Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want

to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about delivering tough feedback. Rich, the CFO of his division, is a caring, empathic guy who excels in many ways.

In the final minutes of a coaching session, he happened to mention he was about to give some

tough feedback to one of his direct reports.

I asked if I could help. He rolled his eyes and he said, oh, it's a long story.

The only he left her department because of her, but he was only now taking action.

He was rightly embarrassed to have avoided the situation for so long.

When I asked what had stopped him from intervening sooner, he said,

she's going to go nuclear when she hears this.

Yeah, she might, I said, but it's your job to manage her.

Rich thought he wasn't giving his feedback to this woman because she would react badly.

I disagree.

I think he wasn't giving his feedback to her because he couldn't manage his own discomfort and because he didn't have good tools to manage

her if she did react badly.

Rich is not alone.

Some of the excuses I hear about why people don't give feedback and I hear a lot of them are he

should know better.

I shouldn't have to tell him.

It's just not safe to mention this.

He'll go ballistic. I'm afraid of hurting her feelings. I don't

...