Good leaders are caring, thoughtful, and candid when giving feedback to team members.
Through their feedback and advice, they attempt to amplify a team member’s strengths and help them to change or overcome their weaknesses.
On occasion, a team member receiving their leader’s feedback disagrees with it and chooses not to act on it. This independence is reasonable unless the focus of the feedback concerns actions or behaviors that are having a negative impact on others.
Team members who dig in and refuse to yield to feedback that is obvious to everyone but themselves offer quite a challenge for leaders.
Even after multiple attempts and both indirect and direct forms of the same feedback, incredulous team members often continue to ignore or disregard the recommendations they find uncomfortable, implausible, or too much work.
Common among the reasons for rejecting this feedback is usually a lack of self-awareness. They simply can’t see the negative impact they are having on others by their choices or behaviors. Offering more examples and asserting the feedback more strongly usually doesn’t break through their self-denial.
Savvy leaders have a trick up their sleeves when dealing with a recalcitrant team member who ignores their feedback. They send them on a hunt to learn what others think.
Like encouraging a medical patient to ask for a second opinion, the leader gives them a task: It’s time to talk with your teammates. To complete this task, leaders arm them with one or more questions.
The conversation might go like this:
“I know you don’t believe me when I have repeatedly shared that your passion and intensity intimidate your colleagues’ direct reports. You haven’t taken this seriously or adjusted your approach. So, I want you to do something for both of us. Interview your teammates and ask them this question: How do your direct reports respond and react to my style and advocacy? Listen to what they say. Once you’ve talked to everyone, let’s have another conversation.”
In cases where the peers may be reserved in their answers, the leader might prepare them for the conversation and ask them to help their teammate by being highly candid.
There’s no need to give them talking points or to encourage them to give the person any more than their honest views. This is their chance to help fix a problem they experience. Trust them.
Once the incredulous team member has completed the brief interviews, they normally have a much different view. The negative impact they are having will create an echo that shakes them up.
This will typically convince them to focus their attention on making a real change. Hearing the same feedback from different sources can have a profound effect on awareness. After all, if everyone says the team member walks like a duck and talks like a duck…you know the rest.
When a leader’s feedback is disbelieved, it is sometimes best to deliver it through a different lens. Peers are an excellent lens. When a team member is instructed to ask their peers about what they experience, it is hard for them to remain in denial.
Insight and action depend on self-awareness.
