Giving feedback to someone without sounding prejudiced

Question

I had this situation at work where a colleague (not my report, but junior to me by 5~10 years) was pushing people so strongly to work on a project that it caused a few of those people and their managers to come to me and either complain outright about it or just express confusion about it, because they hadn't heard about who this junior person was.

I felt like I owed this colleague to share the feedback that I was seeing a pattern that could be detrimental to their career and shared it, specifically pointing at instances and offering suggestions.

Here's the problem. I'm a man, that colleague is a woman, and I work in an industry (as many) where women have reason to complain of multiple biases. I was very conscious that my feedback could come off as sexist, so if anything, I held back until I saw more of a pattern, and made a very conscious effort to focus on the specifics without using any adjectives to describe her personally -- I said things like "in this case, you did this, and the outcome was that, here's how it could become a problem for you in the long term, and here's a couple things you can consider doing in the future", nothing at all like "you're being too aggressive". She thanked me for that feedback, shared some of her own, and I thought that feedback session went well.

Still, a couple days after sharing this, she told me that the conversation made her feel like I was basically just a man telling a woman to shut up.

I felt very sad hearing that because in reality I am completely rooting for her and want her to succeed, and her questions are making it very uncomfortable, if not dangerous career-wise, for me to help her by sharing insights.

I pointed out that I had seen a pattern not a single instance, that I had "checked my biases", that in fact a few of the people complaining were women too, and that she could do whatever she wanted with that feedback. I don't know if she was genuinely convinced but we left it at that. Not a pleasant experience.

So here's my question. What more can I do to give feedback to someone and completely avoid giving the false impression that my feedback comes from prejudice? (And replace gender by race/ethnicity/age/religion/sexual orientation etc...)

EDIT

A couple clarifications addressing some of the things in the comments or replies.

• I had discussed the situation with this person's manager, who had encouraged me to share feedback and help coach her rather than he having to do it with secondhand information.

• The person didn't argue that gender bias was a reason to dismiss my feedback. She acknowledged the feedback I gave her, just said it made her feel a certain way, which both of us disliked.

EDIT 2

For my first question, I am overwhelmed with gratitude at this community for the amount of thoughtful discussion. Thank you all.

I also want to explain the answer that I'll accept, because the topic is obviously contentious, answers are a bit all over the place and because the one that I've personally found the most useful is by far not the one with the highest "popular vote". I'll go over the most popular answers and my thoughts on them first.

Old Nick's answer is relevant, but not a direct answer to my question; its main argument is that I shouldn't give feedback directly to a person who does not report to me. Even if that were true, I will be confronted to situations where dodging the responsibility of giving feedback is not an option, and then it won't help me.

ShinEmperor's answer construes the situation as one where I have given "advice" to the person, and then argues against giving advice in general. But there is a big difference between advice (where I have nothing at stake in the other person's behavior) and feedback (where I do). This situation had affected me because it destabilized my team, so doing nothing also had a cost to me; I had skin in the game to defend.

I generally agree with bilbo_pingouin and Words_like_jared's answers, but instead of giving me thoughts on what I could have done differently, they focus on what I should do from now on.

So in the end, it was in Erika's answer that I have found the most interesting clue about something I could have done differently, which is to ask questions in the first place. I was certainly focused on giving feedback, and I can see how asking questions instead might have helped in this situation. The answer is slightly off-base in other respects due to the vagueness of the context in my question (i.e. the answer makes it sound like it was someone pushing a pet project, which it wasn't) but I'll accept it as the most useful to me personally.

Again thanks everyone for the thoughtful discussion and answers.

Answer 1

Consider approaching the original feedback conversation from a stance of humbleness and seeking to understand.

...a colleague was pushing people so strongly to work on a project that it caused a few of those people and their managers to come to me and either complain outright about it or just express confusion about it, because they hadn't heard about who this junior person was.

