You offer difficult but necessary feedback to a report— they get defensive, think you are attacking them, and start operating in a silo.

You offer difficult but necessary feedback to your manager or boss— they get offended, think you are acting out of place, and stop asking for your input and collaboration.

You offer difficult but necessary feedback to your co-founder— they avoid the matter, cut the discussion short, and the issue becomes a purple elephant in your business.

— the above are examples of how well-intended communication is received the wrong way creates barriers between people rather than bringing people together.

How do you ensure your communication is received as you intend?

Short answer: you can’t ensure anything. However, you can maximize the chances that your communication is received as you intend, and offer the opportunity for multiple communicating parties to clarify each others’ communication to arrive at a clear understanding. In this post, we offer our top 3 attributes of quality communication to help you:

Build psychological safety and trust.
Reduce ambiguity when offering feedback.
Encourage productive, functional behaviors.
Offer room for new learning and growth.
Create alignment amongst key stakeholders.

1: Build Psychological Safety

Think of the person (real or imaginary) you most fear approaching you. As they approach you, you might notice your heart beating faster, your breath shortening, and your palms are sweating.

Now, consider the likelihood that this person wants to congratulate you on a job well done, and treat you to a lunch to celebrate.

“That’ll never happen!” you might think.

However, this happens all the time:

It happens to employees when their managers say something as simple as, “Can we talk for a minute?” Some interpret it as, “I must have done something wrong,” when really, the manager might simply want to draw on their expertise to get support on a problem.

It happens when new lovers ask each other a question as simple as, “Is everything ok?” One partner might just be mentally occupied with work, while the other partner is concerned their relationship is on the rocks.

It happens when a potential investor says, “I have a few questions…” Some founders perceive this as a potential attack on a weak point in their business model when the investor might be very impressed, intrigued, and wanting to clarify a few minor details for their own understanding.

When we are in a fear state about someone, something, or some event— we typically direct our mental and emotional resources to identify, respond, and avoid a threat. In doing so, our brains track our environment for potential threats. As such, we don’t have as much access to the higher functions of our brains. Instead, we are more likely to presuppose the worst.

Human beings don’t have just one brain. We have four, including the reptile brain, mammalian brain, neo-cortex, and our prefrontal cortex. The oldest brain we have is the reptile brain. We share this brain with all creatures on this planet. The reptile brain controls the body’s vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, and body temperature. Its purpose is survival and continued survival. You may have heard of the following representation called the 4 F’s:

Flight.
Fight.
Freeze.
Fornicate.

The main driver for the reptile brain is fear. The reptile brain does not distinguish between what is real or imaginary. If you send a series of sounds and pictures to it, the reptile brain will think they are real. If you are watching JAWS at the theater, your heart rate will suddenly elevate when the shark darts towards you from the screen. That doesn’t seem logical since you are sitting in the theater, and there is no water around you— your reptile brain cannot make this distinction.

Fear is not a bad thing. Fear is necessary. Our reptile brain serves to keep us safe from harm and to respond to rational fears. Our reptile brains care about the quantity of life, not quality. The challenge is when we have an irrational fear. It is challenging to generate psychological safety if we:

Feel at threat to ourselves.
Feel threatened by others.
Feel we are a threat to others.

To build trust with others and to create a space for quality communication, we must generate a space of safety for ourselves and others. To create psychological safety, we must find ways to demonstrate we are with ‘like-kind.’ Without the appropriate feeling of safety, the reptile brain, when under perceived threat, will go into; fight, flight, or freeze. When the reptile brain experiences it is with ‘like-kind’— it will not be interrupted by the mechanisms of ‘fight, flight, and freeze.’

There are many ways to build safety and rapport with yourself and others, either in-person (conversational) or via written text (e.g., email). Here are the simplest ways to build foundational rapport:

In-person:

Mirror their Physical Positioning: adopt similar bodily postures to the degree available and appropriate. This is not to be confused with mimicking. Imagine sitting down and having someone tower above you and speak down at you. Now, imagine sitting down and having someone join you in sitting down, speaking directly to you at eye-level.
Mirror their Speech: match the tone, pitch, and pace of another’s speech.
Use their Keywords: use the same words someone uses in communicating. You can quickly identify people's keywords as they will typically mark those words out with a physical gesture or unique tone of voice.
Match their Breathing: breathing in sync with the other party.

Written communication:

Use their Keywords: use some of the words the other party enjoys using. If you have written samples of their communication, you might notice patterns. For example, you might be used to say ‘creating the plan’ whereas someone else might say ‘laying out the map.’
Use Collective Pronouns: where possible, use words such as ‘we,’ ‘us,’ ‘team,’ and ‘group.’ Human beings feel safer when they feel they belong— using collective pronouns helps achieve this.
Mind Your ‘But’: compare your experience of receiving these two communications: 1) “I love your design. But I would like you to make a few changes to the frame.” and 2) “I love your design. And, I would like to make a few changes to the frame.”

2: Communicate Positive Intention

Almost nobody wakes up with the conscious intention to perform poorly in life. However, often, people’s behaviors and communications are misinterpreted as being lazy, unclear, and full of ‘excuses.’

Furthermore, almost nobody wakes up with the intention to help others feel they are performing poorly as possible in life. However, often, people’s behaviors and communications are misinterpreted as being attacks, rude, and diminishing.

