Hey lovely folks, welcome to the Majority of Work podcast, where we talk about all the ways we as software engineers work with other people and how we can improve at it to thrive in and enjoy our careers. My name is Callie and I'm very excited about today's episode because it's the first one. And also because it's one of the topics that I would say even my closest friends talked to me about all the time, they'll ask me questions or even give me feedback about and that is giving tough feedback.
Now what I mean by tough is not, oh man, I'm just so weighted down by the compliments I want to give people, yeah not that, but more so when we have to give people critical feedback, negative feedback, constructive feedback, however, whatever adjective you want to use to say this might hurt them, this might upset them, which wouldn't turn her door upset me.
So giving tough feedback is an essential part of, I mean, honestly, to being a human being, but especially as a software engineer, we rarely build things by ourselves. We're building things that they're people, we're working with all different levels of leadership, all different kinds of roles. And so we have to in order to excel and get better, we have to iterate and in order to iterate, we have to give tough feedback.
Now what's interesting on a personal note about this is I would say my default setting is actually not to be an honest person. I was that kid who lied about everything so much that you're like, why is she lying about that? That's a very dumb thing to lie about. I remember my younger brother and I were walking with some friends one time and I was telling them that like we had a trampoline, we did not have a trampoline and my brother called me out on it and I was super mad.
But like, why am I lying about trampoline? Maybe because I wanted them to like think I was cool. Does a trampoline make people cool? I don't know. The point is my default setting is not to be honest and there's a really strong connection between those things like giving tough feedback is because you are telling the truth. You should never give tough feedback. That's a lie. That's just lying. That's not tough feedback.
And so we have to come to a place where we just we think it's important to tell people the truth or to acknowledge the truth, to acknowledge reality. And so what I want to emphasize is you do not have to be a person who has always valued that, seen the value, experienced the value in order to value it because I wasn't at this point in my life, I now feel like weighed down when I'm not being honest. Like I feel like someone put like a muzzle on me when I just can't be honest about things.
So that's changed a lot in my life. And so for you too, if you're kind of like, you know, I just kind of like to dodge the truth or try to hide it or try to minimize it, I totally get that and you also don't have to stay that way. So before we dive into a few ways to give feedback, I have seven principles on that. First I just want to give three reasons why I personally choose to give tough feedback. I mean, it's hard. Even to this day, I've practiced doing it intentionally for over a decade.
And I still sometimes feel like I'm going to throw up. I guess I'm nervous. So I guess those good news and bad news is it gets easier functionally, but I think to a certain extent, it never gets easier emotionally in the sense that I don't know. I don't care because if you don't care, then I don't think you should be given tough feedback because that means you might be kind of cutthroat. That's not helpful. So here are three reasons why I personally give tough feedback.
Number one, I believe that truth is inherently valuable. That sounds like really abstract and like highfalutin a little bit, but it kind of became established for me when I was doing my undergrad and I had an ethics and literature class and had a wonderful professor, professor Nehmeh. She's the best. What a great teacher. And I realized in that class, it's going through things of how important that is to me is I want to know what people actually think.
I want to be able to share what I actually think. And I, the best way to describe it is like, I want to experience reality and I don't want to pretend reality is not real. I don't know. That just sounds like real circular, but like my favorite people in the world are not people who agree with me or people who think I'm always right or all those things. I mean, I love those people and I appreciate them.
But my favorite people are those who are honest and authentic because I just, I know what I'm showing up for and I just know, I know how this works. So again, for me, just that truth is inherently valuable because it's just reality and I don't think we should all embrace reality. So the second reason I choose to give tough feedback is because close, real or meaningful relationships depend on trust and I believe that trust requires truth. You can trust someone and you could be wrong about them.
But to me, that's, I mean, you are choosing to trust them, but you don't actually know what's going on. And so I have the strongest relationships with people who I can give and receive feedback from that we can both grow together and that growth, that meaningful relationship is so important to me. And so giving tough feedback has enabled me to have wonderful friendships and relationships both inside working outside of it. And so I could never go back at this point.
The third reason why I choose to give tough feedback is simply because I want to receive tough feedback and it feels like to be a hypocrite if I want it and never give it. So there are many reasons why I love one of my specific family members and one of them is because I never have to guess what she thinks of me or a situation or other people because it is just all over her face. And yeah, it can be hard sometimes and she's upset, but I feel very secure because I know the truth always.