This strikes me as someone who is ambitious, and feels strongly about the success of the company. Who in turn is being repeatedly rejected. If this is something you wish to better understand, consider facilitating the conversation with variants of the following questions:

I notice you’ve been pushing for project X. Why do you see such value in it? How do you feel it will benefit the company? <allow & listen to answer, drawing out as needed>

Its been a few (weeks, months) since you first suggested project X, but you’re still bringing it up. What reasons have you been given for us not taking on project X? < allow answering; if she hasn’t had any reasons, why not? this is something to discuss with your colleagues about> Why do you still feel project X should be done despite these reasons?

At this stage, suggesting future approaches for proposing and getting projects accepted at your company would be valueable.

She has demonstrated a desire to be proactive, and I imagine is frustrated at being shut down. As a junior employee, consider offering mentorship, or discuss with your colleagues about having a mentorship system for new employees. She has likely demonstrated the technical expertise for her position, but as a junior its hardly fair to expect her to master or understand factors at play in your firm for project decisions.

Edit: I'm unclear whether she wanted to be added to an existing project, or was proposing the company work on a specific project. Written in the context of the latter, but could be equally answered for the former - with the addendum of her exploring what skills would be required to move to the existing project if that is something she wants in her career - again, mentorship regarding the process is of value here.

Answer 2

As long as you kept your feedback limited to the things she did, what the effect of those things were and what she could do to get a better outcome I don't see how anything you have said could be construed as being related in any way to her gender.

She has tried to make it about gender, not you because she has taken it personally and to be fair as you are not her manager you should have probably not tried to act like one (I know you tried to give friendly advice but this is not how she seems to have taken it).

In future, you'd be better off directing anybody who has any questions about her to her reporting manager "XXX doesn't report to me sorry, you're better off raising it with her personally or her manager.".

Answer 3

I responded to your post but I'll go ahead and answer:

I felt like I owed this colleague to share the feedback that I was seeing a pattern that could be detrimental to their career and shared it, specifically pointing at instances and offering suggestions.

This, generally speaking, is not as helpful as people imagine it to be. Unsolicited criticism is rarely taken well. Forbes covers this, and it's kind of interesting.

Some key points:

• When you give advice, in essence, you’re telling somebody else what to do. This implies you have all the answers about what works and what doesn’t. But how could you? Chances are you don’t have all the background information on the situation, nor do you understand the other person’s emotions and what makes them tick.

• When you give advice, you offer the other party only two choices: take the advice or ignore the advice. And in either case, there’s the possibility of a “gotcha.” If your advice is taken, that means the other person must tacitly admit you’re right and he or she is wrong. This automatically gives you credit for being smarter. That’s Gotcha #1 and it’s a dangerous scenario, one that’s almost guaranteed to create defensiveness.

• Most advice is unsolicited. This means the other party didn’t ask to be judged, corrected, or directed. When you catch someone off guard and hit them upside the head with advice; there’s virtually no chance they’ll be in an open emotional state to hear what you say. Listen, there are many ways to give feedback. Giving advice, though, often makes people defensive, comes off as arrogance or can just seem like a suggestion rather than a command. Constructive feedback can push good employees toward great performance, but advice generally just doesn’t work. And remember, while advice may be fun to give, it’s generally not that much fun to get.

All of these things played out in your description from her side. People will frame it as a "her being defensive and using gender to deflect" when in reality, unsolicited advice is the REAL issue here.

Then with the current political climate you get: Mansplaining

is a pejorative term meaning "(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner"

This is what you wrote:

"in this case, you did this, and the outcome was that, here's how it could become a problem for you in the long term, and here's a couple things you can consider doing in the future"

Depending on tone... and the unsolicited nature of the advice, it could absolutely be Mansplaining.

Good Intentions, poorly thought out, can lead to a lot of trouble.

To be clear, I'm not saying it is a gender issue, but observing this from the perspective of a woman, who is new at her job and potentially struggling; to have a man just step in and start telling you what your faults are and how you can do better, feels... awkward? Something about it, to me, doesn't feel right.

