. If you want to be a good manager, or even team member for that matter, you’ll need to get comfortable giving negative feedback.
It’s not going to be high-fives and roses all the time, and that’s okay (more than okay!).
Constructive negative feedback is what truly helps people develop, maintain team performance, and inspire someone to achieve more than they previously believed they could.
One of the best pieces of feedback I’ve received was a critique that I'm too overbearing when protecting my team. This made me a much better leader and I can now proudly say that three people who reported to me are now in leadership roles themselves!
The trick is to be mindful about how you deliver and follow up on negative feedback. Otherwise, it can have the opposite effect of disengaging your team and putting them on the defensive.
As with most things, it’s about balance. So let’s take a look at some practical examples of that balance.
What Is Negative Feedback?
Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room. Even just calling it “negative” feedback can make people nervous and conjure up fears of being told you’re “Not good enough” with no elaboration.
As Alana Fallis points out in her excellent giving effective feedback article, if the brain perceives what you're about to say as a social threat, it will move into an “Away state”, i.e. a type of fight or flight mindset, and prevent the receiver from processing what you’re about to tell them.
For feedback, be it positive or negative, to be at the level where it can push, inspire, and positively challenge people, it needs to meet the following criteria:
- Specific and factual: Do not rely on vibes! This is not to say you cannot give feedback on how someone made you feel/made someone else feel, but be aware to bring specific examples of what happened/was said.
- Constructive: This means checking yourself to ensure your intention is to correct behaviors or errors, not to give the recipient a piece of your mind.
- Candid: Do not sugarcoat or try to obscure the message. Sometimes softening the impact is not helpful for people to understand where they stand.
- Be open: Where appropriate, open it as a discussion. This could be a discussion on what they should do to improve or try to understand their intention.
We will go into more best practices for giving negative feedback below, but the above is the minimum criteria to ensure that your feedback is not just verbal finger-wagging.
Why Negative Feedback Is Important
Negative feedback is vital because it helps individuals and teams improve and grow. Here’s why I never shy away from providing constructive negative feedback to my teams:
Promotes growth and development
Constructive criticism highlights areas where someone can improve, enabling them to develop their skills and perform better in the future.
Bear in mind that sometimes these areas of improvement may be blind spots for this person, so they need that 3rd person view to identify this.
Clarifies expectations
It ensures that employees understand what is expected of them and where they may be falling short, reducing the chances of repeated mistakes.
Make sure that expectations are clarified early and often and that you maintain that clarity. Otherwise, feedback on expectations that were not known to the person may ring hollow.
Enhances performance
When employees know where they need to improve and how, they can work more effectively, which positively impacts overall individual and team performance. This feedback flow can also provide clear goals and motivation to achieve those goals.
Builds a culture of trust and transparency
Providing feedback fosters open communication, trust, and a culture where employees feel valued because their development is being prioritized.
You may think that people will not like you if you highlight arrears of improvement with them.
However, the team members who are truly engaged and want to improve and continue delivering at an excellent standard will appreciate the transparency.
This has actually been studied. In 2022, researchers from Harvard and Berkeley found that we underestimate people’s appetite for constructive feedback, and that only 5% of employees believed that their managers provided candid and critical feedback about their performance.
Eek!
Don’t fall into that trap and assume that people won’t want to hear where they stand vs. expectations and what they can do to improve.
Uncertainty about standing can be a much bigger source of disengagement than negative feedback.
Prevents bigger issues
Addressing problems early through feedback will help prevent them from escalating into more serious issues that might be harder to resolve later.
It’s just like any relationship, if you don’t speak up, set boundaries, and let things slide, it will eventually explode and be a lot bigger dent to fill versus a small crack that can be fixed early on.
How To Give Negative Feedback
Delivering negative feedback requires a careful approach to ensure it’s constructive and leads to positive outcomes.
I mentioned above what needs to be met for the feedback to be considered good quality, but here are some practical tips on what to do when actually delivering the feedback.
- Be Specific: Focus on the specific behavior or situation rather than generalizing. Describe exactly what happened and how it impacted the team or organization. This is where performance management software is useful to help capture details.
- Use a private setting: Deliver negative feedback in a one-on-one setting to avoid embarrassment and ensure the person feels respected. Remember: criticize privately, praise publicly.
- Avoid ambushes: Reach out to the person and ask “Hey I wanted to talk to you about some feedback, is now a good time?”. You may be catching them at a really inconvenient time if you just pull them aside out of nowhere.
- Stay calm and objective: Maintain a neutral tone and avoid letting emotions influence the feedback. Stick to the facts.