And I just, I want that tough feedback. I want to know, okay, what does she actually think? Because then we can work through it. So all three of those kind of come together. I believe that truth is inherently valuable, close-reel or meaningful relationships depend on that trust, which depends on the truth, and I myself want tough feedback. I've just grown so much from it from people having the courage to tell me about myself. So those are the reasons why I choose to give it.
I'd love to hear why you choose to give it or why you don't. Without further ado, I want to talk about seven principles of giving the tough feedback. Number one, know the person and build rapport before you need it. Pretty much always you are guaranteed to mess up tough feedback if you don't know the person. This is where a lot of managers, but also like I see is getting trouble is they can roll into a new working relationship and be like, I'm new here. Let me just start saying stuff.
I'm like, you do not know anyone. You can do that. It's, it's your right, I guess, as an employee, but this is not going to go well because you don't know the person. You don't even know how they like to receive feedback. You don't know if they're detail oriented or logic driven or emotionally driven. You don't know what's important to them. And so all these different ways that we come to know people, it is so key that we know the person and build rapport before we need it.
An analogy about relationships that doesn't sound great at first, but it's really true is that a lot of rapport and good and bad in a relationship, it's like a transaction. Oh, we need to make enough deposits in a relationship like affirmation and compliments and laughter and fun in order to draw on those things, make withdraws when things don't go well, when you mess up, when you accidentally insult them, when you need to give them tough feedback, when, you know, different things like that.
And so what happens is often we find ourselves in situations with people and we either haven't had the chance to work with them closely or we don't even know them that well. But by the time we get to the point where, oh, we need to give them tough feedback, we haven't built enough rapport to make the relationship okay afterwards. Which is like, oh, yeah, well, they're super sensitive. I'm like, are they sensitive? You just don't know them and you just rolled up and tore apart their PR.
Like, they have no reason to be like, wow, I really appreciate that you did that. So some ways to know the person and build rapport before you need it are to be able to answer the question, what is important to them? You can see this often by the way people behave. Maybe they're the engineer who are always doing extra tests. Like they test every edge case ever known to man, woman, and child and other things that you're like literally known that's never going to happen. Like, that's a show.
They're just the test person, okay? And there's other people who are the QA person, whether they're just going to test something manually to the end of its life. Someone else's documentation person, someone else's the infrastructure person. Someone else is the, I just really need to explore so many different ideas before we choose one person. What is important to this person? And also just how do they interact? Are they very swayed by data? Are they very swayed by logic?
Do they more so cater to people with strong personalities? Do you kind of need to like, strong talk them into submission when you need to make a decision as a team? Like, what is this person like? And that can also help you know how to phrase and how to do your tough feedback when the time comes. Another thing is to affirm and encourage people always. And without strings attached, it is a wonderful thing to get kind words from someone and that's the entire message.
Like if someone's just like, Cali, your PR was great. Like you really thought through that feature super well and I can't wait for people to see this. And then I'm like, and then I'm like, no, that's it. That's the message. Like there's no, but also this sex. So you forgot about this. Like, no, that's, that's it. So I'd say. But that is so rare because often we're stuck in the compliment sandwich spiral, which for the record, not a great idea.
But the compliment sandwich is you're using good to get to the bad. And so even the good is sourd. The good is ruined because the listener is like, yeah, just get to the part where you're upset with me or just get to the part where I failed.
But if we just affirm and encourage people, when we have to make a withdrawal from that and we have to talk about something that's more difficult like, hey, really let the team down in this way or hey, this really doesn't look good in this PR or this feature you did. Like when you get there, they're already secure in your respect for them. They already know that you treat them kindly and that you are good to them. So giving them tough feedback isn't as hard.
Now before I go on to principles two through seven of giving tough feedback, I want to emphasize how important again, this first one is because if you skip those steps of getting to know people and building rapport, the perfect word choice will never matter. Like sometimes you'll get lucky. The stars will align and you'll say that one word that like slips through people's radar and I'm very happy for you.
