I love hearing about feedback fails! They are such a great way to learn. Many people are happy to share their worst feedback conversations - usually when they were the recipient of the feedback, rather than the person offering it. I made many feedback mistakes when I led teams in my mid-twenties. I cringe just thinking about how bad they were. My guess is many of you can relate. We are human, which means we make mistakes, and then hopefully we learn and grow from them!
Being told by my Director, ‘You are not cut out for this role.’
Being called into my Manager's office, them being distracted (looking out the window/ playing with a chair) and yelling at me telling me in a cryptic way what was 'wrong with me' and what I 'needed to be careful of.’
I asked for feedback and was told by my manager they didn't have enough time to speak with me and said, 'I’m sure you are doing fine'.
My line manager told me what I was doing wrong and that maybe I should think about other professions as it doesn't seem that I have what it takes.
My worst job evaluation was when my manager spent the whole time talking about herself. In the end, I asked her was she happy with my work.
Not receiving any feedback from my manager and hearing from other people that he is not happy with my performance.
Being told I am not leadership material by my manager, after being in a leadership role for more than 12 months.
The leader made it all about them, told me that our communication issue was my problem, and they would be CEO one day, so this conversation didn't matter.
An unannounced meeting with someone who I didn't know had access to my work.
Hopefully, you haven’t made any of the above mistakes, but we can get feedback offering wrong in less dramatic ways. Even if you carefully consider your wording, sometimes it just comes out wrong. When you make a feedback mistake, be kind to yourself. When you say something that didn’t come out the way you intended, stop, own it, and try again. It’s better to be transparent, show you are fallible and have another go right there in the moment, than to go home and dwell (and worry) about what you said, wishing you could go back and phrase it differently.