Episode 240 - When Negative Feedback Becomes Too Much

Summary

Negative feedback can sometimes improve performance and sometimes leave people distracted, discouraged or withdrawing from their work. New research shows that how surprising, disruptive and consequential the feedback feels helps explain those different reactions. This episode looks at how leaders can make difficult feedback clearer and easier to act on.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 240 of the Leadership Today podcast, where each week we share practical tips to improve your leadership. This week we look at negative feedback and why the way someone experiences the feedback can matter just as much as what you actually say.

Most leaders know that feedback needs to be clear and specific. If something isn't working, we need to talk about it rather than hoping the problem fixes itself. But we've probably also experienced situations where feedback seems to have a much bigger impact than we expected. We raise what feels like a fairly straightforward issue and the person becomes defensive, discouraged or distracted by it for days afterwards.

New research published in Human Resource Management helps explain why. Rather than treating every piece of negative feedback as the same, the researchers looked at specific feedback events over a 10-week period. They were particularly interested in how novel, disruptive and critical the feedback felt to the employee. 

By way of example, imagine telling someone they need to tighten up the formatting in a report. That's negative feedback, but it probably isn't particularly surprising or consequential. Now imagine telling someone who believes they are performing well that there are serious concerns about their overall performance. That's a very different event, even if both conversations could technically be described as negative feedback.

The research suggests these characteristics matter because feedback can affect our sense of competence and use up mental resources. If the feedback is significant enough, part of the person's attention shifts away from the work itself and towards trying to understand what has happened, what it means and what they need to do next.

For leaders, one implication is to think beyond the message you are delivering and consider how surprising it will be. If someone has been hearing nothing but positive comments for six months and then receives a major performance concern at their annual review, the novelty of that information becomes part of the problem. Regular, proportionate feedback reduces the likelihood that one conversation has to carry everything.

It's also worth thinking about how disruptive the feedback is. Are you asking the person to make one specific adjustment, or are you effectively telling them that their whole approach needs to change? When substantial change is required, people may need help breaking that into manageable steps rather than leaving the meeting with a broad sense that everything is wrong.

And then there's the issue of competence. Corrective feedback should focus on the approach someone is taking rather than who they are as a person. Something like, “This part isn't yet at the standard we need, so let's work through what needs to change”, gives you room to be clear about the problem while still conveying confidence that improvement is possible.

This doesn't mean cushioning every difficult message or turning negative feedback into praise. Sometimes the feedback genuinely is serious and needs to sound serious. But it does mean recognising that the same words can land very differently depending on what the employee already believes, how consequential the issue is and how much change you're asking them to make.

One question worth asking before your next difficult feedback conversation is: How big an event is this likely to be for the other person? If the answer is “quite a big one”, then allow enough time not just to deliver the feedback, but also to help them make sense of it and work out what happens next.

Clear feedback matters. But effective feedback conversations also take into account the impact of the message on the person.

Reference

Corwin, E. S., Rosen, C. C., Lee, H. W., Simon, L. S., & Johnson, R. E. (2026). Negative Feedback as Performance Conversations: An Event Systems Perspective. Human Resource Management. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.70094.

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