But in general, the perfect word cannot save you from the lack of a relationship or the lack of rapport with someone. Perfect words will not hold up a broken or untrustworthy relationship. So in order to really get good at giving tough feedback, you have to do the hard work that involves investing in people way before you have to lean on it. Alright, that said, let's go to number two. So second principle is wait until you're calm.
The next few principles will talk about how to be able to talk to people and if you get to those steps and you're like, I can't do this right now, then now is not the time my friend. Right now needs you to wait until you're calm. Ways that help me, one is the passing of time. There's just nothing like it. And I don't mean the passing of time like months, probably shouldn't wait that long. But I mean the passing of time like a day for sure hours, often several good nights of sleep.
But something else that helps me is I'll write letters that I will never send. It's a way for me to process what someone has done and how I feel about it. And I'll never send them because they're rude or sarcastic or way too intense and use words that I should never use really to someone else when I'm trying to give them tough feedback. It helps me process my anger or my hurt or my frustration or my irritation, whatever the word you want to use.
And so we need to be able to process our feelings so that we don't unleash them on someone else. Because the purpose of tough feedback is not to put someone in their place or to crush them or to get revenge or I don't know some other silly thing. The purpose of tough feedback, maybe I should have said this at the beginning, but it's cool. It's first episode. We'll just go through it. The purpose of tough feedback is to help the other person grow and to mend and repair your current relationship.
Now sometimes the mending isn't necessary. You're like, we're good. I'm not mad at you. You just also, you know, for your own sake, you need to grow. But that's the purpose of it is it's not to crush people or to hurt them, but it's to give them the gift of self-awareness and help them grow. And if you're still stuck on your feelings, which are totally valid, you're not going to be in a good enough space to think about the other person and to phrase things in a winsome, helpful way.
So first, wait until you're calm. Feel the feelings, be upset, give feedback later, and never use your anger as a courage booster of like, oh, I'm mad. So like right now, my journal notes going to make me be honest to you. I bet that's not the time. Wait until you're calm. The third principle is use simple objective language. Describe what actually happened.
So things like, and yesterday's meeting, I noticed when you started talking, when I was talking about five different times, or over the last few months, it seems like you write comments on my PRs that focus on smaller details than anyone else's PRs. Or, and the demo yesterday, when asked about the project, used language that gave you the full credit for both of our work. So notice what I'm not saying, right? I'm not saying. And yesterday's meeting, you just like talked over me the whole time.
You just really think you are the only person in the world that's something important to say, well, other people do too. Okay, don't say that. Or man, or the last few months, you are just tearing apart my PRs and you do it to no one else. What is your deal? Or, and the demo yesterday, you made it seem like you just did everything. And I wasn't important at all. I don't know why you would do that. So those aren't the emotional or intense versions.
The first one is just the objective, simple language. See, this is why we have to wait until we're calm. We don't want to use inflammatory language of any kind or superlatives, words like always or never or things like that. Instead we want to ask, what did you observe? And a good rule of thumb is what could someone see without reading anyone's minds or describing any motives.
So someone sitting in the Zoom call could see, yeah, when person A was talking, person B started talking while person A was still talking five different times. Like that's just a reality thing that you can just observe. And same thing with PRs, you can look at, I noticed how these PR comments focus on smaller details. These don't, there's a little bit of subjectivity there, but you can also bring it up with some data.
And the third, using language that gave someone the full credit when it belonged to multiple people, using words like I instead of we, there's a way to observe those things, but there's no ascribing of motives of you did this because you just want that promotion or you did this because you're mad at me or you did this because you think I'm stupid. Like there's none of that.
So using simple and objective language helps people see that you're just observing something and you're not coming further neck. It also gives them the space to describe perhaps why they did it. It is possible. I know it's hard, it's hard to imagine, but it's possible that someone did not mean to do what they did and they didn't even know or it's even possible they had a good reason to do what they did and you had no idea.
So it invites a conversation if you're just like this happened versus telling someone about how they're, you know, terrible or something. So once you tell someone what happened, what you observed, number four, the fourth principle is you want to tell them about their impact and you want to make it about you and maybe other people, but not them. This is one of those times where selflessness in the way you talk really backfires. So this is the time you want to be selfish in the way you talk.
