Almost half of managers find giving negative feedback stressful. One-fifth avoid it completely. Research now confirms that if managers wait an appropriate amount of time, consider an employee’s personal situation and deliver feedback appropriately, doing so during morning hours is most effective to optimize learning.
Source: Quartz at Work, September 16, 2018. Link. For many of us, this dissonance gets worse as the day progresses, which led Ruttan to her proposal that the best time to give negative feedback is in the morning. Perhaps not the first thing when your colleague walks into the office – best to let them settle in. But in the first half of the day for sure.