Less Stress, More Success: Giving Feedback with Confidence
There are many skills surrounding feedback, and today we will focus on giving good and effective feedback.
Setting the Stage
Feedback is data. By giving it, you are potentially giving someone new context or perspective.
Trying to change someones mind or behavior with feedback can lead to a lot of unnecessary work or frustration. You may want someone to change, but they have to make that decision. All you can do is give them data.
If you can let go of the desire to change someone else, you can give more effective feedback and save yourself a lot of work. Less emotions, less work, more impact.
When you offer feedback, you’re sharing how you see things. You don’t have perfect information, and that’s okay. The other person might disagree or have knowledge you don’t. Feedback isn’t a debate you must “win.” It’s just valuable data they can use or ignore. This shift in mindset will free you from the pressure of needing to be “right” and help you focus on clarity and helpfulness.
Focus
Send one message.
Don’t give feedback and try to tell the person two things. Tell them one. Don’t cloud your message with extra information. Make it clear and concise.
One message.
If you have more than one thing to say, pick one. Deliver that single piece of information clearly and concisely.
This ensures that you do not cloud your actual message and get off course. It is very easy to get lost once the conversation gets going and for the other person to get stuck on one minor detail and miss the bigger picture.
Now you can run it through an LLM and ask if this feedback is clear/concise and focused. Give it a try.
Ask Permission
You need to make sure now is a good time for the other person to receive feedback.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the big CEO, if the other person is in the wrong headspace your going to waste everyones time.
At the very least check in. “Hey, I had some feedback I wanted to share on your presentation from yesterday, is now a good time?”
You open up the floor for the other person to say “actually my cat is very sick, I don’t think I’d be very receptive to that today. How about in a few days?”
If you ignore this bit, you might be fine, but the cost is low, and the mitigations great.
Situation and Behavior
Focus on the subject, not the person. You aren’t assessing this persons character, or who they are. You are giving data on a thing they did or said.
“You are lazy” is not useful feedback. It’s a judgement call. Nobody ever heard that and went “you’re right, I’m going to change my act and I’ll never be lazy again! If only someone had told me this 15 years ago it would have saved my marriage”.
Keep the feedback focused on your observation and be specific.
“Yesterday during our team planning meeting, you interrupted Carol 3 times when she tried to speak, as a result she stopped trying to contribute, and we never got to hear her viewpoint.”
Be specific. We didn’t say “you usually interrupt Carol”. It was about that specific meeting. Even if it had happened in the past, focus on specific most recent example. This prevents us from wasting time arguing about details. We can argue about “usually”, but we can’t argue about what actually happened.
Timing
In the ideal case, you want to give feedback as close to the event as possible.
If you feel confident to give your feedback in the moment, and you lean on your other great feedback skills like asking permission, go for it. It is however okay to sleep on it and reflect.
In most cases you should give whatever feedback you have the next time you meet.
Feedback that is about someones performance, may require you to consult with others. This is also fine, but keep in mind that the longer you wait, the more problems you invite.
If you sit on feedback for too long, it will become harder to be specific, and the persons memory of the event will start to get foggy. You risk your version of events drifting further from what they believe happened, which makes it harder for everyone to be on the same page.
The value of the data degrades over time. Your feedback on my presentation the same or next day is super helpful for me to reflect. If you give it to me 5 years from now, I probably forgot I even gave a presentation, and that’s 5 years where I could have used that feedback to have refined many presentations.
In Summary:
Feedback is data - Not a tool for behavior change.
One Message.
Ask First: Ensure the other person is ready to hear what you have to say.
Be Specific and Objective: Describe the situation and behavior, not the person’s character.
Be Timely: Provide feedback while the details are still fresh.