Give a lot of positive feedback when an employee is learning a new task or working on a new project

• ·   Start negative feedback with a compliment

• ·   Be as descriptive as possible in giving negative feedback

• ·   Be straightforward and try not to include emotion into your feedback as employees might filter out negative feedback this way

  • Consider ending the conversation with something positive

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This New York Times did an excellent job in explaining the best way to give negative feedback.  You never want to make anything personal in the workplace, so a compliment at the beginning is a good way to let someone know that you’re trying to make them better and not put them down.  Leaving emotion out of the feedback process is an interesting point mentioned in the article. I agree that if you include emotion into the feedback process, it can lead the feedback to be more positive or more negative than it was intended to be.  I am skeptical about the last part of the article in mentioning something positive at the end of a conversation. I think that it could possibly lead an employee to disregard negative feedback. One question that wasn’t answered by the article was how to be descriptive when giving negative feedback.