Giving Great Feedback: An In-Depth Look at The Most Important Three Skills

Giving feedback can make even highly experienced, successful professionals nervous.

 A friend, Mike, confessed to me over coffee the other day that he was stressed and dreading his workday. Mike is a regional manager for a major retail chain and usually loves his job. But he wasn't loving it that day. He had an appointment later with one of his best employees and had to deliver feedback. 

As Mike described it:  

"The feedback isn't even all or mostly negative. In general, she is doing a fantastic job. I just need her to adjust her approach to a few performance areas. But I am afraid the meeting will go poorly. I just never feel confident about my approach to these meetings. If the feedback is strongly negative, I have significant anxiety in delivering it. But even when the feedback is mostly positive and entirely aimed at supporting my employees toward even greater success, I still feel queasy and unfocused during the meeting."  

Mike is not alone.  

Many leaders have trouble giving feedback. This is in part because we are usually well-trained in the key performance indicators we are tracking and what we need to say, but we are not nearly as clear about how we need to say it.  

Giving feedback can be one of the most important and trickiest parts of professional communication. We know we need to do it, and we also know that there is no guarantee that it will "go well."  

Many professionals give too much or too little feedback, and when they do give it, they focus almost entirely on the content of the feedback.  

Yet, we know that when it comes to effective feedback, the recipient's state of mind is the most important ingredient for success. If the person with whom you are sharing feedback has a dysregulated nervous system response, the chances of them remembering any of the feedback accurately, much less putting it into practice, become almost zero.  

For this reason, we are sharing with you three ways to think about your feedback before you begin, which will help you regulate your own nervous system and clarify how you want to share your message.  

Your new focus and clarity will calm your own nervous system and have a profound subconscious impact on your voice, body language, and other non-verbal communication. 

These cues will, in turn, impact the nervous system of the person you are speaking with and help them be more open to fully absorb your message. As a result, your ability to give better feedback can build resilience, teamwork, and high performance in your employees.  

1) Take a moment to consider the perceived "power differentials" in play.

Feedback, or any other communication, is useless until it is received.

But when it comes to giving feedback, the ability of others to receive your message can have as much to do with the power dynamics in play as it does with the words you choose.

To illustrate this idea, imagine you hear the statement "Please come with me" from two different people and in two entirely different contexts:

1. A) One is a waiter showing you to a table in a restaurant. You have chosen to be there, you anticipate a positive experience, and you can choose to follow or not.
2. B) The other is a Police Officer telling you to come with them to their headquarters; you are not free to decline, and you likely have some concern about what outcome you can expect.

This illustration can seem like an oversimplification when discussing professional communication. After all, most of us are not arresting our employees and work colleagues! However, exploring this metaphor is a helpful starting point for understanding how power and expectation can impact communication.

Imagine for a moment that you think that you are making the request "Please come with me" from the power position of a waiter, but the other person receives it as though you were a police officer.

Or visa-versa.

You can see how this could lead to misunderstandings and difficulties in clear communication.

And it happens all the time in the workplace.

Let's take the working example of a simple question, "Do you have a moment?"

The question can take on vastly different meanings depending on how the people involved view the power dynamics at play.

A seasoned leader may feel that asking a new employee, "Do you have a moment to discuss this?" is entirely respectful and should be taken at face value.

The leader may then become frustrated that the employee seems to respond with veiled annoyance and immediately stops what they are doing to accommodate the discussion instead of taking a moment to complete what they are doing and bring their most collaborative attention to the conversation.

The leader may be perfectly willing to accept a reply along the lines of "I would be happy to discuss that. Can I come and get you in five or ten minutes after I have wrapped up this email?"

However, the employee may feel that they do not have the leeway to respond in that manner. They may feel that they are expected to drop everything instantly and accommodate the request. They may find the perceived expectation disconcerting or even disrespectful.

And, of course, the opposite can be true. For example, there may be times when the leader needs the employee to prioritize making time for the conversation and feels that they are communicating urgency with their request, but the employee feels that the request is not a priority. The employee may even feel that the leader does not or should not have the power to interrupt them to request a conversation.

In these cases, the expectations outweigh the actual communication.

Now let's imagine the request of "Do you have a moment?" is not coming from the leader but is instead coming from a new employee.

In this case, the employee may feel that if the leader does not immediately stop and take the time to answer a question, they have no power and permission to ask again later, and their question or concern may remain unresolved.

Simply put, both real and perceived power dynamics can greatly impact even the simplest of communications.

When it comes to giving feedback, complications increase exponentially. And we cannot always know how others see the power dynamics in play. Others may see their power, and our own, very differently than we do.

So, how do we use this awareness to improve our feedback? We do it by working to remain both curious and clear.

We want to take a moment and see if we can get curious about possible perceptions of the matter that differ from our own. Taking the time to pre-think about this will allow us to listen more fully and spot possible mixed cues much earlier in the conversation.

 We also want to ensure we are exceptionally clear in our expectations and agreements regarding feedback. Whenever possible, we want to address assumptions that may arise from the perceived power differential.  

