Giving Negative Feedback Without Destroying Morale

Rachel Provan (00:00.546)
Hey, CS Psychos, Rachel Provan here. And today I'm gonna talk a bit about how to share negative feedback with your direct reports without absolutely killing morale or feeling horrible. That's all coming up next, right here on Psychology of Customer Success. Stay tuned. Music. Okay, welcome back. This is episode number seven of Psychology of Customer Success. And today we're gonna be talking about

Something that most CS leaders find really challenging in terms of being a leader, and that is giving negative feedback. As we talked about in the helper personality, a lot of people in CS really are very empathetic. So having to give negative feedback, it can make you feel really crappy. Most of the time, we care about our employees, we don't want them.

to feel bad about themselves. We know when we get negative feedback, we really feel bad about ourselves and we don't wanna be doing that to someone else. Now, because of that, a lot of CS leaders fall into the trap of not actually giving the feedback at all. Now you don't necessarily intend to do that, but at least for me, the way it used to work was I would think, oh, it's not a good time or oh, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say yet.

And then it would be a few days and it's, oh, is it still okay to bring it up? Maybe it'll resolve itself on its own. Maybe I should see if it happens again. Or thinking, oh, is it really that big a deal? Minimizing it thinking, is it really that big a deal? Maybe it just bothers me. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I need to get over it. And I can tell you that if somebody is being disrespectful or they're not doing their job, you owe it to them to have that conversation.

Letting them get away with disrespect because you feel guilty is an absolute poison to your entire team. And there are consequences to that. When you're thinking of having to talk to them, you're probably thinking about the consequences of having that conversation. Are they going to be mad at you? Are they going to tell other people on the team? Are they going to get others mad at you? Is their work quality going to go down? Are you going to suffer consequences in some way?

Rachel Provan (02:18.818)
But we don't often think about the consequences that will happen if we don't do it, which is CS teams are very sensitive. Even if you think something is only affecting you, chances are your other CSMs see what's going on and are taking note of it. And if things are not fair for whatever reason, if again, if the employee isn't being respectful, if they're not pulling their weight,

The other CSMs are going to feel it, and that's going to turn into resentment and mistrust. Because why is that person not held to the same standard as they are? People start to feel it's really unfair. And when that happens, when people start to get resentful, they stop making that same effort that they used to make. It can really start to tear your team apart, and I've seen this happen. And

when your CSMs start making the effort, even if they're going through the motions and checking the box off for everything they actually need to do, you and I both know your customers can tell whether your CSMs care or not. And in order to care about your customers, your CSMs have to feel respected. And to do that, you really have to be fair to everyone. One of the reasons this is happening tends to be because

you care if they like you don't want one of your employees to hate you. That's going to suck. Nobody likes to feel like somebody doesn't like them. I think we've all been in a situation where we've had to deal with a person on a day-to-day basis, just feeling the intense dislike radiating off them. And I don't know for me, that always made me want to get out of a situation as soon as I possibly could. And when you become a boss, you have to be able to detach from that.

That doesn't mean that you tolerate someone behaving in a way that isn't acceptable. It means you need to detach from whether or not they like you or whether or not they're mad at you. And I could never really do this. I never really understood how to do this as well as I do now because I've had kids. Not that I see employees as my children in any way, but when you're the parent,

Rachel Provan (04:38.694)
you have to be the authority. There is no one else to turn to, and sometimes your kids are gonna wanna do something, and you can't let them, and they're gonna be mad. One of my kids, when he was two, consistently really wanted to throw himself down the front steps, down the stone front steps of our brownstone. I knew that was not going to go well, and it was not going to end the way he wanted it to, and we'd end up in the emergency room. But...

I cannot tell you how pissed he was. He would cry, he would scream. Sometimes it would take 45 minutes, which is a very long time when someone is screaming in your ear. And I just had to hold him and let him be upset and know that I was doing the right thing for him, for me, for everyone, by not letting him make that move that he so wanted to, that he felt was right for him. I have that perspective to know you really don't wanna throw yourself down those stairs. He doesn't.

from his perspective, like I am keeping him from the best thing in the world, I absolutely suck. So sometimes that can be going on with your employees. Again, not to such an extreme degree, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend physically restraining them, but it's just sometimes you understand more things than they do because you have more perspective, you've been at it longer, or you may have more information than they do. And all of us have moments where we are not the most self-aware.

where we maybe don't realize how what we're doing is coming off. The other thing is, there's a difference between caring if someone likes you, which is about you, and as usual, typically about fear. There's a difference between that and your caring about them. Wanting to make sure they're okay, that they're not hurt in this process, that they can still trust you and feel like they can still come to you. That is something that is absolutely okay and great. And...

