Giving difficult feedback

[Clearlynotmyname]

I need to give some feedback to someone in my team, i.e. one of my direct reports. I have given negative feedback a few times (not to her) but this one is personal, so I'm really struggling with what to say, and have been putting it off.

Basically, she talks waaaaaaay too much about her life, about things that no one else gives a crap about, such as going on about her PFB to people who don't have children (I do have dcs, but I still find the level of detail she goes into irritating. For the singletons in the team, it's excruciating). More importantly she cannot read body language, e.g. when someone has literally started walking away or typing away on their laptop, she keeps talking. Mostly of course, people are too polite to do that, so they get stuck talking to her, or it delays a meeting while she is still talking. Sometimes it's someone quite senior she's waffling at! It's annoying and embarrassing, and several people have complained to me about it.

It might well be a cultural thing - she is Eastern European and they do tend to be blunter than Brits, (ime - but happy to be corrected!) so maybe she's just failing to read our unhelpfully subtle British signals. Or she interprets a polite "how was your weekend?" as an invitation to describe it, in detail, when we are only being just that - polite, rather than really wanting to know.

I know I need to tell her, but also know I'd be pretty upset by receiving negative feedback about the way I interact with people. Though I don't want to water it down so much she doesn't get the message. It's harming relationships in the team, and is probably harming her career too.

Any advice from anyone who's had to give feedback of a personal nature? Or been on the receiving end... what helped/didn't.

I've been on the receiving end of this conversation, when I was a young apprentice . My then manager discussed appropriate times for talking and professional boundaries with me.
She explained that she may have seemed distant and dismissive in conversation on the lead up to the appraisal and that was because I was talking to much/not at appropriate time/too personal.
It made me very wary over the next few weeks of when to talk as spent time observing other people's interaction. In the long run it has helped me a lot and I am grateful but it was difficult to listen to at the time.

Buttercup, that's really helpful, thanks. Reassuring that you appreciated the feedback in the long run. On reflection I had personal feedback of an opposite nature (I came across as too quiet and grumpy) in my first role and it was really useful in hindsight.
My team member isn't junior though. In fact she is older than me! Will that make it worse do you think?

The shit sandwich is always the way to go.
The bread are compliments about things she does do well at either end of the conversation, the meat/shit is the constructive criticism in the middle.

It might make it easier as she won't have the possible 'the world revolves around me' attitude that some juniors might have.

Maybe word it along the lines of

'I appreciate you are very friendly and enjoy sharing things with colleagues, but it has been brought to my attention that you often share too much, especially when people around you are trying to work. It maybe better to discuss personal things and chat to others during lunch time and breaks and stick to business talk during other parts of the day'

I think this was along the lines of what my manager said to me.

I have always found that asking a question like " have you noticed that some people dont engage as much on personal conversations as you?" If she says yes - there's your platform to explain why. If she says no respond that you have observed this and then explain the differences of approach in the UK. The key thing is not to go down "the your way is wrong our way is right" route. More a gentle steer of this is how its done around here.

Thanks all - especially for the specific wording ideas, they are great. I may have to bring a pre-prepared statement to our meeting so as not to screw it up!

Lonecat

More suggestions welcome!

On a management course we have been taught the DEFICIT model for having difficult conversations:

D: Describe the core issue as you see it
E: Evidence of this issue
F: Feelings - how this problem makes you feel
I: Implications - what is at stake (eg people feeling embarrassed when this person goes into details)
C: Contribution - what have you done so far perhaps say that you should have mentioned this sooner
I: Intent - what do you want to happen
T: Turn it over to the woman

The above is the intro and should take about a minute and a half.

The shit sandwich is just the sign of a shit manager who can't manage their staff.

Personally, I'd just pop my head out and say 'Enough chit chat - next person I hear talking for more than 5 mins about their kids gets a work review as I am obviously not giving you enough to do'.

Then if it persists I'd have the meeting where there was far too much chit chat and that's fine on breaks but not in work time. Focus people focus.

I'd also pop my head out and ask 'Maryanne, am I to interpret this as you being out of work? Pop in here if so as I have some stuff you can do if you haven't got enough to be getting on with'.

Gnome - thanks, I like that model. Just need to see if I can remember it all now...

Doreen - ouch! I admire your chutzpah, not sure I'd have the guts to phrase it quite like that but I agree with the sentiment!

Write it down. It is fine to have prepared what you are going to say in advance.

I just wish I had had the model before I had had to give a bit of personal hygiene feed back!

I have written some notes which will hopefully stop me waffling. It's a really useful model!

Personal hygiene feedback - oh dear that's much worse!!

As a manager/director of many years standing - the most effective tool is your observation and nipping things in the bud IMHO.

A quick shout of 'who isn't busy' which leads to some very boring and dull work is worth it's weight in gold without having to angst over meetings and models etc etc.

But dont people then start doing the 'quick look busy' thing?

It doesnt deal with the problem which is that the person is over-sharing and not picking up the cues that other people just dont want to know. This over-sharing can be very damaging within a team as it can mean that one person eventually gets isolated.

From the OP this isnt about general chit chat but about one person over-stepping boundaries.

I think this problem needs to be more formal than shouting "who isn't busy". The message won't get through to the key offender and if it needs to be taken further and formalised as a written warning, its no defense in law to say "well I did shout across the office in the employee's general direction ... and hope they got the hint

I would arrange for a private meeting with the person to explain that you appreciate the person's friendliness, but please can they restrict their conversations to lunch breaks, because it is distracting and stops people getting on with their job.

I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that.

I'd make sure the person is given a chance to comment on what has been said and make sure they understand the message. Also ask them if they have enough work to keep them busy.

We have had to deal with exactly the same situation with a team member. (In fact I think her lack of social awareness of when it's appropriate/ inappropriate to talk and how much to say is one of several traits of ASD she has).

Initial polite hints about 'chatting' too much went over her head. (As she saw it, if she was chatting with someone else who was politely nodding with a glazed expression then it was ok as they were chatting too.) So, she was given an action plan. She agreed with her line manager that other team members were allowed to support her in achieving the plan. She told us all (as did her line manager) that her target was not to chat when it was work time and we were all asked to tell her immediately if she was forgetting her target.

It worked for her and there was a steady improvement and staff members did feel able to say You'd better stop chatting now Mary (not her name) or we'll all be in trouble. Haha!

She is a lovely well-meaning person though with perhaps a learning disability. Not sure if the whole-staff-helping-Mary approach would work for others.

Doreen I can see your point and that approach would work in many office cultures but not ours - where I work it would be considered much worse for me to shout "focus people" than my team member oversharing!

Gnome you're right that it's about them not picking up cues and it does affect how the team bond together. It's difficult though because we tend to eat at our desks rather than having proper lunch breaks so there aren't many proper chances for chat.

She does have enough work and is overall very productive, it's the not reading people's signals that the real problem. Interesting point about getting the other team members involved - will have a think about that.

In the end I wrote down a version of the Deficit model and had the discussion, but ended up wimping out softening it slightly. Still, I think I got the point across and if it continues, I can feel like I tried the soft approach so can try something a bit more formal like an action plan.

Thanks all for your advice!

Well done for doing it. It is really horrible as a manager to have those difficult conversations.