The Problem with Unspecific Feedback
“You’re too eager.”
I stood across from my boss in his office on campus. It was the job I worked to get myself through college. I had asked for feedback on my performance and brought some ideas for ways we could improve our system. And while I loved my job, this feedback haunted me for years.
For one, it was unspecific and unclear. This boss could be very stoic and sarcastic, so I did not know whether or not this comment was a joke that I did not find funny, or if he was being serious. I immediately wanted to know what he meant, but to ask for clarification would seem defensive, or maybe it would seem like I just cannot take a joke.
My response? I toned it down, asked less questions, and tried to stay out of sight.
A few years later, when interviewing for jobs, the famous question popped up more than once.
“What is your greatest weakness?”
And without thinking, I had my answer.
“I can be a bit too eager.”
mParticle Leaders Talk Conflict Management at Women Impact Tech
At November’s Women Impact Tech conference, I made a beeline for the auditorium when I saw “conflict management” on the agenda.
I have been working since I was fourteen, sometimes in leadership, sometimes as an employee, sometimes both. I have had my fair share of conflicts, big and small, that could have been handled better– and I knew that the biggest problem I have had when it comes to conflict is unclear communication.
Right off the bat, Melissa Benua, Senior Director of Engineering at mParticle and Janna Loeffler, Director of Engineering at mParticle, took the stage and addressed this fact– communication between managers and employees is what can make or break the relationship.
Benua and Loeffler discussed the importance of learning healthy communication styles as a woman in any industry.
They used Kim Malone Scott’s book, Radical Candor, as a frame for this conversation– that in order to become a successful woman in leadership, one must embody a communication style where they care personally, but also challenge clearly and directly.
Clear but Kind: The Path Toward (and Controversy of) Radical Candor
Like Loeffler and Benua at mParticle, author Kim Malone Scott was in big tech herself. She had clocked years of experience at both Apple and Google before releasing her book, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, in 2017, which was a huge critical success.
The central tenet of the book is a matrix, or as Scott calls it, a compass. Scott’s compass outlines four types of behaviors, or feedback styles, that each manager can plot themselves into. These behaviors are as follows:
- Ruinous Empathy occurs when managers have compassion and respect for their employees as individuals, but fail to be direct in their criticism and challenges. It also includes non-specific feedback that may be kind, but is not helpful because it is either unclear or sugar-coated.
- Manipulative Insincerity is a cold, uncaring manager who has a tendency toward being passive aggressive. This manager neither cares about nor directly challenges their employees. They often talk badly about employees behind their backs.
- Obnoxious Aggression, or “front stabbing,” occurs when managers challenge their people directly but do not care or empathize with them on a personal level. This might involve unkind, demoralizing praise and/or criticism.
- Finally, Radical Candor is the goal– becoming a manager who both cares individually, and challenges directly through clear, specific, and actionable feedback.
Scott supports each management type with specific examples from her time in Silicon Valley, which Benua and Loeffler supplemented in their talk with examples of their own: A male boss who had only ever worked on teams with men, and communicated with classic “Obnoxious Aggression.” A woman boss who talked poorly about her employees but praised them to their face, exhibiting “Manipulative Insincerity,” and the list goes on.
Benua and Loeffler do state that, while this compass is a helpful tool for assessing one's own leadership style, it should only be used as a self-assessment tool, not a cure-all for interpersonal conflicts in the workplace. And the matrix itself has problems of its own.
As Erin Vanderhoof states in her Vice article “Women Suck at Being Bosses Just as Much as Men,”
“If nothing else, Scott's book explains why majority-female workplaces and industries tend not to be too feminist in practice. THINX, for example, was a place where the employees were underpaid and expected to do emotional labor for their bosses. In order for a boss to care about you, they have to feel confident about hiring you. In order for a boss to challenge you, they have to be able to take criticism themselves. This is a pretty rare occurrence in real life.”
Vanderhoof goes on to explain that many women are treated poorly because they are not seen as capable, and therefore a boss will not care about or respect them enough to communicate well.
