12 Reasons Why Constructive Feedback is A Critical Skill for Engineering Managers + Technical Leaders

No manager enjoys giving negative feedback to a direct report.

But you need to embrace the discomfort because constructive feedback plays a critical role in your team's professional growth and development. Meanwhile, avoiding it will lead to critical consequences for your team and your career.

Stay tuned.

Hey everyone, and welcome to my channel. If you're a first time viewer. I'm Doug Howard and I help engineering leaders increase your impact at every level of your organization. By showing you how to leverage people skills and influence as your biggest asset for advancing your team and your career.

Today we'll be discussing the 12 crucial consequences of not providing constructive feedback to your team, and then I'm gonna tell you how you can become more effective at giving your team negative feedback. But before we begin, make sure you hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell so that you never miss any valuable insights on how to increase your productivity and your overall effectiveness as an engineering leader. Let's jump right in.

#1 Missed Learning Opportunities

The first major consequence of not giving constructive feedback to your team is missed learning opportunities. Your constructive feedback provides valuable insights and learning opportunities for each person on your team. It helps them understand different perspectives, acquire new skills, and enhance their problem solving abilities.

But when you avoid giving them this feedback, your team is missing out on crucial learning experiences.

#2 Stagnant Individual Growth

Which leads me to number two, which is stagnant individual growth. Constructive feedback is crucial for the individual growth of each person on your team. But without this feedback, your team members will struggle to identify their strengths, their weaknesses, and their opportunities for improvement.

By not giving them this feedback, you're actually stunting their professional development and preventing them from growing in their role. Which leads to lack of progression in their careers and a decline in personal motivation.

#3 Kills Employee Engagement

Number three, it kills employee engagement. Engaged and motivated employees are more likely to contribute their best work and stay with your organization.

But when you're not giving your team constructive feedback, each person on your team is gonna feel undervalued and unappreciated, and they're also gonna feel disconnected from their work and from your team, which results in decreased employee engagement.

#4 Increased Employee Turnover

And that leads me to number four. Number four is increased employee turnover. When your team feels disengaged and unappreciated, they're gonna feel like their work goes unrecognized and unnoticed, which gets them really frustrated.

Just remember how frustrating it was for you when you were an individual contributor and you felt like your boss didn't pay attention to what you brought to the table. But getting back to your team, eventually they're gonna become dissatisfied and they're gonna start looking for new opportunities where their contributions are recognized and where their growth is supported.

This is where everything starts to snowball on you because high employee turnover is detrimental to your team's cohesion, productivity, and overall success.

#5 Diminished Team Dynamics

Number five is diminished team dynamics. By now I'm sure you're starting to see why feedback is essential for fostering a collaborative and high performing team environment. But when you withhold constructive feedback as a manager, it creates an atmosphere of uncertainty, which hinders effective communication within the team.

The longer this goes on, the more it leads to strained relationships, decreased trust, and a decline in overall team morale. Quick question though, do you struggle with giving constructive feedback to your direct reports or maybe you struggle with giving constructive feedback to your boss or to cross-functional teams?

What part of it do you find the most challenging? Let me know in the comments and I'll create an episode around that specific topic.

#6 Reduced Productivity

Moving on to number six, reduced productivity. Without constructive feedback, not only will your team members continue making the same mistakes over and over again, they're also gonna overlook simple and obvious opportunities for them to improve on their own.

Obviously, this results and piles up into suboptimal quality of work and decreased productivity because, you're gonna end up wasting a lot of time fixing the same problems in your team over and over again.

Each individual issue may feel like a small amount of time in the moment, but over time, they collectively add up to major issues that have a huge negative impact on your project outcomes, as well as your team's overall productivity.

#7 Creates Lack of Accountability

Number seven is it creates a lack of accountability from the individuals on your team. Constructive feedback plays a vital role in holding your team members accountable for their actions and for their performance.

When you fail to provide feedback, it creates a culture of complacency where individuals are not held responsible for their work or their behavior, and this leads to a decrease in overall team accountability and a lack of ownership over project outcomes.

#8 Negative Impact on Team Culture

This snowballs into number eight, which is negative impact on organizational culture. Feedback is an essential component of a healthy organizational culture, but when you fail to prioritize constructive feedback, it sends a message that growth, improvement, and open communication are not valued within your team or the company.

This creates a culture of silence where problems go unaddressed. Continuous improvement is stifled because basically everyone adopts a general attitude of what's the point of bringing anything up. It's not gonna go anywhere anyways.

Quick sidebar, when you're giving constructive feedback to someone, it's hard to tell if they're actually getting it, but if you wanna learn a simple framework for making sure your message is received, check out my episode called How to Make Sure People Listen and Understand You.

#9 Lack fo Allignment with Goals and Expectations

Let's move on to number nine, which is lack of alignment with goals and expectations. Constructive feedback is essential for aligning individual goals and expectations with the goals and expectations of the organization.

But without constructive feedback, your team won't fully understand what their role is or what the project objectives are, or how their work contributes to the overall goals.

This leads to confusion, inefficiency, and misalignment of efforts within your team.

#10 Missed Opportunities

Number 10 is missed opportunities for innovation and creativity. Constructive feedback encourages your team to think critically, explore new ideas, and innovate.

But when feedback is lacking, your team becomes hesitant to take risks and to propose creative solutions and new ideas. They are hesitant because they fear judgment or lack of support from you and the rest of the team and the company. And ultimately, this stifles innovation and it hinders your team's ability to find unique and effective solutions to the complex problems that you face.

#11 Weakens Your Relationships

Moving on to a number 11, not giving constructive feedback weakens your relationship with your team. Now I sound like a broken record here, but giving constructive feedback on a regular basis fosters strong relationships based on trust, respect, and open communication.

But when you avoid providing this feedback, it creates a perception that you're indifferent and that you're uninterested in the growth and success of the individuals on your team.

Just imagine, this puts a strain on each relationship within your team, and it hinders your ability to effectively mentor each individual on your team.

#12 Decreased Customer Satisfaction

The 12th and final consequence of not giving constructive feedback to your team is decreased customer satisfaction. In engineering the quality of the final product or service you're providing is ultimately what it's all about and what's most important.

But without constructive feedback, potential flaws and areas for improvement will continue to go unnoticed. This leads to costly errors and mistakes that slip through the cracks and impact your customer.

As a leader, you can mitigate all of these negative consequences just by prioritizing regular constructive feedback with each person on your team.

But a lot of engineering managers struggle with giving negative feedback in a positive way. If you wanna improve your ability to give constructive feedback to your team, check out my episode called How to Give Constructive Feedback without the Stress.

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