No one likes to give critical feedback but everyone wants to hear it.

Most people can come up with several traumatic stories from their pasts in which they have given or received unconstructive, negative feedback. These terrible experiences embed themselves into their psyche and become a source of anxiety.

On the other hand, most people can also remember a time when someone gave them helpful feedback that contributed to a marked improvement in their effectiveness and influenced their success.

Research suggests that people like to hear suggestions for improvement more than positive feedback.

Here are 5 ways you can give negative feedback to bring out positive results.

The ratio of positive to negative feedback. It's not negative feedback but the ratio of positive to negative feedback that influences how employees respond to feedback. Research by HBR revealed that the average ratio of positive feedback for every negative feedback for the high-performing teams was 5.6. But the average for the low-performing teams, at 0.36 to 1, was almost three negative comments for every positive one.

Interestingly, you notice a similar magic number in John Gottman’s analysis of couple's likelihood of getting divorced or remaining married. Once again, the single biggest determinant is the ratio of positive to negative comments the partners make to one another. And the optimal ratio is amazingly similar—five positive comments for every negative one. (For those who ended up divorced, the ratio was 0.77 to 1—or something like three positive comments for every four negative ones.)

Listen after you have given feedback: The more you listen the better employees think that you are better at giving feedback. In the global study, respondents were asked to rate how well managers “carefully listened to the other person’s point of view about a problem before giving them feedback” and how effective the feedback was that their manager gave them. The less people felt their managers listened to them, the more likely they were to believe that their managers were not being honest and straightforward. One could look at this the other way too – that is, those who felt strongly that their managers listened to them rated them high on their ability to give honest feedback.  

Help them reflect on the consequences: Very often, when we see someone performing poorly we say to ourselves, “If they only realized they had a problem they would do better.” But most of the time, that’s simply not so.  A struggling employee may not realize how serious the problem is, but more likely, he or she is very much aware but hasn’t figured out how to do better. That means that simply pointing out the problem isn’t going to be all that helpful.

A better approach could be to bring up the feedback and ask them about the consequences of their behavior. People will continue to behave below expectations as long as they are unaware of the consequences.

Clear, observable, and straightforward tip: Awareness of consequences alone does not help, sometimes. A simple, "Here is what you can do differently next time" can work wonders. It diffuses the situation, as you are not dwelling on the uncomfortable part but looking forward to the future. This gives a chance for the team members to redeem themselves.

Express confidence: The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse according to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations.

Research shows that there is a strong positive correlation between a person’s level of confidence and his or her preference for receiving negative feedback. Be sensitive to the fact that people with low self-confidence will shy away from receiving negative feedback while people with high confidence might seek it out. While giving negative feedback, it helps if you express confidence in the team member's ability to change and sound reassuring and encouraging.

People believe constructive criticism is essential to their career development. They want it from their leaders. But their leaders often don’t feel comfortable offering it up. However, the ability to give corrective feedback constructively is one of the critical keys to leadership, an essential skill to boost your team’s performance that could set you apart.