- Be Timely: Give feedback as soon as possible after you notice the behavior occurs to make it more relevant and actionable. If you leave it too long, you are sending out the signal that the negative behavior or error is tolerated.
- Do not bring a list: Bring up one issue at a time where possible. Only allow a second issue to be brought up if very directly related to the first. The same goes for examples, if you are timely with your feedback a list wouldn’t be needed in the first place!
- Encourage two-way communication: Allow the person to share their perspective and ask questions. This provides context and helps in understanding the situation better.
- Focus on solutions: Try to steer the two-way discussion towards suggestions for improvement or offer ways to address the issue. This shows that the feedback is meant to help, not criticize.
- Follow-up: Set a plan to revisit the issue later to see if there has been progress. This reinforces the importance of the feedback and shows your support in helping them improve.
The main takeaway from the above is that the intent with which you approach feedback is very important.
Only give feedback when you feel like the recipient has something they need to fix or improve.
The other thing that I also recommend avoiding is the “positive feedback sandwich” where you include negative feedback between praise. This can muddle the message, especially if it is a serious piece of feedback.
A note on feedback formulas
If you look up “How to give feedback?” you will get a bunch of formulas on how to structure feedback. Formulas like:
- Feedback matrix—splitting feedback into Positive/Expected, Positive/Unexpected, Negative/Expected, and Negative/Unexpected.
- SBII—Situation, Behaviour, Impact, Intent
- CEDAR—Context, Examples, Diagnosis, Actions, Review
- STAR—Situation, Task, Action, Result
- EEC—Example, Effect, Change
And many more…
These formulas can be helpful as a starting point, but it's important not to become too rigid in their application.
You will end up sounding like a feedback robot.
The key is to adapt your feedback style to the situation and the individual receiving it.
This is why in this article I give overall guidance to approaching feedback and don’t recommend a certain formula.
This is more powerful for you to learn HOW to think about feedback and not how to fill in the blanks like a game of Mad Libs.
12 Negative Feedback Examples
To help demonstrate what I mean, below are common examples of negative feedback and how to approach them constructively.
1. Performance
Feedback: “I’ve noticed that your ticket resolution rate has decreased dramatically. If we compare with the last quarter you are on track to do only 50% of what you did then.
From what I can see, the ticket types have not changed to be more complex and you have a target of X ticket completions per quarter.
I wanted to raise this issue now as I want to see what we can do to address it before the quarter is over. What do you think we can do to get you back up to speed?”
Explanation: The above feedback is likely a starter for a larger conversation, but it gives us a few vital clues.
Firstly, it clearly states the expectations and the current delta between goals and where the person is.
Secondly, it shows the manager has looked into the work and is not assuming that the tickets are the same.
Additionally, the feedback is timely. It is before the quarter ends so the person still has time to course correct.
2. Communication
Feedback: “When we were in the sprint planning meeting with the engineering team, I couldn’t follow what your plan of action was.
As a product manager, I would expect you to lead the discussion and guide the engineering team through the product roadmap, but the entire meeting was meandering with no clear goals set for the upcoming sprint.
In the next meeting, I’d expect you to take control of the discussion, and ideally put together a pre-read and goals for the meeting which we currently do not have as a ritual.
If tangential points come up, make a note and mention that these can be discussed in a different forum.”
Explanation: The above is concise and speaks about a specific situation and the issue very candidly. It also offers a few suggestions for improvement.
Not every piece of feedback is going to be this grand discussion jump-off point, but it’s important for people to understand the different communication situations and styles they are expected to employ.
3. Lack of collaboration
Feedback: “The delivery team mentioned to me that you promised a certain deadline to a client without speaking to them first.
I understand that in your capacity as a Business Development Director you’d like to reach your sales targets, but we need to make sure that the delivery team has the capacity to meet client expectations that you have set.
It is a lot more difficult to try and claw back a steep deadline vs. being able to deliver quicker on a more reasonable deadline and delight our clients.
As a result, the delivery team had eight weeks of overtime and weekend work, which is unsustainable.
I’d like for you to be more up to speed with the delivery team’s capacity. What do you know about their work so far and how can you make sure you keep up with the entire process up and down the chain?”
Explanation: When it comes to any feedback around collaboration, it’s important to show the impact that the person’s lapse has had on other teams.
None of us do anything alone, so it’s important to consider the entire chain. Again the above feedback is clear on the situation, impact, and expectations.
As this is a senior person receiving the feedback, it’s even more important that you push them to come back to you with a solution on how they would address the situation.
4. Giving feedback
Feedback: “I understand that it was frustrating when the warehousing team didn’t fulfill a client order correctly, especially since it was a particular person for the second time, but it is unacceptable to just pull them into a room, raise your voice at them for 5 mins, and storm out.