I mean, you want to talk about yourself and the impact on you again, maybe other people, it depends, but not you don't talk about them. Like do not ascribe motive or try to mind read like I know you just did this because no, no, you don't know, you do not know. Even if you're trying to be nice like, oh, I know you just did this because you're trying to help me grow. You don't know that. And people trying to mind read like, does that sound like a good time? People trying to read your mind.
It just triggers people's defenses. So even if you are a thousand percent sure, that's cool. Keep it on the inside. Don't talk about it. Also saying things that again, maybe sound helpful like, I'm just telling you this so you can grow as a person. That does sound super condescending. So you can work, you can sometimes do this a little bit if you're in a position of authority like you're someone's manager.
But if you're a peer, you just kind of sound like you think you're better than them, like a superior to a superior, a superior to a superior to a complex. So oh, I'm just telling you this, you did this yesterday and yeah, it wasn't good that you did this. So I'm just, I'm telling you this, you can grow as a person. Man, I want to slap that person. Like, it just, yeah, you know, so that's not a great approach.
But instead, you want to talk about how it made you feel and to pay on the person, to pay on their relationship, you can use stronger language or just less language. Another thing too is to pay on the person. You can focus more on the logic and you can, other times, you can also focus more on the emotions because I think we can all agree that some people are more receptive to emotional conversations than others that's not in my experience at least.
So for example, let's go back to the example of, and yesterday's meeting, I noticed you started talking when I was talking about five different times. And when that happens, it kind of feels like you don't think what I have to say is as important. That's just how it comes across for me. Right? So that's just talking about, I'm not saying you are doing that, but that's how it feels. That's how it feels for me.
Or over the last few months, it seems like you write comments in my PRs that focus on smaller details than anyone else's PRs. It starts to feel like you don't trust my judgment or my ideas on the PRs because the level of response seems like it's just smaller on mine. Or yesterday, you checked in with me five different times on whether or not I was going to get something done. I told you when I was going to get it done over Slack and you still kept checking in.
So it makes me feel like you don't trust me to get my work done when you do that. And it makes it very difficult for me to be able to do deep work and focus because I'm afraid I'm going to miss a check-in instead of just doing the work itself. All right? So you're not saying, man, you're a micromanager, you're the worst, but this is what happened. You checked in with me all these times. And this is how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like you don't trust me.
It makes me feel like you don't think I'm smart. It makes me think that you don't find what I have to say valuable. And that's how it comes across me. That's how it makes me feel. Now once you say these things, even if not at this point in the conversation, but later on, people are going to respond. And sometimes they're super gracious like, oh, my days, I had no idea I was doing that. I'm so sorry. I'll do better. Those are great. But other times, people can be defensive.
And that's a pretty common reaction, honestly. There's like over the top defensive, but right now I just want to talk about kind of like regular defensive where people don't seem to be truly hearing what you're saying. And they're just like, well, it's not what I meant or, you know, and they just kind of like push back about your perception. So we'll talk later about I'll sometimes you should let that go.
But for the fifth principle, one of the best ways to handle this is to listen for and address their fears. So again, the person you're giving feedback to, they have fears. You want to listen for and address them. I'll give you some examples and then I'll explain what I mean. I gave someone feedback a while ago and told them how some of their work practices were hurting other people, myself included.
And it was very thorough feedback was very involved and it really upset this person by what I said. And one of the things that they kept saying was how they felt like they weren't being trusted or they felt like they weren't doing good enough. They felt like they weren't being perceived as excellent as they were. And this person's fear, I know because I also have known them for a very long time.
I worked closely with them, but also because I was listening to them in this moment, this person was afraid of being seen and competent. And this person is one of the most brilliant people that I know. And if they're listening right now, they know exactly what I'm talking about. They are incredibly brilliant, like I aspire to their level of brilliance. And so to me, I'm like, what the heck? Like they're not incompetent. They are like the founder of competence. What do you mean?
And so I realized though that because that's a fear of theirs, that's something that they just worry about being as incompetent. And because that wasn't what I meant at all, I could clarify that. And I told them point blank, like for the record, I think you're brilliant. Like I think you're a fantastic software engineer. I'm telling you these things because I think they will help you. And I think, you know, these are things you can work on.
