Day 3: How to Deliver Hard Feedback in a 1:1 Meeting When You Hate Confrontation
The reframe – and the language – for the conversation you’ve been postponing
Dreading a conversation with a colleague you know you need to have? Today we’re going to talk about how to deliver hard feedback in a 1:1 meeting… even if you hate confrontation.
What’s coming up today:
How confrontation can actually be a kindness
5 moves for delivering hard feedback in a 1:1 without wrecking the relationship
A single action item to help you put this into practice
Welcome to Day 3 of our 5-Day Mastering 1:1 Meetings Challenge.
Yesterday we talked about how to hold a useful 1:1 with someone you don’t have much of a rapport with – how to open, what kinds of questions land, how to close.
Today we’re going somewhere a little harder – when you have to deliver hard feedback in a 1:1 and you hate confrontation.
You might have even been sitting on this feedback for weeks. Letting missed deadlines slide. Ignoring behaviors. Hoping the drop in work quality would fix itself.
You likely know what you need to say, you just don’t want to say it. Today is about making speaking up feel a little easier.
As a reminder, here’s where we stand in this challenge:
Day 2: How to Make 1:1s Productive When There’s No Rapport Yet
Day 3: How to Deliver Hard Feedback in a 1:1 (You Are Here)
Day 4: What to Do When Your Team Member Isn’t Engaged
Day 5: Bridging Personality Differences in 1:1 Meetings
A reader requested I cover something specific in this series. They said:
“I don’t like confrontation, so I’d appreciate some guidance on how to tell somebody off in a 1:1.”
I read that and felt every word of it. Confrontation is something I’ve personally struggled with my whole career, and as an ISFJ-T, I suspect I always will.
If you’re a Turbulent personality (the -T at the end of your four-letter code), there’s a decent chance you feel the same. Turbulent types tend to care a lot about how things are going to land and how we’ll be perceived afterward – which makes it harder to say a thing we know is going to come across badly in the moment, even when we know it needs to be said.
So let’s start with a small reframe that made this easier for me.
Confrontation, Done Right, Is a Kindness
Years ago, I worked with a C-suite leader who had to let someone go on his team. I remember being surprised by how calm he was about it. But then I discovered his thought process behind hard tasks like this, and it started to make a whole lot of sense.
That leader believed that letting someone stay and struggle would be unkind. It’s a kindness to let them go and find a role where they can thrive.
That sentence reframed the whole thing for me.
When you withhold hard feedback from someone – when you let a behavior slide, or let a performance issue go un-addressed, or cushion the real message until it loses all its shape – you aren’t being nice. You’re being comfortable. And your team member is the one paying for your comfort.
They’re paying in slower growth, because they don’t actually know what needs to change. They’re paying in a reputation forming around them that they can’t see. They’re paying in a career trajectory quietly stalling out while everyone around them politely looks the other way.
Real kindness, in a leadership role, often looks a lot like the harder conversation.
5 Moves for Delivering Hard Feedback in a 1:1
Dreading a hard conversation isn’t a sign you’re the wrong person to have it. It’s a sign you care about the person on the other side. That dread probably isn’t going to go away, but the good news is that there are a handful of moves you can reach for in the moment, when the adrenaline shows up.
Today, I’m sharing five such moves you can turn to when delivering hard feedback in a 1:1.
One note before we begin: How hard feedback should be delivered can vary depending on the personality type across the table from you. To go deeper into this, check out our guide, How to Tailor Feedback to Each Personality Type. It walks through how to deliver hard feedback to each of the 16 personality types without demotivating them.