I need you to approach everyone with respect and with the intent to solve a problem, not to tell people off.
I expect you to apologize and approach the person with more questions and curiosity about what happened and why the error persisted.”
Explanation: In general, giving feedback on feedback is a bit difficult as you don’t want to give feedback immediately after someone gave you feedback—avoid a tit-for-tat.
However, if feedback is given with malicious intent or unconstructively, you need to step in and correct that behavior like in the example above.
Acknowledge the frustrating nature but do not validate the behavior. Get specific on what the expectations are and maybe send them this article!
5. Poor customer service
Feedback: “I’d like to discuss in more detail an interaction you had with a patient today. She rang the management practice back completely distraught because you rushed through the diagnosis and she was left more confused than before the telephone appointment.
The patient also said that you said “I am not here to answer your follow-up questions, only to give you the facts of the diagnosis”.
The call was recorded so I listened to the entire conversation. This may be factually correct, but it is completely inappropriate to dismiss a patient at such a distressing time.
I would expect that you do not forego your duty of care, regardless of how in a hurry you may be or what you were told you need to do. This is below our standard and I need to see a plan of action from you on what you will do to improve your understanding of patient care. “
Explanation: The above example is a real piece of feedback I helped a friend of mine who is a team lead at a hospital write.
As you can see, this is something very serious and potentially impacting this person’s career, so checking the evidence/log was important.
If no evidence is available, I’d expect the feedback to predominantly be questions e.g. what happened during the call?
Again, ensure that in giving feedback you reiterate expectations and that you want the recipient to think about corrective next steps.
6. Lack of initiative
Feedback: “I’ve noticed recently that in our team meetings, you come up with many potential ideas and identify issues around our processes and standards, but when we speak in a one-on-one setting to discuss your ideas for improvement to create a project for you to own, I do not hear any initiatives at all.
This is concerning to me as I like to hear from my team what they want to see in a process or standard, not just complaints.
If it was the occasional whine I’d understand, but this is sustained now over a few weeks with the same problems complained about with no solution proposed.
I need to see the drive for you to also be a problem solver as that is what I’d expect a senior in your position to do and we’ve discussed your path to promotion. “
Explanation: There may be that one person who always complains about things, always is the “one who notices problems”, but never solves them.
Noticing problems is a great trait to have and a skill to develop, but if you are not also working on the solution in any capacity, you are a bystander.
The above feedback is important as it tests whether this person actually has any ideas and it loops it back to the expectations for a promotion that they have.
One thing you may see here is that the person has observed this behavior for a few weeks.
Timeliness doesn’t mean immediately jumping on the first time the person identified a problem and didn’t come up with a solution. That is unrealistic.
However, if a pattern emerges, give feedback as early as is appropriate.
7. Not following processes
Feedback: “I wanted to discuss your use of Jira. It’s in our team norms that we, including you, have agreed that we will use it in this way and I am not seeing your work logged in there properly.
I expect all the engineers to follow the process, but I want to understand why you haven’t been following that and what the challenges have been.”
Explanation: Sometimes, when a process has been established and the person not following it was part of the creation of the process, it’s important to acknowledge that they may have had the opportunity to speak up but didn’t.
Ending this with a question opens up a discussion, as you may not have all the information.
Maybe their particular work is more non-deterministic and therefore doesn’t lend itself to this new approach. Maybe they didn’t feel like they could speak up. You’ve voiced the expectations and are now trying to find out more context.
8. Not paying attention to details
Feedback: “The last three pricing quotes you sent to these three clients all had mistakes that I had to go back and correct. The mistakes were different from each other, the clients were left very confused, and now we have to claw back trust with them. I need you to pay attention to the details there—what happened in these situations?”
Paying attention to details is likely vital in most roles, but I always recommend asking a question in the end to understand what happened.
There are likely three reasons why the person may have not paid attention to the details:
- Because they just haven’t learned things properly or have outdated knowledge
- They are much more “bigger picture” people
- They are so swamped with work that attention to detail goes out of the window.
Find out which one first before you start making assumptions.
9. Presentation skills
Feedback: “In the last all-hands, you were clearly nervous to present in front of the whole team and it showed. I could see that you thought your slides through really well, but your actual presentation was chaotic and hard to follow.
I also had to develop this skill and, as your peer, I understand it can be difficult. How can I help you improve on this?”
Explanation: Presentation skills are something that everyone needs to learn and continually develop, so offer to teach if you are one of those people who is just good at this!
That aside, the above feedback is concise and acknowledges the reality of what happened —both positive and negative—without muddling the message.
