You Might Be a Bosshole® If: You Don't Overcome the Fear of Giving Critical Feedback
This episode explores the critical role of feedback in management, highlighting that avoiding difficult conversations can lead managers into The Bosshole® Zone. John and Karen discuss strategies for providing effective feedback, including establishing clear expectations, scripting difficult conversations, and the importance of regular communication of both praise and criticism.
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"You Might Be a Bosshole IF: You Don’t Overcome the Fear of Giving Critical Feedback"
Original Publish Date: 3/4/2025
Hosts: John Broer and Karen Shulman
John Broer: It's time for another episode of "you might be a Bosshole if" This is a new series. We started on The Bosshole Chronicles a few weeks ago. Welcome everybody out there in the boss hole transformation nation. This is your John Broer host, and joining me today is none other than Karen Shulman.
All of you out there in our audience, you know Karen. She is always one for adding great insight and perspective on those things that help managers and supervisors stay out of the Bosshole Zone. Well, she gave me a great topic for a you "Might Be a Bosshole If episode, and it has to do with feedback. Now we're only going to scratch the surface relative to feedback, but Karen gives us some great insight. We're going to talk about the importance of feedback and I'll tell you what we will have more about this topic in future episodes. All right, let's jump in.
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm, helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
All right, everybody, we got Karen Schulman back with us for one of our new episodes entitled "You Might Be a Boss Hole If and I asked Karen to be on here and you know what was- what would be something that would be a great illustration or example of when a manager might be a Bosshole and she's got a doozy. So, Karen, um, let us know, you might be a Bosshole if what?
Karen Shulman: If you do not give direct feedback, if you do not give critical feedback to people that are not performing at a level that you would like them to. I have seen managers, I have seen leaders, I have seen Bossholes actually avoid situations where they have to give feedback. I have seen people soft pedal the message so that it's not truly understood. They feel like they've communicated what needs to be communicated and the person goes off thinking, hey, I'm doing fine. And that doesn't work either. I've even seen some managers actually pawn off the duty of giving somebody critical feedback to somebody else and here's what happens. I mean, you know, in any of those situations, the chances of the person continuing to perform in the way that they have been performing, which is suboptimal. They're probably going to continue doing that because they don't know that anything needs to change. And it's not done by osmosis, it's not figured out. This is basically enabling poor performance.
JB: Right. The part about outsourcing critical feedback is just amazing to me, and yes, we know what happens. The word that comes to mind is cowardice, and that may be kind of harsh, but I think it's true no-transcript uncomfortableness than the need for the other person to perform.
KS: And I think the priorities are mixed up. I think the priority has to be I want the performance to be better. How do I ensure that the performance gets better? I have to give them critical feedback, regardless of how uncomfortable that might be for me.
JB: I need to do it. So the manager, the Bosshole, the person that might be a Bosshole, who is not providing critical and constructive feedback, is really making it about them and not the direct report. Okay, that makes sense to me. I used to work for a guy named Greg years ago, early, early in my career, and he was a super nice guy, never wanted to share bad news, never wanted to have those tough conversations, and I remember one time I was in the sales group and I took an order from a client incorrectly.
There's a shock, you know, lower formality, Captain. I missed some of the detail and weeks later I was out in our facility and I saw the product that was supposed to go to this customer and I knew that that was my order. And I asked somebody, I said, why is this here? And they said, oh, it was returned, it was wrong and it was like I never heard about it. He never brought it to my attention and it's like you know, man, that's. I feel horrible about this, but I would have thought, you know, he would have come to me and say, John, we have to talk about.
KS: By not giving you that feedback, you could have gone out and sold the same thing to another customer or many customers and it would have been done wrong. And what was the cost to the company? And what happened to your relationship with that manager? Because you figured it out on your own, you never got the feedback from the manager. What happened to the relationship?
JB: Yep, that's right, and I don't know. I walked away from there thinking, if I was ever a manager, I would at least need to have the courage to step forward and say something. However, one of the things that we have to think about as a leading indicator is that when a direct report has clearly defined expectations in other words, they understand exactly what success looks like. Having those conversations the difficult ones, is much easier because you are both working from the same perspective. We know what your performance metrics are. If you fall short, let's have a conversation around those.
I'm reminded of a phrase we use all the time at Real Good Ventures is that feedback is the oxygen of engagement and people need it. They really deserve your feedback, not to be harsh, not to be brutal, but to be truthful and transparent. So what are managers to do? How do we help them stay out of the Bosshole zone? I mean, one example is clearly defined expectations, but this feedback thing is a problem. What are you seeing? You're seeing it manifest in problematic ways in some circumstances where you're working. What needs to happen?