In addition, “Manipulative Insincerity” is routinely seen as the worst behavior, but mainly because it is coded as more female. Scott paints a picture of this behavior style being the pinnacle of bad leadership, even though this fails to address how men in tech have coasted through decades-long executive careers while exhibiting classic “Obnoxious Aggression.”
The point that Vanderhoof makes is key– that Scott’s book paints a picture of the way bad leadership is gendered, but it is uncritical about why this might be the case.
This means that the Radical Candor behavioral matrix does not solve, or even fully address, the systematized problems that created these conflicts and communication styles in the first place.
Especially in Silicon Valley, systematized prejudices against women, notably BIPOC women, need to be addressed first, rather than relying on individual responsibility to change one’s behaviors and thought patterns.
Keeping all of this in mind, and holding loose inspiration from Scott’s book, Loeffler and Benua offer three simple tools from their own toolkit for handling conflict in the workplace.
3 Simple Steps Toward Better Conflict Management
1. “Stop, take a deep breath, and think of your own safety first.”
Both Benua and Loeffler explain that the most important piece of conflict management, especially as a woman in a male-dominated field, is to maintain psychological safety.
If the confrontation becomes heated, and the other party begins yelling or crossing boundaries, it is important to learn how to walk away.
“You are making me uncomfortable, and your behavior is not appropriate. Let’s take a minute and address this later today when you’ve had time to cool down,” is one way to communicate psychological boundaries with both empathy and clarity.
If necessary, bringing in a third-party mediator through human resources might be a good option.
If the situation still feels unsafe and is concerning to you, you have the power to shut it down. Do not be afraid to reach out for assistance, or to walk away entirely. Although conflicts come up often in the workplace, a dangerous conflict is not worth taking on if it means risking your own emotional or physical safety.
2. “Care personally, and challenge directly.”
“As a young manager, I thought the best way to make my people believe in themselves was to shout their wins and give indirect criticism,” explained Benua.
“I failed to give direct feedback and this situation spiraled out of control. I ended up being less kind in the end.”
To exhibit kindness does not mean every comment must be positive, or an affirmation.
You can be kind and still offer criticism, redirection, or feedback. Oftentimes, in order to get any work done at all, we need to offer specific feedback to one another.
Although it can seem daunting, practice re-imagining conflict– not as a bad thing or something to avoid, but something that makes each of us better, and also can bring us closer.
And when you do need to offer feedback, make it personalized. Leverage your relationship, and tailor the feedback to the recipient. The clearer, more direct, and more specific you are, the better this communication will go, which will build rapport.
3. “Be emotionally prepared for future difficult conversations.”
We do not learn much about conflict in school. We do not learn how to be uncomfortable until we have to be. While conflict is nobody’s favorite part of the day, Benua and Loeffler explain that emotional preparation in advance can make it easier for both parties when conflict does arise.
One way to emotionally prepare in advance of conflict is through shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
- A fixed mindset, Benua explains, is one where you believe that intelligence is a fixed quality– that, if you are not good at something now, you never will be.
- A growth mindset, however, is one where you truly believe your skills, knowledge, and talent can be developed over time.
By focusing on the skills and knowledge you want to develop, rather than the ways in which you fall short, you can start to reframe feedback as a positive mechanism rather than a negative one.
It can also help to develop your own confidence, so that when you receive feedback, you can take what would be beneficial to you and leave out the pieces that might not be about you at all.
For example, when my boss told me I was “too eager,” I did not have a lot of confidence yet as I was pretty new to the working world. I took it to heart.
Now, I can see that that position could not offer me the resources I was asking for, and did not value my ideas very highly. Instead of expressing this, my boss chose to communicate in an unclear way to stop me from approaching the subject again.
So while there are many ways to make yourself better at conflict, the real key might lie in realizing what is yours to hold onto, and what is someone else’s that you don’t have to carry.
Learning this takes time, and there are many structural issues we need to work to solve in the meantime, but it’s never too late to practice standing up for yourself– even when you’ve been burned before.
How do you handle conflict in the workplace? Email ccwomen@cmpteam.com and let us know your thoughts.