What I did notice in your description, was interesting. There was a lot of effort put into avoiding looking bad, avoiding being blamed. There was also a lot of effort put into explaining what was wrong with what she has done.

But I didn't sense much empathy... There's no clarification of how much effort was made to understand her perspective in the organization? Gender might have zero to do with any of it, but it's clear this is a colleague who is struggling, but in turn is getting unsolicited advice rather than guidance...

Like this:

I was very conscious that my feedback could come off as sexist, so if anything, I held back...

I pointed out that I had seen a pattern not a single instance, that I had "checked my biases", that in fact a few of the people complaining were women too, and that she could do whatever she wanted with that feedback.

This isn't empathy... this is building a body of evidence... like an indictment... against a fellow colleague, which you then just came at her with, on your terms, not hers...

My response: Practice more empathy in your assessment. It's about more than clarity. It's about understanding the other person's perspective and understanding they experience the world in a different way.

UPDATE:

Just an afterthought...

where a colleague (not my report, but junior to me by 5~10 years) was pushing people so strongly to work on a project

Does anyone know why? Why she was pushing people? Because from the description, it looks like zero effort was put into understanding the "why", what is motivating her? Someone else in the company? Is it her own directive?

Answer 4

To me, you did good. You had some people complain, and being a senior, you thought to give advice to your junior colleague about it. She did not see it as such.

There are many reasons why that would be the case, from defense mechanism, her own bias, etc.

The question is what to do from now on, and my advice there would be: do nothing more on that topic. You are not her report, and thus aren't responsible for her. If people complain about it, and want to make it a formal complain, you can redirect them to her report and/or HR. If they just want to vent, it might be acceptable to hear it out. So long as you, yourself do not waste too much time on it.

And specifically, to your colleague, you could answer something along the lines of

I am sorry you feel that way. I can only assure you that was not my aim, and thought you might profit from some feedback. However if that feedback is unwelcome, then I won't bring it up anymore.

Try to keep to the point, but also show that you went beyond your job to try to be helpful. But that you had no interest, and will drop it, since she obviously did not want the advice you offered.

Answer 5

From the situation you described, it sounds as if you already made every effort possible to avoid accidentally giving the impression that there were prejudices in your remarks. Unfortunately, if the person you are speaking to is in a minority gender, age, religion etc. for your particular workplace, there is always that risk.

• You waited to see if a pattern emerged. If, in an office with an even mix of men and women, that the comments were (for example) only coming from the men, then there would have been cause for further concern. You emphasised that the feedback came from male AND female colleagues.
• You avoided describing the colleague personally, avoiding even a passing reference to subjects that may show bias. If you had said something like "a woman like you shouldn't be nagging people to work on extra projects", then your colleague would have genuine reason to suspect a bias.

If issues with the colleague persist and they must be addressed at a formal level, some companies I have worked with offer the option of setting up a meeting with someone as HR attending as a 'witness', to further ensure that the situation is resolved with no prejudices. If this colleague is indeed at the same level as you however, it may be worthwhile just forwarding the concerns to their manager. They will - more likely than you - be trained to handle these situations, and there is a good chance they may have heard the same remarks you have.

In rare cases, some colleagues may simply fall back on the argument that "you are targeting me specifically with criticism, it must be an unrelated prejudice taking hold". In these extreme cases (and of course, you're confident there are no prejudices clouding your judgement), the manager or HR approach can still help put you and the colleague at ease.

Answer 6

I felt like I owed this colleague to share the feedback

OK, nice you want to improve things.

I said things like "in this case, ...", nothing at all like "you're being too aggressive.

Let us assume the ideas were civil and not biased.

Yet as a colleague, it is not your role to provide unsolicited significant negative feedback.

---

Instead, consider before presenting such ideas to a colleague, ask if she wanted some ideas concerning the situations.

If yes, proceed as you did. If not a terse explanation, seeking affirmation before continuing.