That's what we're really going to harness in order to help make these conversations much easier on both sides. So once again, it's okay to care about them and not want to make them feel discouraged or frustrated or shamed and just wanting them to like you and not wanting anyone to be mad at you. Getting into the meat of how we do this. When I was

Rachel Provan (07:03.594)
Early on in management, I was lucky enough to be given a copy of the book, Crucial Confrontations. Now that book, a lot of people have heard of Crucial Conversations, which is a different book. They're both by the same people. Crucial Conversations is tools for having conversations when the stakes are high. Crucial Confrontations sort of takes that and ratchets it up 10 notches. It is tools for talking about broken promises.

violated expectations and things like that. It's for really serious situations. Now, hopefully you never deal with a situation that is that serious with one of your employees. Chances are you probably will at some point if you manage long enough. Either way, this framework works no matter how big or small the infraction is. It might not quite be messy.

necessary if you're like, hey, you loaded the copy wrong. Don't do that because it jams up. I don't think anyone's going to take that on their soul. But for anything where someone might take the criticism to heart, this is an amazing framework to use. And I use it to this day. And what's interesting is the reason that I loved it so much immediately was I thought, oh, this is how I already handle conflict in my everyday life. And

That's why it's never that big a deal. It never occurred to me that I could do the same thing in a professional circumstance. So here is how it goes. Here's what you do. There's an overall feedback framework that I like to use. And basically it's five steps. The first is establish psychological safety. Second is connect on a shared value or desired outcome.

Three is just state the fact-based problem and the example of it. Number four is ask for their perspective and highlight invisible consequences. And five is agree on a plan and follow up. So I'm gonna go through each of these in detail, but just wanted to give you an overall viewpoint of what this looks like. I do have a resource that just lists what each of those are.

Rachel Provan (09:25.25)
just for a little crib sheet that you can download. I will put it on the website. There'll be a link in the show notes, but let's jump in. So the first thing that's important is you need to make the negative feedback timely. Do not wait because the longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to give the feedback. Don't let things fester. Once you have the necessary information, set a meeting.

Otherwise, you're likely going to let it slip, hoping it'll get better, and chances are, it won't. It'll get worse. And it's also so much more respectful to bring it up. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna sit around thinking that someone is upset with me or somebody thinks I did something wrong and isn't telling me, because I can take it. Granted, I may cry at home, but that'll be 15 minutes, and then I'll get over it, and then I'll be able to take the feedback.

And most people are not even as sensitive as I am, but I would still rather know, and so would most people, that's being respectful, that they are someone who wants to get better and that they can do better. So if you have a beef, bring it up. So the first thing to do here is establish psychological safety. So what I mean by that, and there are whole long definitions, but my way of looking at it is just,

creating a situation where somebody knows that they're not being judged and they're not going to be shamed. You're not going to indicate in any way, shape, or form that they are less of a person, that they did bad, that they're awful. People interpret things like that very often without us actually saying them. And sometimes we have to head that off a little bit, which we'll get into. But just making it very clear that you're there to work together, and I'll show you how this is going to be done.

Before you do this, you actually have to get in the right mental head space. Because if you think the person had bad intent, you think they're lazy or they're just a jerk, they only care about themselves, they leave work for everybody else. Whatever thing you're telling yourself about why they did what they did, you're going to have to put it aside. So the very first thing that I would say to do is assume good intent.

