Diagnosis

The agent gives feedback but immediately qualifies or softens it, undermining the value of the assessment and signalling discomfort with being perceived negatively.

Session objective

The objective of the session is to help the agent experience giving direct assessments — positive and negative, to peers and to more senior people — and to notice that the assessment lands well without any qualifying language. Help the agent see that stopping after the assessment is both sufficient and valued. Get the coachee to commit to a practice of giving assessments without adding qualifications that dilute them.

Session tactics

Rather than playing a call, use a live exercise in which the agent gives real assessments of recent interactions to the coach and the TL who is present. Start with a low-stakes positive assessment directed at the coach. When the agent qualifies the assessment, interrupt directly and name what just happened — tell the agent the assessment was complete and the qualification was unnecessary. Ask the agent to give a positive assessment to the TL to build the habit of giving feedback upward. When the agent shows reluctance to assess someone more senior, do not address the reluctance head-on; instead, narrow the task to a positive assessment only, lowering the threshold for the first attempt. Ask the agent to give a negative assessment of the coach, framing it explicitly as valued and consequence-free, so the agent experiences that critical feedback is received without judgment.

Behaviour observations

• The agent gives assessments but follows them immediately with qualifications that soften or retract the point.
• The agent expresses reluctance to give any feedback — positive or negative — to people who are more senior than them.
• When giving a positive assessment to a senior colleague, the agent adds caveats suggesting the behaviour cannot be repeated, undermining the encouragement.

Experiments

• The agent will give assessments and stop immediately after stating them, without adding qualifications or reassurances, and will practise this in the next team interactions.