Without a clear yes, move on.

Answer 7

Giving feedback is distinct from giving advice: feedback is information about events (concrete information, not opinion), while advice is a suggestion of what to do.

If you are careful to strictly give feedback - e.g. "apparently you had a conversation about xxx with a colleague, who has reported to me yyy about how they feel about you as a result of that conversation" - your feedback is pure information and, in principle, should not sound prejudiced. I say 'should' because it is easy to accidentally introduce your own opinion about the incident, often unconsciously, and that opinion can make your feedback sound prejudiced, judgemental, etc.

When you give advice it may seem wise to you - but that is because it arises from your own mental construct of the situation. Every person's perspective on things is, of course, different; your advice can and most likely will, therefore, be received as not taking into account reality as the recipient sees things. It can fail as not making sense, not addressing the real problem ... or as being sexist, prejudiced, etc.

My advice, therefore, is "don't give advice" :).

OK, I couldn't resist that one, even if it doesn't help at all.

The approach I prefer is "feedback with enquiry", not giving advice. The feedback, I've addressed; the enquiry is a tool that can help the other person explore their reality - illuminated by the topic of your question(s). When you choose your questions with the strong intent that they are to help the other person (a) discover their own blind spots, (invalid) assumptions, prejudices, etc. and (b) gain freedom from them, then the questions will make a difference.

Now, it can take a great deal of carefulness (and, when necessary, compassion) to ask questions that are useful and that don't push the other person into a corner. But, if you have another colleague, or friend, with whom you can explore the questions you think would make a difference without being offensive - you can get feedback that may prove useful.

One aspect of the carefulness is to be clear with yourself that you are not trying to fix or change anything and you are not trying to prove a point: what you need to be committed to do is empowering the other person to discover (not 'receive from you', but discovered in their own thinking ... by exploring your questions) ideas that, when they take them into account, will have an improved result in their interactions with other people.

Answer 8

Elephant in the room: If you are not this person's manager, why are people coming to you to discuss her performance? This speaks somewhat to her manager's deficiencies as a manager, if her colleagues go to you, rather than to her manager, to complain about her performance. You should probably raise this as a concern with her manager's manager, that her manager is not managing to properly manage. Following this, you should, in a way that doesn't come off as cold and uncaring, but urge the people complaining to you to complain to her manager instead, because you have no authority to do anything about it.

Or perhaps these are not formal "complaints", as it were, but just office gossip. In which case, I think perhaps you should have shared it in a less formal way. If you have a friendly repartee with this colleague, simply mention to her over lunch one day about some of the things you've heard. From the way it may have come off, it may have sounded to her like you were trying to do her boss's work when you had no such authority, and to be frank she's probably right.

Alright, now that we've addressed the elephant in the room, let's assume for whatever reason that you are the correct person to report to. Now, the issue seems to be that you told her about these issues others are having with her, and you asked her to rectify her behaviour, and you gave her particular, well-detailed action items to follow to try to repair her reputation. As far as I'm concerned, that's all you can do. Don't pursue the issue any further. If she wants to gossip about how you're sexist or whatever, then let her do so. One of two things are going to happen:

1) She will not change her ways and her reputation will continue to decline and diminish, and she will eventually professionally implode. You did what you could to prevent this, the rest is not your problem. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

The other option is a bit more involved. The problem is that as a majority (male, I presume white), it is a very serious issue to be labelled an "-ist" by a minority in a professional (work) environment). Basically, if a woman calls you a sexist, in the current environment, if you don't believe the woman's accusation even without proof, then you risk being labelled as a sexist as well (see also racist if the person is POC, homophobic if the person is LGBT, islamophobic if the person is Muslim, etc), and, most importantly, the legal implications of this as a legal entity. To which I am referring not to you, but to your company. If she lodges a formal complaint with HR against your good-natured attempt to put her back on track and calls you a sexist, it's in the company's best legal interest to take corrective action against you, even if she is completely fabricating the story. To mitigate this, I would stay away from her completely. Do not talk to her, do not associate with her. If you have the need to work together, insist that all communication be done over a written medium (email, Slack, etc) or via communication by an impartial third party (e.g. her/your manager). If you are friends outside of work, I'm sorry to say but your friendship is over. If she asks why, feel free to explain to her that you do not feel comfortable being labelled as a sexist, and you would like all communication preserved for posterity just in case.

