HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback (HBR Guide Series)

Chapter 4

A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

by Jean-François Manzoni

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jean-François Manzoni, highlighting key ideas.

IDEA IN BRIEF

That dreaded moment has come: You’re delivering critical feedback to an employee. Despite your best efforts, the conversation is a disaster: tempers flare, the employee gets defensive, your relationship grows strained.

What happened? Like most managers, you probably inadvertently sabotaged the meeting—preparing for it in a way that stifled honest discussion and prevented you from delivering feedback effectively.

In other words, you most likely engaged in restrictive framing—a narrow, binary, and frozen approach to feedback: You initiated the conversation without considering ...