Overcoming protective hesitation
I only recently learned about the term protective hesitation. It was instantly clear that it was a term explaining an issue I’ve observed for years in tech.
Harvard Business School’s Professor David A. Thomas defined this behaviour as “protective hesitation”—the failure to give feedback due to fear of being perceived as racist or sexist.
I’ve been using a modified definition: Not giving necessary feedback because you are worried about their reaction and you want to avoid a difficult conversation.
But here’s the thing, if the feedback you are hesitating to give is vague, judgmental and unactionable, then you are right to hesitate. You have homework to do. While timely feedback is important, clarity is critical.
Telling someone they are <negative label> is rarely helpful and probably not true. Knowing that people have a negative view of you is not the important part. The important part is the specific behavior(s) with the context that it can lead to those perceptions.
The problem is that if those perceptions are going to be used (if they get talked about, or if they are labeled etc), you have to tell them. It isn’t fair to keep information away from them.
This is hard. This is the job.
It isn’t 1 size fits all, but here are some tips.
1.Understand your role in giving feedback.
Your job: is to build trust, clarify the information, provide context, set expectations and accountability, hold the space, and offer to help identify paths forward if they want.
Their job: decide what the feedback means to them and how they will respond to the feedback.
It’s not your job to make them change or act a certain way. Beyond the requirements of the job, you don’t get to decide what’s right for them.
It’s helpful to have an intent to convey the information in a way that is well understood and that they appreciate hearing it, but they might not. Even if you do everything right they might be upset. That’s okay. As long as you do your part respectfully, they are allowed to not take it well. They also get to disagree.
You may think the answer is <x> but their answer could be <y>. And I’m not just talking about that you think they should talk more and they think they should send more emails. They might think the answer is to work somewhere else. Most of the time it will be less dramatic and the path forward may be similar in both your minds, but it’s important to remember that you don’t know what is right for others.
2. Learn to separate the facts from opinions
In most cases it will be important to share both the concrete facts and the opinions, but it is important to separate these for yourself and be clear when you are giving the feedback. General rule of thumb is that the actual behaviors observed are the facts and the perceptions and judgments are the opinions. You have to be able to remove your judgement of them as a person.
The initial feedback you get will be a mix of:
- opinions
- behaviors
- bias
- misunderstandings
- perceptions
- status quo
People who are more different from you are likely going to get more feedback in areas you have less experience. We get desensitized to feedback we’ve gotten and over come or that we have given a dozen times. It then just seems like a natural learning point. When we first hear feedback about someone that we haven’t heard before it can feel dramatic. Don’t make your lack of experience with people like them their problem. It just means you have more homework. You must do the work to reverse engineer and decode the opinions to find what is really going on. You need to make sure that others aren’t making behaviors mean more than they should.
The behavior I’ve observed ______ has the potential to create a perception of ______ and the lead to ______ impact
Whether you use this exact format in your conversation or not is dependent on your relationship, but it is helpful to have it clear before having the conversation.
The important part is to be clear about what is concrete and what is context to help them understand how it fits in. This gives them space to identify when the actual thing to change is totally different etc. The following are helpful to ensure that you are conveying with your context:
- Opportunity vs risk vs consequence
- Long held/common view vs new /loosely held
- Single occurrence or observed pattern
- Concrete examples
This might be the 1st time hearing this. Or the 100th time they’ve felt judged and labeled. You may be coming after a sea of damage. So be sure that it’s a conversation and you are aware of what’s going on.
Above all, keep it respectful. If in doubt, treat people like people.