Rachel Provan (11:47.842)
So try and think about the person that, maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a best friend or a partner, maybe it's a parent. If they did this thing, what would be a good reason that they might have had for doing it? All right, because I guarantee you, the person who did whatever it is, is not doing it to piss you off or to be a jerk. They most likely either didn't realize or more likely thought they had a perfectly good reason. Again, ask yourself,

Why might a reasonable person have acted this way? And once you have that down and can understand that a reasonable person who is not trying to be a jerk might do something, that's when it's time to set a meeting, meet one-on-one in private. If you have to, however you're gonna do this, whether it's slacking them, emailing, putting a meeting on their calendar, passing them in a hallway, always, again, this is with the psychological safety, be clear.

about what you're talking about, what you're doing, and that it's not a big deal. Unless of course it is a big deal, but you still wanna give someone some context. You never just wanna be like, hey, can you meet me for 30 minutes? I wanna talk to you about something. Like anyone and everyone will immediately think they're getting fired. Do not do that to anyone. It's really unkind and unfair. Let's say I have an employee and it is getting close to the end of the quarter and they have not been putting

any of their activities in the CS tool. So I look in there and it seems like the other CSMs are doing a lot, but their activity seems very minimal in relation to the other two. I might immediately take that as, oh, they're slacking off, or, oh, I said this was important, they're not listening to me, they don't respect me. All sorts of things can happen in your mind. Most of the time it will have to do with you and some perceived threat to you. In that situation,

like, oh, they don't respect me, are other people not gonna respect me? We see how that spirals from there. You wanna get it to the purely fact-based issue, which is that they were not filling in information that they were supposed to in the CS tool. That is a fact. That is not an opinion. No one can argue. You could argue how much you were supposed to. They were not putting as much as the other people and as much as had been requested of them.

Rachel Provan (14:12.974)
So you got to get it to a very clear fact. You can prove that in a court of law, that we said you need to put X, Y, and Z in there, and you did not have X, Y, and Z in there. All right, there's no opinion about that. It happened. So if you come to them and say like you're slacking off or your numbers are terrible, that's immediately going to make them defensive. People always feel justified for the things they do. So when you set a time to talk with them, just let them know, hey, I need...

30 minutes chat with you about the CS tool. Do you have time at 1.30? All right, so that's not like about your performance. It's not, it's clearly it's about the CS tool, right? So that's gonna be less alarming, even though you're going to be giving them feedback, it's less alarming than I want to give you some feedback. That it's just so scary to hear. So something like that, something about the fact-based part of it. So once you have established psychological safety, made it clear that

You believe in them, you don't think that they're doing anything on purpose. You want to connect on a shared value. So this is before you even bring up the problem. You want to bring up something that both of you care about and ask if you can give them some feedback so that you can work towards that desired outcome together. I'm such a CS person. I say desired outcome. I don't know what it would be goal, but go with me because you're CS too. But.

For example, if they care about the team or their clients or they wanna grow into a managerial position, you can bring any of those up as the context. But this way you're anchoring it in something they care about. Now you're gonna bring up that fact-based problem with an example of when it happened. So state what it is when it happened. So for example, on Friday, I checked the CS tool and the activity showed.

that you haven't reached out to your clients who are renewing this quarter. Now, before you go any further here, you're gonna wanna reestablish that psychological safety. I know that sounds annoying, but the second you've stated what they did wrong, they're immediately going to become defensive because to them it was justified for whatever reason. Maybe that reason is.

Rachel Provan (16:28.918)
They don't have time to fill out the CS tools. I could do that, or I could talk to clients. You've given me 80 new clients this quarter. This is what I can do. Or your brain is never going to immediately say, yes, that's true. I did that. That was wrong. Oops, my bad. I will try to do better. Our brains just don't do that. Because as we talk about a lot, this comes back to the primitive brain. When our boss starts talking to us about something we may have done wrong, that's the end.

triggers that response in the brain that says, oh, this is an immediate threat to my survival. So even though they know in our rational brain that nobody's threatening anybody's life here, you didn't pull out a knife, you talked to them about a tool, but the fact is you are saying something is not going well with the way they make money and earn a living and keep a roof over their head, food on their table, the real basics of staying alive, staying safe. Yes.

it does trigger that animal part of the brain, makes it go crazy, and that makes them have thoughts that are not rational. It happens to you, it happens to me, and it's gonna happen to them. So that's why we jump in again and reestablish that psychological safety. So I said, I checked the CS tool and the activity shows you haven't reached out to your clients who are renewing this quarter. And then I'm going to immediately say, now,

I know you care about your clients and I know you're always really on top of your work. You have to try and anticipate what they're going to interpret your fact as, how they're gonna take that as a criticism. In a really amazing book called Never Split the Difference, one of my favorites, I'll link that as well in the show notes, Chris Voss talks about an accusation audit. It's like, here are all the things I am not accusing you of.

