It’s hard to hear feedback from a manager at a time when you may be emotional, especially when your manager is giving feedback about the exact thing that is causing your emotion.
In sales, for example, if a rep has just had a tough call—say, they had a big deal that they thought was going to close, but they’ve just found out that their customer bought elsewhere.
Instead of immediately diving into a coaching session with that rep about how they could have better handled objections on the call, this might be a good time to just offer some encouragement, “Good fight! You’ll get the next one.”
Keep that objection handling feedback in your back pocket. Then later on, maybe during a pre-scheduled 1:1, you can ask the rep to recall the specific situation (it’s a good idea to have the account information and maybe a call recording ready to go). Side note: make sure feedback targets a specific example, as opposed to talking generally.
You might be wondering, how do I know if my direct report is emotional at any given time? Ask them!
“How are you feeling?” is a magic question, and you can never ask it enough. It’s natural for humans to want to answer this question. And it’s the key to knowing if your direct report is in the right headspace for feedback.
If their response to that question is emotional, you’re probably better off just offering encouragement and saving the feedback for later.