Delivering Feedback

The most important ingredient for giving effective feedback is care for the other person.

Your intent must to be genuinely help the other person. You must see and validate them, and thus want what’s best for them. If you go into giving feedback with a kind of I mantra in your head—I want to sound smart, I want them to like me, I give them a piece of... See more

Feedback is ineffective if it does NOT result in the other person taking action in a way they or you feel good about.

As the remixed Dostoevsky quote goes, All effective feedback is alike; each piece of ineffective feedback is ineffective in its own way.

Ineffective feedback is feedback the other person…

…already knew, so they don’t do anything... See more

There's a great quote that Nick Saban said. He said that average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached, and great players want to be told the truth. Michael had a giant ego and a giant drive, but he would run up to the coach and tell me what I need to get better at.

When delivering tough feedback, use this framework:

Start directly: “I want to chat with you about [specific issue]”

Share observations: “What I’m hearing/seeing is [specific examples]”

Connect to impact: “We both know that to be successful here...”

Focus on future: “Let’s discuss how we can improve this going forward”

If someone gets defensive during... See more

Instead of telling people what I think of a proposal, a product, a feature, whatever, I ask them instead what they think. Were they thrilled with it? Absolutely love it? Most of the time I would hear, “It's okay,” or “It's not bad.” They would surmise from my facial expression that this wasn't the answer I was looking for. Come back when you are... See more