Advisor-Owners: Be Sure to Provide Constructive Criticism to Employees

One of the hardest jobs any manager has is giving constructive feedback to employees on their performance. It seems especially hard for advisors, who usually have little or no management training, and often view having employees as a necessary burden in order to do their “real” job: working with clients. Perhaps the most difficult situation that advisors and other managers face is when an employee reacts badly to constructive criticism. 

No matter how constructive, you never know how people will react to a critique of their work, and some just don’t take it well. Crying, arguing, shouting and even swearing aren’t unusual responses. When this happens, my best advice to advisors and managers is to don’t let the response—no matter how negative—stop you from continuing to give that employee honest assessments of their job performance: that’s your job and the future of your clients and your firm depends on it. 

The first challenge in facing these negative reactions is not to make things worse by over-reacting yourself. As soon as it’s clear that a constructive discussion isn’t going to happen, it’s time to break off the conversation. At this point, here’s no need to offer any further comment on the employee’s performance or their reaction: Just a simple exit line such as: “Well, please think about what I’ve said,” will do. 

Once the confrontation is over, it’s a good idea to review your own performance, to determine if you did anything to warrant such a response. Were your comments intended to help the employee do better, or were you just abusive? Overly critical? Profane? Condescending? Simply wrong in your assessment? Perhaps surprisingly, poor employee relations are the easiest to fix when the manager is at fault: Because that’s something the manager can control.

For conversations where the manager was the problem, I usually recommend being aware of one’s behavior, and making every effort not to repeat your mistake. I’ve found that apologizing to the employee is rarely helpful, and can sometime lead to another bad conversation. What employees really want is to be treated fairly and with respect, so just behaving properly in the future is usually the best response. 

While manager problems are the easiest to deal with, the tougher situation is when the employee overreacted to reasonable feedback delivered in a supportive way.