Like I'm not saying like this is who you are point blank and this brief stay. This is like the stamp of your character. I'm just telling you because I think you're great and you can be even greater. And so I had to listen forward and address that fear. Someone else, I was giving them feedback and there's a few things that they were doing that didn't find helpful in their communication pattern. And the way they responded was, oh, there wasn't my intention at all.
I'm so sorry, but like I really didn't mean to do that. Like I had only good intentions, but I really, you know, I'm really sorry, which that's a little hard for me personally because to me that sounds like a non-apology of like, I'm sorry, it came across like that to you. But you know, we'll talk about non-apologies another time. But what I heard from what they were saying is I was like, oh, they're worried about how their intentions come across.
And I personally had no qualms or worries about their intentions. And anyway, I think they're incredibly kind. And so I told them that I was like, hey, just to just to clarify something really quick, I don't think anyone questions your motives or your intentions. Like I think you are incredibly kind. I think you want to help people. I know you're trying to move heaven and earth to help me and others like genuinely, I see no issues with your intentions.
My emphasis right now is not so much about your intentions, but your impact, like how it comes across. And I want your intentions to be clearer. And they would be clearer if you did XYZ. So listening to them was and that then that changed the caliber of the conversation. And they started listening closer like, oh, okay, as long as you like, no, I'm a good person. I'm like, for sure, I think you're a great person.
And so being able to see how that changed the caliber of the conversation because now they're not defending their core fear or defending their core personality. They're just like, oh, okay, Kelly thinks I'm super competent. Kelly thinks I'm super kind and helpful. She just give me some tweaks. And I'm like, yeah, that's it. I'm not coming for your neck. I'm not saying you're a terrible person. So generally people aren't going to come out and say, I'm afraid of XYZ.
Like for me, I mean, I'll tell you all if you want to know. But like my greatest fear is to not be productive and to not contribute. Like I need to feel useful. I need to feel like I'm getting stuff done. But like I don't just go around saying that to people. But instead what you'll hear me say is I'm overwhelmed with my to-do list. I don't know what to prioritize or I need to get this done by Thursday. If it kills me. And I was like, okay, well, Kelly clearly is motivated by productivity.
So listen closely to people's words. And you can sometimes hear what they're afraid of. Like this person is afraid to disappoint people. This person is afraid. We're all going to get fired. This person is afraid to be seen as unkind or incompetent. Or this person is afraid to look stupid. Like we all have these different fears. And sometimes when we want people to hear us, we need to affirm them where they need that affirmation the most. So they know we're not talking about that.
I know your mind always goes there because something you're afraid of or something you're, you know, you just have this core thing about. But that's not what I'm talking about. Our sixth principle of giving tough feedback is make an ask for next time or the future. It is so important to show people how to succeed. No one likes a message where they're like, hey, by the way, are you all these things wrong? Yeah, I hated it. Anyways, have a good day. Where's the redemption? Where's the solution?
Like how do we get out of this place? So it's really important that we ask for something. And it can even be collaborative. It doesn't have to be like, I have arrived with all of the answers. My best friend, and we've been friends for over 15 years at this point. She has really helped me with this because what often I would do is I just kind of show up with my, my report where I'm like, this is what you did. This is how it affected me. And this way you're doing the future. Awesome. That's it.
I'm talking. You're listening. But it can also be very collaborative. It can be like, hey, this happened and this made me feel this way. But I'd love to hear from your perspective, like what was going on for you or how we can work better in these situations. So it can be a collaborative ask. That's totally great. And oftentimes, that's the best. We still need to have an ask so we're not just telling people like, you're awful. And this is what hurt me and you suck.
So if it's collaborative, you can have questions like that where again, you end. So you say the objective, simple language, you talk about yourself and how it impacted you. And then you can say something like, yeah, but I know, you know, I can't read your mind. I don't know what's going on. And I'm sure you have really good intentions. So I'm just trying to better understand what was going on. And I'd love to hear what was going on for you and also how we can work better in these situations.
Right. And then you started conversation. But maybe you do know something specific that would be helpful and you're welcome to say that as well. So some examples could be, hey, so going forward, I'd really appreciate if you used the raised hand function. So people knew you're going to talk and you won't interrupt me or other people at the same time. That'd be super helpful. So that's the person interrupts you in Zoom, right? Next is it would have helped a lot if you asked questions from here.
