How to Give Negative Feedback to a Coworker

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negative feedback


Unfortunately, managers do not always give positive feedback and sometimes they need to deliver negative feedback as well in order to keep all of the employees on track and help them reach their full potential. Although giving negative feedback is not an easy task, you may ease the process by following the below tips.

  • Deliver Feedback Privately: Never deliver negative feedback to your coworkers in front of other team members because they may get offended. Also, don’t email negative feedback. People can misunderstand emails very easily. Always set up a private meeting and make the discussion in person.
  • Be Constructive Not Destructive: Don’t attack your coworkers mentioning all of their negative behaviors. Try to explain the results of their negative behavior and tell them how they can fix it. For example; the reports you prepare doesn’t reflect so and so and this makes us lose money. However, if you prepare your reports differently/ the way we showed you/ x way, we can get ahead of our competitors/ we earn time and money.
  • Don’t Wait: Don’t wait until the next performance review to give your feedback. Be timely and give both your positive and negative feedback regularly. If giving feedback becomes part of your weekly routine, then, your coworkers don’t get upset and your feedback doesn’t lose its importance due to timeout.
  • Give the Other Person a Chance: Tell your coworker that you still believe him/her to try to encourage him/her. This will also cheer him/her up. Also, ask if s/he needs anything from you and how you can help. Then, let him/her speak so s/he can respond to your statements and mention his/her own opinions.
  • Agree On an Action Plan: Decide together what you can to improve your coworker’s performance. Maybe, s/he needs more training or coaching. Maybe, you need to pair this person up with another employee to be his/her role model so s/he can start doing the things needed and stop doing the things unwanted.
  • Follow-Up: Set up a specific time to follow up with this employee. In this follow-up meeting, review what s/he has done so far and his/her improvements. This will help him/her to regain confidence and encourage him/her to get more responsibility. Don’t micromanage the employee fearing that s/he can make another mistake. This can cause him/her lose his/her confidence again.
Picture of Ceren Cubukcu

Ceren Cubukcu

Ceren Cubukcu is a top 5 bestselling author of Make Your American Dream A Reality: How to Find a Job as an International Student in the United States. She recently founded her consulting business to help more international students find jobs in the US in addition to her self-service digital event ticketing platform, Etkinlik Fabrikam (My Event Factory), to offer her webinars. 

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