I have spent a good portion of my professional life teaching people how to build self-confidence. I've written about it. I've researched it. I've delivered keynote speeches about it to audiences around the world. I've coached national teams, championship athletes and senior executives on how to develop it; and then, one afternoon on a soccer field in Iowa, I managed to destroy a young man's confidence in about 30 seconds.

Not exactly my finest coaching moment. Let me explain.

When the Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story

Our soccer season has gotten off to an encouraging start. There's a renewed sense of optimism around the program. The players are buying in. The staff is energized.

This season we've been leaning more heavily into performance analytics to help us make better decisions. Data doesn't care about your reputation. It doesn't care how hard you think you're working. It doesn't care that you had a great game three weeks ago. Data is wonderfully, sometimes painfully, honest; and in a profession where coaches can fall in love with their own opinions, that's a good thing. We've been using analytics to challenge assumptions, remove some of our biases, and hold players accountable to measurable standards.

During a recent match against one of the top-ranked teams in our conference, I decided to use some of that data to motivate a player. As he was preparing to enter the match, I pulled him aside. "Listen," I said. "In your last game, you played 39 minutes. You passed the ball four times,  and three of those passes resulted in turnovers. I need you to get involved. I need you to be stronger. I need you to make better decisions."

In my mind, this was brilliant coaching. I had the evidence. I had the urgency. I had the accountability. I imagined him storming onto the field, determined to prove me wrong. I wanted him angry, focused, fired up and ready to impose himself on the game.

Insert pile of poop emoji here!!! 

For the next 10 or 12 minutes, he struggled with everything. He was physically overwhelmed. He turned the ball over. He looked hesitant, tentative--almost afraid to make a mistake.

The exact opposite of what I wanted.

When I finally got him alone at halftime, I could see tears welling up in his eyes, and that's when it hit me:  I hadn't motivated him. I'd crushed him. I had delivered accurate feedback, but I had failed as a communicator.

The Feedback Paradox

Here's something that might surprise you: Feedback doesn't always improve performance. In fact, sometimes it makes performance worse.

In a landmark 1996 meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin, researchers Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi examined 607 effect sizes from feedback interventions involving more than 12,000 observations. Their findings were fascinating. Although feedback improved performance on average, more than one-third of the feedback effects were negative.

Think about that.

We spend enormous amounts of time in organizations developing performance management systems, conducting evaluations, building dashboards and training managers to give feedback. Yet a substantial proportion of feedback interventions in that research actually made performance worse.

Why?

Kluger and DeNisi proposed that feedback can redirect a person's attention away from the task and toward themselves. Instead of thinking, ‘How do I make a better pass?,’ the person begins thinking, ‘Am I good enough?’ Instead of focusing on the next decision, they're replaying the last mistake. Instead of being absorbed in the work, they're worried about how they're being judged.

Sound familiar?

That's exactly what I had done to my player. I wanted him thinking about ball possession, decision-making and physical engagement. Instead, I had him questioning his ability to play. When people start questioning their ability in the middle of a high-pressure performance, things can unravel pretty quickly.

The Corporate Version of My Coaching Mistake

This isn't just a soccer problem. Imagine a sales manager preparing a salesperson for an important client presentation. The manager pulls up the numbers and announces, "Your conversion rate is down 18%. You've missed your last three targets, and your closing percentage is the lowest on the team. I need you to step up today."

The manager believes they're creating urgency, but what if the salesperson walks into the meeting thinking about their poor numbers instead of listening carefully to the client?

What if they become so preoccupied with not failing that they stop taking the thoughtful risks necessary to succeed?

The manager has delivered the facts, but have they improved the performance?

The Conversation I Should Have Had

Back on the soccer field, I knew I had some repairing to do. At halftime, I found a quiet moment with the player. "Listen," I told him. "I gave you that feedback because I know you're better than what you've shown. I've seen what you can do. You belong on this field. I need you to believe that and go show it." I reminded him of his strengths. I gave him specific things to focus on. Perhaps most importantly, I tried to restore the confidence I had inadvertently taken away.

His second half was better (not perfect, but better).

A couple of days later, once the emotion of the match had passed, I circled back: "Hey, I've been thinking about the feedback I gave you before you went on. I don't think it worked."

He immediately protested, "No, Coach. I like hard feedback. I want you to be tough on me."

Now, here's where things got interesting because what he was telling me he wanted and what I had observed on the field didn't seem to match. I realized something important. It wasn't enough for me to ask him what kind of feedback he preferred. I also needed to pay attention to how he responded to it. Maybe he genuinely wanted tough feedback. Maybe the timing was wrong. Maybe the delivery was wrong. Maybe the emotional intensity of the moment changed how he heard it--probably some combination is most true.

The evidence was sitting right in front of me.

My approach hadn't produced the behavior I wanted, and that was my problem to solve.

Three Lessons About Feedback Every Leader Should Remember

1. Timing is not a footnote. It's part of the message.

We often think the quality of feedback depends entirely on what we say, but when we say it can be just as important. There is a time for detailed performance analysis, a time for difficult conversations, and a time for simple, confidence-building instructions.

Moments before an athlete enters a high-pressure match may not be the best time to review everything they did wrong in their previous performance. Just as the five minutes before a major board presentation may not be the best time to remind an executive of their last three failures.

The question isn't simply, "Is this feedback accurate?" It's, "Is this the right feedback for this person at this moment?"

2. Evaluate feedback by its impact, not your intention.

This one stings a little because I had good intentions. I wanted my player to succeed. I wanted him to compete harder. I wanted him to reach his potential, but intentions don't score goals. They don't close sales, improve customer service, or build high-performing teams. Behavior does.

Too often, leaders evaluate their feedback by whether they delivered the message clearly.

Instead, ask yourself:

• Did performance improve?
• Did the employee leave with greater clarity and confidence about what to do next?

Feedback is not successful simply because it was delivered. It's successful when it helps produce the desired change in behavior.

3. The leader must be willing to change, too.

 This might be the hardest lesson of all. When an employee fails to respond to our feedback, our natural instinct is to place the responsibility on them:

They're too sensitive.

They're not coachable.

Perhaps, but what if the problem isn't their willingness to learn? What if it's our unwillingness to adapt?

In studies involving adolescents receiving critical feedback on their writing, researchers found that a simple message communicating both high standards and belief in the student's ability to meet them increased the likelihood that students would revise their work.

The message was essentially:

"I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them."

Think about this approach.

The standards don't change. The expectations don't soften. My leader believes I can do this. That belief matters. It creates a foundation on which accountability can stand.

The Final Whistle

The art of leadership is knowing when to challenge, when to encourage, when to push and when to put an arm around someone's shoulder. It's understanding that the same message, delivered to two different people at two different moments, can produce entirely different outcomes.

The purpose of feedback isn't to prove that we're right about someone's performance. It's to help them become better at it.

Sometimes, the first person who needs to change is the leader.