I'm not saying this, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that you are lazy. I'm not saying you're not reaching out to your clients. I'm not saying that you don't care. And by saying, I know that's not like you, it's showing that I don't think negatively about this person. You stated what they did wrong, then you reestablish psychological safety, and then you just ask what happened. So I saw you didn't put the things in the CS tool, that's not like you, you're always on top of your stuff.

Rachel Provan (18:51.81)
Can I ask you, what happened? What's up? What's going on? Do you see how that becomes so much less confronting? You're saying, I know that you're on top of things. I think well of you. So if something isn't right, I need to know what's going on because most likely it's not you that are wrong. Something else is impacting you and I need to know what it is. And I think we'd all appreciate.

having that as the way we're approached on these things. So yeah, basically the idea of just what happened. And when you ask that, you need to really listen and you need to be open to it and you need to try and understand what the real problem is. Is the real problem they don't see the value of the activity? Is the real problem that they didn't have time? What is the issue that's causing the problem? Now, just because they feel they were justified or feel there's a reason why it happened,

And that doesn't mean you want it to keep happening or that it's okay, or that you want it to happen again. You let them say why it was, and then you want to highlight the invisible consequences. So those are the things that they don't necessarily see as being a problem, or they wouldn't have done this. Them as a reasonable, kind person, if they realize these were the consequences, they wouldn't have done this in the first place. So you want to highlight those. For me, if they were saying.

Oh, I didn't have time. I would say, I completely understand that you are underwater right now. We've given you a lot of new accounts. That makes a lot of sense. The problem here is these are what I have to use as a manager to justify how you're getting to your KPIs. If for some reason customers churn, which sometimes happens for reasons that have nothing to do with you, I need to be able to show.

look, this person did everything they were supposed to. They were reaching out to the client. We have emails, we have calls tracked, and they did everything they could. So we need to find out why else that might have happened, you know, why else that might be an issue, but this way it doesn't get blamed on you. And this gives a compelling reason that is going to make a lot of sense to them that they probably didn't think of. So once you've talked about that, whether or not they agree with you,

Rachel Provan (21:19.802)
they are going to have to take steps to right this wrong. But you do have to explain to them the consequences, why this is a problem, why it needs to change. Sometimes it'll have to do with them and sometimes it won't. I've had instances where people were disrespecting their fellow CSMs or talking over them because they did think they were more important. And so in that case, they wanted to be a manager. So I explained to them that I understand that you wanna be a manager.

One of the most important things in being a manager is being able to communicate and being sure that your people feel heard because they're not going to do what you tell them to unless they feel heard and respected. So as part of a development exercise for you to reach that role that you want to, this is something I want you to work on. There always has to be something in it for them. A reason why it makes sense for them to do this. Whether it's, I can't...

make sure that your job is safe without this, or this role you want, this is part of it. I'm telling you this because I have your back. So once you've gone through with that, you want to put a plan together. So it's better if they come up with the plan than you having to dictate it, saying, so since we know this is what needs to be done, how do you think we should handle this? What are your thoughts about on how you can make this happen? What do you think is realistic for you?

What are your thoughts on how we can make this happen? And that might be a little bit of an uncomfortable phrase for you, because you can see even what I just did there. I wanted to soften it. I wanted to make it like, how can this be okay for you? And that really isn't what we're doing here. It has to be done. You're giving them an opportunity to find the right way. But it's not about if it works for them or not. It has to be done. It's best if they can come up with the plan.

You can ask them questions and guide them. If they come up with a plan that sounds like it's not gonna work, rather than just saying, no, that's not gonna work, try asking them some questions. Okay, I think that's a good idea. My question is, what about this one issue here? What do we do about this aspect of it? Because they might have an answer for it that you don't. But the important thing to do is once you have a plan, way forward that this isn't gonna happen again, the important thing to do is to get a commitment from them.