As you can see it also comes from a peer. Not all the feedback needs to come from a manager, sometimes the best advice we receive is from a peer.
It also ends with an offer to help. Not every piece of feedback needs to be an absolute decree of expectations etc. Sometimes you have to extend your hand to help!
10. Decision making
Feedback: “In the last few client meetings, I noticed that the consultancy advice you gave them has not been the most efficient or what we would recommend on the topic.
One of the clients contacted me and asked me why we didn’t recommend process X when it was mentioned to them during the sales process. Can you walk me through your thinking?”
Explanation: With something like strategy and decision-making, it’s important to delve deeper into the thinking behind the decision before you fully critique it and the way the person got to that point.
That way it’s not just the decision made that is corrected, you also teach them a better way of making judgments. Or the reverse may happen and you learn more context or a new way of thinking!
11. Punctuality
Feedback: As we are a fully remote team, it’s really important that we take advantage of the meetings and time we have for collaboration or discussion together.
I’ve noticed that you have been dialing in 5-10 late for most meetings in the last month, both in our team and also cross-functionally.
This is valuable team time you are missing and also the team then needs to backtrack to bring you up to speed.
As this is now a pattern, I wanted to let you know as early as possible that this is not acceptable and I need you to correct this.”
Explanation: Once again, something like this will need to be at least a little bit of a pattern. Don’t jump down someone’s throat if they’re late once—a whole bunch of stuff outside their control may have happened that just wouldn’t happen again.
However, as soon as a noticeable pattern emerges, let them know that this is unacceptable and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
12. Management feedback
Feedback: “During the team presentation where we had to update the team on the project I was working on, I had thoroughly prepared an entire deck with a corresponding pre-read.
However, you interrupted me and basically updated the team yourself. Some of the information you had wasn’t the most up-to-date and it created some confusion with the team who’d read the pre-read.
Ultimately, I felt quite undermined and not trusted to be able to adequately update the team on the progress of the project, especially as you kept interrupting me to answer questions that the team asked me directly.”
Explanation: You can absolutely give feedback on how someone’s conduct had a personal impact on you—especially as in the above example of a manager who overzealously bulldozed a meeting.
In these situations still make sure you speak to facts, what happened, and only speak about what you felt, not anyone else.
It’s only okay to talk about other people if they speak to you directly about any issues they had (e.g. the confusion above).
How To Receive Negative Feedback
We’ve talked a lot about how to give negative feedback, but remember that you are bound to receive some at some point as well. Rejoice for this is your opportunity to learn!
However, nothing can discourage feedback and stop your own learning like being a bad sport in taking feedback - doubly so if you are a leader! Here are a few pointers to avoid that:
- Do not reject the feedback outright. You can discuss it, but think about it first and give it its due.
- Do not use the opportunity to give them some feedback right back. This can come across as you looking for revenge instead of engaging with the feedback in earnest.
- Do not talk about how other people have been doing what you’re doing and are getting away with it, you don’t necessarily know that they do. You may not be privy to the feedback conversation their manager has had with them.
And what to do instead:
- Thank them for the feedback, especially if they are junior to you.
- Ask questions to clarify anything unclear or go into more detail.
- Ask for help in improving in certain areas, or ask if you can come back to them for help once you think about your next steps.
- Listen with the intent to understand the feedback vs. with the intent to just respond to what they are saying and have “the right answer”.
Creating A Culture Of Feedback
The best way to ensure that feedback is consistent, timely, and constructive is to build up a culture of feedback. This is what really takes performance management to the next level.
This may be tough, but here are a few essential things:
- Creating this culture will be a journey—especially for a growing company—so encourage feedback all the time.
- Make sure that the feedback doesn’t flow in just one direction or you will become a diktat and won’t be able to learn and develop as a leader. Eliciting 360-degree feedback is great for collecting feedback on leaders and helping people feel comfortable giving it.
- Recognize the courage it takes to speak up, especially to leadership and between peers. This will create a model for everyone to follow.
- Teach people how to give feedback constructively and productively. Not everyone will know instinctively.
- Invest the time and guide proactively. If left to its own devices, the culture will shift back to the path of least resistance and that may not be the path of continuous feedback.
Remember, Feedback Is A Gift
Giving high-quality feedback, be it positive or negative, takes practice, but it’s a gift the vast majority of people will appreciate and hopefully pass on.
Giving negative feedback takes care and courage, so give yourself time and space. Invest in developing this skill and you will see how your own team will start speaking up, flourish, and build stronger bonds.
If anything, the fact that negative feedback takes more practice makes me hopeful that most of us are not naturally negative Nellies!
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