When ‘We’ comes before ‘Me’

Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist, speaker, leadership team consultant, and president and CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates. He is the author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams and The Skilled Facilitator. His writing also appears in Harvard Business Review.

If you’re like most leaders, you’ve learned to praise in public and criticise in private. This is a classic common-sense leadership principle—and it is flawed. It’s intuitively appealing, especially if you’re concerned that giving feedback in a team setting can put someone on the spot, get the person defensive, the team uncomfortable, and undermine working relationships. But providing feedback in the wrong setting can create the very results you’re trying to avoid. Done appropriately, providing feedback in a team setting increases team learning and trust, accountability, and performance.
 
When leaders inappropriately give feedback one-on-one, they are almost always sharing someone else’s feedback. The central principle here is that people are accountable for giving feedback directly to those with whom they are interdependent. Apart from team members doing their work, this is the most basic form of team accountability. If you’re continually urging your team to work as a team, but don’t require them to give each other feedback, you’re undermining the accountability they need to be an effective team. Here are the criteria for deciding when to give feedback one-on-one or in a team setting and some recommendations for avoiding the flaws of inappropriately criticizing in private.
 
Give feedback one-one when all these conditions are present: 1) you are the source of the information; 2) other team members are not affected by the behavior; and 3) other team members have no information about the situation. If you do give feedback in a team setting, the team member will reasonably feel inappropriately called out for information that is not relevant to the team. If you give feedback one-one-one, be sure you’re giving only your feedback.
 
Give feedback in a team setting when you are either a source of the information or experiencing negative consequences of one or more of the team members’ behaviors and at least one of these conditions are present: 1) one or more members are experiencing negative consequences of other team members’ behaviors; 2) team members are a source of the feedback; and 3) most of the team is either a source of information, experiencing some negative consequences, or seen as generating negative consequences for others.
 
When only one team member is directly experiencing negative consequences from another’s behavior, it’s better to have those people speak privately. You can still facilitate the conversation, helping them be transparent and curious as they give feedback directly to each other.
 
Giving feedback to the team can be a big change. You can start by explaining you expect team members to be accountable to each other, including providing feedback and support to each other. If you and your team agree on this expectation and you give them the skills to provide productive feedback, you’ll find that the team addresses problems sooner, without needing your help, and ultimately becomes more effective.