MANA 3320.460 SHRM 2 - Paige Daniel

Webinar: Fear of Feedback

The webinar selected for the purpose of this assignment is “Fear of Feedback” by Leila Bulling Towne, who speaker belongs to leadership and coaching firm. She coaches teams and leaders and loves giving feedbacks, she considers feedback an evergreen topic. Overall the webinar discusses the topic of feedback, its significance and what holds back managers from giving feedback to their subordinates. This webinar aims at reducing the fear of feedback by assisting managers in overcoming this fear.

The webinar begins with the idea that most of the managers understand the significance of giving feedback to the employees and subordinates. However, the fear of providing information to the people that can make them unhappy is something that withholds managers from giving feedback to the employees. The author brings the most searched topics and a glimpse of what helps people are seeking through the most popular topics on HBR. These topics are self-awareness, mobile phone addiction, controlling your emotions during a difficult conversation, how to control your life, etc. There are so many employees and managers out there who neither give feedback nor obtain feedback from their managers, so what holds them back? There could be many reasons but the main reason is fear. It is the fear to hear something unpleasant that refrains them.

There is a gap between what people are hired to do and what they need to do. Based on her experience, the speaker shares that most of the leaders she met had an intense fear of giving feedback to others. Nevertheless, she emphasized that understanding what are the fears and overcoming them is pivotal for the managers and leaders. In the same way, it is crucial for the managers to gets over this fear. Coming towards the way of overcoming the fear, the first thing a manager must understand is acknowledging that giving feedback is necessary. For this purpose, managers also need to be emotionally intelligent. Because the emotional center of the brain can sometimes delay the logical part to make decisions. The employees are advised to understand the situation the managers are in and must devise the ways to help managers conquer the fear of feedback. The first step to deal with the fears is naming and identifying what fear is holding one back and then recognizing five truths to deal with those five fears. The five fears include, employees will not like the feedback, there can be a conflict or confrontation, the situation might get awkward, and it will be lengthy and tough. After the manager has identified the fear that withholds them, they must think about five truths to overcome that fear. These truths are recognizing that feedback is my job and it will make my job easier, feedback creates ease in everyone’s job, maximum employees wish to get feedback and are worthy of it, I can get better at giving feedback, and procrastination will make it worse.

I believe this information will be very helpful for the managers and the HR department that mainly deals with the areas of performance management and evaluation. HR decisions regarding employees’ promotion, compensation, and benefits, training and development are based on the idea of supervisors and managers giving feedbacks of employees. If the managers and leaders refrain from giving feedbacks, the entire idea of developing and improving employees is impractical. Fear of feedback will adversely impact the performance management of employees.

Performance management is a vital function of the HR department, and hence the information shared on the method of dealing with the fear of feedback can be helpful for the managers in training the employees on overcoming barriers to feedbacks. It also helps in developing and understanding that fear of feedbacks is natural and it can hinder an organization’s ability to progress. The five fears and five truths methods can be implemented by any organization’s HR department to ensure the effectiveness of performance management programs.

If I would be the HR manager I will take the following steps to reduce the fear of feedbacks:

Creating a culture and habit of feedback because habits will make most of the managers and employees comfortable in developing feedback behaviors.

Promoting that feedbacks will make everyone’s job easier and every employee deserve to obtain supervisor feedback regarding their performance and job

Providing rewards on positive feedbacks and coaching in case of negative feedback.

Creating a positive mindset regarding feedbacks and eliminating thoughts of betrayal.

Giving employees the opportunity to question the feedback they received.

Ensuring that the feedback shared is based on precise evaluation and no bias is involved.

Using the feedback to reach professional goals and organizational goals as well.

Devising strategies for performance improvement based on feedback and comments

Initiating 360-degree feedback programs

Creating a simple process of feedback to create ease for managers and employees and encourage them to share feedback.

Thanking employees and managers for the feedback they share.

Setting new goals based on the results of previous feedbacks.

Creating a culture of feedback from top to bottom and at all the organizational level.

Eliminating procrastination on feedbacks and making it a compulsory thing.

The three-step method shared by the coach in the webinar will also be implemented by me as an HR manager. This method of naming the fear, naming the truth and then writing feedback is able to eliminate the fears that withhold managers and employees from sharing feedbacks.