How to Leave Space for Respectful Feedback in the Workplace

Confrontation isn’t fun, no matter who you are. Throw in an  added layer of Minnesota Niceness — bleeding into passive aggressiveness more than any of us are willing to admit — and confrontation and pushback becomes borderline unbearable. But, when you have employees avoiding confrontation like the plague, it makes for a toxic company culture that allows negative emotions to fester.

Best case scenario in a company that doesn’t nurture respectful pushback is ending up with  a handful of people harboring feelings of being undervalued and overworked. Worst case scenario? Your company produces work  that is so offensive your PR and legal team gets involved and your target audience is left wondering how many people looked at this and didn’t say anything.

So how do you combat this and provide respectful pushback?

Listen and Give Credit

When you feel strongly about something, it’s easy to flip into a state of listening to respond instead of listening to understand. Make an effort to understand their entire pitch/idea.  Before pushing back , repeat back to them what you’re hearing them say, and state the parts you agree with. You may agree the situation at hand needs fixing, but you might disagree with their solution. It’s important, before jumping right into what’s not working, to give them credit where it’s due.

Doing this fosters a feeling of collaboration instead of combativeness. At the end of the day, you’re working to solve the same problem, so it’s important to remain a united front in finding the best solution.

Carefully Pick The Hills You’re Willing to Die On

One of the most respectful things you can do — for your team and yourself — is work to understand where your personal ethics lie and how they’re coming into play with your perspective on workplace issues. 

For instance, if you feel strongly that inclusive language should be used in every instance, but you have a team member that continues to use “he or she” instead of “they” in their writing, then maybe that’s the hill you die on over and over again. But, if you can see the logic in both sides of an argument, think twice about fighting tooth and nail for the side you prefer. 

There is nothing worse than working with someone who seems to be picking a fight any chance they have. On the other hand, working with someone who never stands up for what they believe in presents its own challenges. 

Knowing at what point you’ll back down — or whether it’s even worth bringing up in the first place —  is not only more respectful, it also brings more weight to voice and opinion when you do speak up.; If you’re fighting for something, they’ll know it’s because you feel strongly about it.

Keep It Factual

Especially in professional settings, bringing feelings and hunches into the conversation becomes a slippery slope. Bringing up feedback with faulty logic or based entirely on how it makes you feel can quickly turn into hurling insults, major defensiveness, and, ultimately, a shutdown in communication.

Keeping your feedback k factual and tactful (e.g., you’re frequently late to meetings, which delays the team vs. you’re too lazy to get to meetings on time, which pisses everyone off) means there’s less room for your message to be mistaunderstood  or blown off. When pushback turns into criticism, or when it’s not grounded in facts, , it’s not only a waste of your and your colleague’s time, it’s also damaging to your working relationship. 

Though telling someone they’re frequently late to meetings and you need them to work harder to be on time can be uncomfortable, it’s worse when the issue isn’t resolved.

Walk The Walk

Of course, you can’t always be handing out feedback  without being able to hear it yourself. Nobody’s perfect, and to nurture a company culture of openness and vulnerability means you need to do the work, too. 

If someone pushes back on you, check your defensiveness before you speak. It's normal to want to stand up for yourself, but it’s important to know when it’s okay to do that and when it’s not (see: Carefully Pick Your Hills). 

If you handle pushback with grace and are willing to hear other perspectives, your colleagues will better understand your own feedback  comes from a good place. 

Be Respectful

Above all else, it’s crucial to nurture an underlying tone of respect among your colleagues. If the respect is there, there’s more room for productive, respectful pushback to happen. The second respect is tarnished, it’s hard to give feedback, no matter how innocent your intentions are.

Respect your colleagues’ time, resources, and space — physical, mental, and emotional — and you’re already on your way to nurturing a respectful feedback loop at work.

// image by mentatdgt