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Computerworld - Managers hate to give negative feedback, and many defeat the purpose of a feedback discussion with employees by setting up a confrontation. So says Jean-Francois Manzoni in the September issue of Harvard Business Review. Manzoni, the associate professor of management at Insead in Fontainebleau, France, and the director of the Insead-PwC Research Initiative on High-Performance Organizations, says taking a different approach to giving feedback can make those discussions—and your employees—more productive. He discussed his ideas with Kathleen Melymuka.

What is the most common mistake IT managers make in giving corrective feedback to their employees? IT managers' problem with feedback starts with the way they frame—mentally construct—the situation. Feedback is something that bosses have and subordinates get. The implicit complement is that this feedback is right, of course.

How might this play out? "Bill's performance is not up to my expectations. I know why: Bill has the following shortcomings/skill or character deficiency. I want to tell Bill about this, but he may not like hearing what I have to say. He may be hurt, and he may try to hurt me in return. Also, if Bill refuses the feedback and pushes back on me, things may escalate and worsen the current situation. So I hope Bill will accept the feedback and spare us an unpleasant moment."

Jean-Francois Manzoni of Insead

What's wrong with this approach? This framing is narrow because it excludes some potentially interesting issues and questions such as: Am I right? What's the evidence on which my assessment is based? Could I be missing part of the picture? How much is it really about Bill, vs. about the situation Bill is operating in? And what about me? Could I be contributing to the situation, and if so, how?

In addition to being narrow, this framing is binary in that there are only two possible outcomes: The session is a success if Bill accepts the feedback; otherwise, it's a failure.

Why is this mistake particularly likely to happen in an IT environment? IT environments present three characteristics that make it particularly hard for bosses to approach feedback productively. First, the success of IT projects tends to be very dependent on the actions of many parties outside IT, particularly IT users. When looking at results, it is hence difficult to untangle the exact contribution of the IT staff from the impact of the conditions they were operating in. Second, IT is often a bad-news-driven environment. Most of the feedback IT receives from the organization tends to be negative. Last, several aspects of IT involve work that is intangible and largely invisible until completion. Assessing progress intelligently is difficult.