Read these statements within a context where you are receiving this feedback from a manager or someone ‘higher up’:

“I entirely disagree.”
“There’s a typo in your blog post.”
“You can do better than this…”

Notice how you received the communication. Take note of your experience, especially if it is a negative feeling. We will work with this soon.

Now, assume that implicit in the above statements is a positive intention. The goal is to make that positive intention explicit. Here is how those statements might better communicate positive intention, combining principles from the previous section to rephrase them in a way that creates psychological safety too:

“I want us to succeed together. Your direction is clearly well thought out, and I am glad we are working together on this. Here’s where I think your approach needs adjustment.”
“Your talent deserves acknowledgment. I found a typo that, once adjusted, can add that additional level of ‘polish’ to match the quality of your work.”
“You have great potential— here’s where I want to help you improve.”

Notice how you would receive the adjusted communication as if they were coming from your manager, mentor, or ‘higher up.’

Assuming every communication has a positive intention, here is a frame for deducing the positive intention behind another’s communication:

What good thing do you want to achieve (for yourself and others) by communicating [[X]]?

The question above is a way to elicit the meta-message (the positive intention) behind all communications. By getting clear on your positive intention and communicating it upfront, you help generate psychological safety with others.

Now, read these statements within a context where you are offering feedback to a report, and they respond as follows:

“It just couldn’t be done in time.”
“The process you gave me doesn’t work here, so I used my own.”
“I forgot to update the KanBan in Notion because…”

“I was afraid to ask for help because the team was so busy, and I didn’t want to interrupt their workflow just to satisfy my own.”
“I wanted to take the initiative to get this done on time no matter what, so I used my process which I know has worked before.”
“I was in flow, completing my high-priority tasks, and I didn’t want to disrupt that by updating the project status in Notion.”

Assuming every statement communicated has a positive intention, here is a frame for deducing the positive intention behind another’s communication:

What good thing do they want to achieve by communicating [[X]]?

When their communication is too ambiguous to deduce the positive intention, ask them the above question directly, “What good thing do you want to achieve by communicating [[X]]?”

3: Use a Constructive Feedback Frame

A good feedback frame provides a simple way to acknowledge someone for their efforts and to offer opportunities for growth and improvement. In providing feedback to someone— in-person or via written communications— here is the feedback frame you can use:

What I noticed that worked well is: [insert description]
What I would like to see/hear more of: [insert description]

Example:

What I noticed worked well:

The monthly report you send (via email) to your investors highlighting key wins and areas for support.
Your responding to urgent executive team requests within the hour.
When you have too much work, and you know you can’t meet the deadline, you immediately communicate that to your manager to get help.

What I would like to see more of:

Sending a weekly report (via email) to your employees, highlighting key successes, and thanking them for their contributions.

Using the frame well is easier said than done. There are a few important distinctions you must understand to be able to use it effectively:

First, notice the frame has nothing to do with whether you liked, approved, or disapproved of anything.

Second, descriptions used in the feedback frame should be as behaviorally specific as possible. By doing so, you help the recipient understand what behaviors are working well, and what new behaviors he or she can adopt to improve.

What does behavioral specificity mean? It means communicating by describing behavior in a way that someone could picture what you mean— as if you were using a script to film a movie! It can help to think of a specific person, event, and interaction.

Behaviorally specific example: “When a customer complains about our product over the phone, it is useful to listen to them, use the 10-step Customer Success (CS) questioning process to ask clarifying questions before offering a solution over the phone.”
Behaviorally ambiguous example: “Be more empathetic with customers.”

Last, when using the feedback frame, it is helpful to communicate ‘3 things’ that worked well to every ‘1 thing’ you would like to see more of. Sometimes, you might be compelled to offer long lists of feedback. However, be aware that human beings can only handle so much information at one time.

Cognitive Psychologist George Miller has a law named after him—Miller’s Law. Miller’s Law prescribes the limits on our capacity to process information using our conscious attention. We can, at any time, consciously focus on 5-9 bits of information. That’s why it is easier to remember phone numbers when they are structured in 3 chunks such as:

(415) 240-1435

Compare the ease of processing the above 3 chunks to processing these 10 chunks:

4152401435

Remember: chunk your feedback so your recipient can process it with greater ease.

Summing Things Up

Create psychological safety in your interactions. When human beings are in a fear state about someone, something, or some event— they typically direct most of their mental and emotional resources to identify, respond to, and avoid a threat. Therefore, it is hard for them to truly receive your communication as you intend if, in their mind, you could be the ‘enemy.’
Make the positive intention behind all communications as explicit as possible. Almost nobody wakes up with the conscious intention to perform poorly in life. Furthermore, almost nobody wakes up intending to help others feel they are performing poorly as possible in life. Identify the meta-message (positive intention) behind all communications.
Celebrate what works and offer opportunities for growth. When using the feedback frame, it is helpful to communicate 3 things that worked well to every 1 thing you would like to see more of. In doing so, you help the recipient build on their past successes.
When offering feedback, be as behaviorally specific as possible. That means communicating by describing behavior in a way that someone could picture exactly what you mean— as if you were using a script to film a movie! It can help to think of a specific person, event, and interaction.