It'll help if you learn about our services before prescribing a solution for them. That'll really help us be more receptive to what you have to say. And last, I suggest letting myself and others just kind of talk about how we're feeling about it before telling us why we need to do it. So these are variations of very real feedback. I've given to people from managers to just hire up engineers to me then and also peers. This is just, this is real stuff that we go through, right?
As software engineers. So we really want to make sure you leave on a note where you're collaborating for what they can do in the future or even how you can change in the future, right? Because maybe you just need to adjust in certain ways. So collaborative or asking them for something specific and then opening up that up for a conversation and see how it sounds to them. Our last principle for giving tough feedback, number seven, you cannot force anyone to hear you.
You can only choose to give clear feedback and represent yourself well. This is one of, if not the hardest part of giving tough feedback. Because sometimes even if you build rapport, even if you know the person, even if you listen to this podcast and you like crafted all these messages and you got like feedback from people on your feedback before you send it to them, people can just choose not to listen to you. People can ignore you, people can say, Oh, for sure, for sure.
And then never change, people can blow up at you. It's just a thing because we all are people and we all don't handle certain things well. You have to let other people make their own choices and it can be especially hard when we're learning to do this because we're like, Okay, so were they like super upset because I'm really bad at getting feedback or because there was nothing I could do. And I really wish I had this like magical formula to give you to tell you, but I don't.
I question myself sometimes too, where I think through something and I get people's help and I think through it and it still doesn't land well. And is it because I'm still growing in this, which I for sure am, or is it just because there was nothing I could do? I don't know. Giving tough feedback is not a skill to brainwash others where as long as I say the right words, I will bend people to my will. Like that's no. You can only choose to represent yourself well and attempt to help others.
You don't have control of the situation you never did and you never will. So when we give that feedback, when we have those conversations, it's important to of course reflect on it. How could I have improved? How could I think through it? But you have to let it go and you have to let people make their own choices no matter what choices you make for yourself. So again, from the top, seven principles of giving tough feedback. Number one, know the person and build rapport before you need it.
Number two, wait until you're calm. Number three, use simple objective language, describe what actually happened. Number four, make it about you and maybe others, but not them. Number five, listen for and address their fears. Number six, make an outright ask or a collaborative ask. For next time or the future. And number seven, you cannot force anyone to hear you. You can only choose to give clear feedback and represent yourself well.
I hope those seven principles were very helpful and I hope that it addresses something going on in your life right now because I mean, we're working with other people and we're other people's tough. Next episode, we'll talk about something that in my opinion is even more important than giving tough feedback. But she helped to wait to see what that is. So practical tip as we wrap up today, I want to give you three options of things you can implement right now or the very least tomorrow or Monday.
Okay, let's not make this complicated. You can implement this very, very soon. Next time here at work, option one, start building rapport with someone before you need it. Identify someone in your life, maybe a superior, like a manager or an engineer ahead of you or a peer or even a junior and start to build that rapport.
Something you can do specifically is affirm them for something they do well at work just because sent them a Slack message, mentioned it and passing in a Zoom call, but go out of your way to say something affirming and just say it. Option number two, go straight for the jugular, give someone some tough feedback using the principles that we talked about today. There's someone that you're like, yeah, I even know what to say. I know the person is, I just know what to do. Yeah, use that.
And so go and give someone that tough feedback. I believe you and you're going to do great. Option number three, maybe there's someone on your mind that's been on your mind during this episode and you're like, I really need to give that person feedback like, but gosh, I'm just so upset still. So for you, write out a letter that you will never send just to process what's going on. What is it that upsets you so much? Why are you so hurt? Why is it not easy for you to move past?
What are the feelings you have? What do you think about this person? Even if it's, you know, they're like, I think they hate me. Like maybe you don't think that logically, but if you think it emotionally, you know, write it out. So option one, affirmation option two, give the feedback option three, write the letter. But choose to do one of those three things as soon as you can because listening to podcasts don't actually make you better at being a software engineer, even in your soft skills.
They just give you more knowledge. To grow out and apply it, my friend. Go out and apply it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll see you next time. And remember software engineering is not just about clean code. It's about clear communication because the majority of work involves other people. Yeah, I'll have a good one. Be sure to update me.