KS: Again, probably a shifting of the priorities in the manager's head. Okay, this isn't about me, this is about what's best for the organization, this is about what's best for my relationship with my direct report. This is what's best for overall performance, for quality, et cetera. I think that shift in mindset needs to take place and I think, you know, for especially for managers that are really uncomfortable giving the feedback this is going to sound kind of, maybe, juvenile, but I think it really helps, whenever you have to give feedback, that is difficult for you to do write out a script, actually, you know, put down some bullet points of the things that you need to convey to the person about what your expectations are, where the performance is falling short, and let's generate some ideas on how to make it better.
I think if you have a script that kind of follows that type of discussion, it would be immensely helpful. And look at your notes, take the notes into the meeting with you so that you understand what you need to cover, and you might even want to practice a little bit before you even get into the session, because it is hard. It is hard to give feedback. But I'll tell you something it's hard to give critical feedback the first several times that you do it. When you start seeing the results that you want and the expectations are clarified and the person knows what they need to do better and they start doing it, then that should be motivation for the manager to say, oh, that was a good thing that I did, that was helpful. Let me do more of that.
JB: And then when you see that, when you see people moving in that direction, reinforce it. Then the feedback takes a different perspective. I am reinforcing and celebrating these successes.
KS: No, I think that that's critically important, John, because usually these managers that tend to avoid or not really give critical feedback when and if they do do it and the behavior changes, then there still is no more feedback letting the person know. Right, this is on the right track. Yeah, that is really important. When you see people doing the right thing, go back and give them more feedback. It does increase engagement. What, what is it? Most people want feedback at least weekly. Yeah, so we we need to do that in order to have a fully engaged workforce.
JB: I think we're going to have an episode of this strictly on feedback, because I think that that has been a a topic in management circles that has been sort of misunderstood. Managers and supervisors feeling like, oh, I have to give feedback, constantly I have to give feedback. Well, there's different kinds of feedback to your point, and not all of it is positive. It has to be constructive. But I do know Bossholes out there that are like they're just waiting for somebody to screw up and they will pounce and they will diminish and demean the individual. That's not motivating, that's not inspiring to somebody. You need to get so much better at that. And then others I've had a manager say this you know, when I've said, hey, don't forget to celebrate the small successes. When somebody gives you a glimpse of understanding what they should be doing, celebrate that. And they go. Now they know I appreciate it. It's like, oh my gosh, that is boss hole behavior. Right there too, agreed.
KS: I think that it's really important to provide ongoing feedback, both critical and, you know, I think the critical feedback it's something you really have to practice and yeah, and I think you're exactly right, you can't assume that people know what you're thinking. They don't necessarily they might, but I think you have to learn to speak the words and you need to learn how to give both critical and positive feedback and celebrate you truly when you see somebody taking the feedback that you've given them and they're making improvements, absolutely you need to let them know, because otherwise people think, well, okay, so you're noticing the bad stuff that I'm doing, but you're not noticing the good stuff that I'm doing.
JB: Exactly.
KS; That's not terribly motivating, so it's got to be both sides of that. Absolutely two huge things here, Karen.
JB: One, I love the idea of a script, I think writing it down, because if you're going to try to do it in the moment spontaneously, you're going to talk yourself, you're going to dig a hole so deep and that's what happens, and that's when managers are ineffectual. It also reminds me of the AI component of like, for example, one of our newest modules with Perform. It actually helps a manager through just queuing up specific words or phrases about how a person is doing, whether it's, you know, positive or they're challenged in some areas, the AI will actually create and provide some guidance. It doesn't- you don't have to use the script, you can still put it in your own words, but it's an aid to help make that feedback more effective. And then the final thing that I just want to say and this is such a great topic, Karen, thank you for bringing it up is a manager has a responsibility to provide frequent, timely, constructive feedback, but you need to be getting feedback. You know you need to be soliciting feedback from others.
How am I doing? How am I? Am I, you know? In what ways am I helping you the most? In what ways am I holding you back? Responsible for is developing others.
KS: Yes, and if we're not giving feedback, either critical, constructive or positive, we are really missing the boat on one of our key responsibilities, which is to develop others.
JB: Nice. Okay. Well, there's another one, you might be a Bosshole if.. Words of wisdom from Karen Shulman. Karen, thanks again, it's been awesome.
KS: Thank you, it's been fun.
JB: All right, everybody, keep tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles. Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own Bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. We'll see you next time.