Rachel Provan (23:43.426)
that they're going to do this things differently going forward. I know that's a little bit uncomfortable, at least it was for me, but it's the crux of this whole thing and of dealing with any sort of problem employee or problem behavior. You need to get this commitment because if they then do it again, now you can talk about how yes, they did this thing before, but they had made a commitment. So if they break.

commitment, that's a bigger deal. I'll get into that in a separate podcast about dealing with employees where a conversation doesn't cut it and you're going to have to get more into disciplinary action, all that fun stuff, but we're not going to get all the way into that today. But just make a plan, follow up, get that commitment. So we're going to do X, Y, and Z by this date. Do I have a commitment from you that you're going to take those actions and you will fill in that CS tool going forward?

they're going to say yes, because people do in that situation. You say, great. And say, all right, why don't we check up, you know, make a plan to follow up. Why don't we check up on this in two weeks and just see how you're doing. We can tweak anything, make sure that things are going to plan. And then you have a time to check up on things where it's not going to be necessarily contentious and it's not going to be like, oh, they're bringing this up again, it's you know, that this is expected to be dealt with by this time.

and we're going to check in on it, and then hopefully it can be put to bed. But it's just good to have that check-in point to finalize it outside of that conversation. Here is an example of the conversation so you can hear it all the way through of what this would look like, establishing psychological safety. Hey, Sam, I wanna talk to you for a sec about the CS tool. Do you have five minutes right now? Okay, great. So let's come in here. You wanna do it one-on-one, away from anybody else.

Okay, let's come in here. Listen, I know you care a lot about your clients and you're always really working really hard towards hitting your numbers and getting a nice bonus. And of course, I want that for you too, because that benefits the whole team. Would you be open to talking about something that could help with that? Great. So on Friday, I was cleaning up the CS tool and I noticed you hadn't put any info in there for your clients who are renewing this quarter. And look, I know you're always really on top of things.

Rachel Provan (26:08.566)
So I just wanted to check in and ask, what happened here? They'll give a response. They'll say, oh, I had too much on my plate. Oh, this and that. I was locked out of it. Whatever it is, they had something personal going on. OK, I completely understand that. The issue here, and of course I understand that. You have lots of work. We all have lots of work. And it can be hard to get everything done. I understand you're prioritizing live customers versus what feels like paperwork or what feels like admin work.

But when you don't put that in there, the executive leadership team, they think that you're not doing the work that you need to do to close these renewals. Or if some of these renewals don't close, they look at that and they follow up and say, hey, as of this date, it looks like they didn't do any work up until this quarter. Are they a problem? So obviously, you're not. I don't want that to be the perception.

But if these things aren't in there, there's only so much I can say versus the data. Obviously, this is important as something that we're going to have to pay attention to going forward. What do you think we can do here to work together to make sure that information is in the CS tool when it needs to be going forward? How can you manage your time to make sure that happens? Then you would establish next steps. So I can get a commitment from you that those things will be in the CS tool.

on the same day that you have those interactions going forward? Great. Okay. So why don't you put that in action? If you're having troubles, let me know. We'll work on it, but otherwise let's just check back in on it in two weeks, see how we're doing and yeah, I'm sure it'll be great. All right. And that's it. What could be a really uncomfortable conversation is just a lot less of a big deal and this works.

in conversations that are about mundane things like that. It works in conversations that are more serious. It even works in conversations where you're talking to your boss about something you don't like them doing with you. So it's a little different, but not a whole lot. Take this, try it out. I'll put a little document that has the steps in there just so that you can use it to plan for when you have to have one of these conversations. And that really helps you have a much more cohesive team.

Rachel Provan (28:34.518)
and a lot less stress in your life. Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of Psychology of Customer Success. If you wanna take the next step in leveling up your team leadership, your strategy and your mindset, go ahead and sign up for the wait list for the Customer Success Leadership Academy where we dive into this even further. You get even more actionable advice on all the strategy you could need. We do exactly the same type of strategic work step-by-step.

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put a review in there. It really helps other people find us. It really helps the podcast and it makes me grin from ear to ear. And until next time, take care of yourself, get some rest and make sure to share this with your CS bestie. Talk soon and here's to your success.