If other colleagues continue to come to you with complaints, I would simply write down the names and brief descriptions of the complaints, and when you have enough of them, dump them on the desk of some HR person, or her manager, and let come what may. Since you have no authority over her, you can't do anything except come to her as a friend and ask her to shape up, which you have done and she has rejected. In which case, imo she has forfeited her privilege to a warning, and the next step is to report your findings to the people who do have such authority, and if this ends up in her being fired, it's neither your concern nor your problem.

Answer 9

"I had discussed the situation with this person's manager, who had encouraged me to share feedback and help coach her rather than he having to do it with secondhand information."

This is unacceptable on the part of the manager. Having the three of you in the room would have been iffy to begin with, but just you and her without management at all is indefensible.

Of course she feels like a man is trying to shut her up. That is literally what just happened! You, a random man who is organizationally at the same level as her, is telling her she is wrong and needs to stop. You are not this person's manager and your conversation with her was highly inappropriate.

Answer 10

I held back until I saw more of a pattern. [...] I said things like "in this case, you did this, and the outcome was that, here's how it could become a problem for you in the long term, and here's a couple things you can consider doing in the future"

Don't. The likely problem here is she might have interpreted this as you mansplaining her what she ought to be doing.

Try something more like this instead, and do so shortly after you notice the problematic behavior:

If I may point something out, when you [behavior], then [outcome].

Or even more ideally:

May I point something out? [wait for yes; and iff yes:] When you [behavior], then [outcome].

Don't make it personal; if she goes defensive, keep the focus on the behavior, and let go if she takes it personally to the point of growing restless.

If you were her boss, you'd likely add something like: "Can you try something different in the future?" But you're not her boss, so let her decide whether to do so or not; and if she says you may not point it out, keep your cool and let her fall on her face.

And then leave it at that. Let her figure out what she could do instead. In particular, don't do anything she might think of as mansplaining. However welcome you think the shortcut you gave her is, she'll likely resist it; whereas if she's the one figuring it out she'll eventually change.

Aside: this isn't sex-specific. The same also applies for male colleagues.

Also: her boss should have delivered this feedback himself, but that's a separate problem.

Answer 11

Here's how I am seeing things: She's obviously using the man vs. woman argument just so that she can get out of this.

I mean, this is work; everyone here is working for the same goal and everyone should do their job right no matter your gender. You are a senior, and it means that you basically have more experience, and everyone as a junior, no matter what's their gender, should listen to what a more experienced person has to say and also no matter who the senior's gender.

Consider yourself as a manager or HR and she did a terrible mistake that can cost a fortune, would you say: You're a woman so we won't say anything? Of course not. It's your job to give pointers if you're a senior, and if you're a manager you will be in a critical position to take decisions about work and the whole company.

I mean, don't think too much about it and that You say this because I'm a woman, You biased to men, etc... This is a discussion about work. It has nothing to do with him or her, so don't make it a personal problem. Imagine that the team quit because of her; can she pay the damage or replace the work of how many people? Obviously NO.

So my advice is this: If you're just a senior colleague when you talk to her, try to point out that this is related to work, and it's nothing personal or related to gender, or you can try to talk to the manager so that he can talk to her about this because that's obviously his job, to make sure that everything is OK and make decisions about that. If you're the manager then you have every right to point out if something is wrong with the way she's doing her job or her behaviour ... People leave their jobs just because of the environment, so it would be a huge loss if good people were lost because of someone's behaviour.

Good luck dealing with this situation.