Here are some communication tools that help when there is an uneven power dynamic:

• Ensure you are giving feedback that the other person has explicitly agreed to receive. People can agree to accept feedback by giving you direct permission or taking on a position or assigned duties that imply a willingness to accept feedback of that nature. Sometimes, a simple statement such as "Since I am your manager, part of my job is making sure you have everything you need to succeed, and that means I would like to sit down with you for a moment and do a quick review of how last week's event went."
• Be thoughtful about when and where you provide feedback, and whenever possible, ask the other person to agree on a time and place that feels comfortable for them. We are all professionals and must expect to receive feedback and requests throughout our workday. However, all times and places are not equal. (Try not to ambush people in the hall, criticize others in public, or ask for significant adjustments in behavior when someone is rushing to meet a deadline by the end of the day.)
• Listen to the feedback you receive. You cannot credibly share feedback if you are not also open to receiving it. If you have more power than the person giving you feedback, you need to be careful not to be overly dismissive of the feedback you receive from them. If you have less power, you need to be sure that you are bringing your best to the situation and that you don't form the habit of giving your own feedback as a method for deflecting or distracting from the messages you are receiving. In most cases, if you have less power in a situation, your feedback should be focused on your personal interactions with the person to whom you are speaking, and it should be centered on what you need from them in order to do your best work.
• Agree with yourself that you will treat others with dignity. Take the time to listen to them when they state preferences or boundaries that will help them receive your feedback more effectively. If "now is not a good time," ask "when would be a good time?" instead of stubbornly pushing your point.

When you consider these elements, you will be more prepared to use your judgment and experience to evaluate any power dynamics that may be in play and decide how you want to respond to them.

Then, you are ready to begin sharing your feedback, which brings us to the second thing you will want to do to keep your feedback productive.  

2) Try replacing the idea of "feedback" with the concept of "success advice":

A 2019 study at Harvard Business School prompted professionals to provide advice on improving a job application rather than simply giving feedback on it. Using the new instructions, participants generated 56% more ways to improve.

It seems advice keeps us focused on practical changes for the future rather than what was merely "good" or "bad" about past activities. However, the advice offering perspective only works well when we can be clear and specific in our communications.

Good advice is never generic.

We can think we are "giving advice" but still, in fact, be stuck giving feedback if we get stuck in rehashing and evaluating the past without enough specific focus on how to do things differently in the future.

More importantly, conversations that are too focused on the past without straightforward suggestions for improvement can leave even the most emotionally balanced and self-regulated professional feeling defensive and disheartened. Their brains can either over- or under-respond, resulting in more miscommunication and performance problems.

This is true for all feedback or advice. Negative feedback without concrete suggestions for improving it will feel like an attack. And, when it is too general and only about past successes, even positive feedback can feel like added pressure rather than inspiring reflection.

Instead, use discussions about the past to frame a conversation about what could be done differently in the future. Or make your praise specific enough that people know exactly what behaviors to replicate in the future.

When you focus more on what you would like to see moving forward and less on why things went wrong in the past, you encourage trust and resiliency in the people around you.

As you hold these future-focused conversations, remind yourself to focus more on building on strengths rather than emphasizing weaknesses. Be relentless about recognizing, celebrating, and building on existing excellence. This will help you create a culture of resilience in your organization.

Focusing on strengths and providing future-focused actionable advice also helps ease tensions that may arise from inherent power differentials at work.

After all, if we are conscious and tactful, we can 'give advice' regardless of the power dynamics. Even a new employee speaking to a seasoned leader can use this tool.

By thinking in terms of advice, they are freed from the awkwardness of offering an evaluation of their boss's leadership skills and can instead simply provide advice on how the leader can support them to be a better employee in the future.

And to ensure our advice works well, we need to keep a third goal in mind.

3) Keep advice as specific as possible and focus on behaviors rather than intentions.

Avoid talking about overall patterns of attitude, abstract attributes, or theory. And please stop using jargon or corporate catchphrases when you are giving feedback.

Instead, describe specific actions that a third party could accurately observe in the person you are providing feedback to.

As you are doing so, take every opportunity to acknowledge their strengths and positive accomplishments as they relate to the feedback before describing the behavior changes you are requesting.

For example, instead of saying, "You need to take more ownership on the Johnson project," you could clearly and positively describe the behavior that would lead you to feel they had taken ownership.

A sample statement might sound something like this:

"You are working on the Johnson project because of your talent for building strong client relationships. To build on that strength and keep the project moving, next time we run into a snag in getting the correct documents from them, I would like you to reach out to them directly and try to problem-solve the issue. You can send me a report with your action recommendations by email. Marking in our project management system that we are still waiting on their documents is creating delays. I know you can help us avoid those delays with a more active approach."

In the above example, it would be easy for a hypothetical observer to observe whether the person receiving the feedback sent an email with suggested solutions rather than noting "waiting" in the project management system.

However, asking an observer to define if the person receiving feedback has "taken more ownership" would be asking for a subjective opinion and would invite errors and personal bias.

It is important to remember that the point of thinking about third-party observations is not to pass the buck or encourage your people to monitor each other's work! The point is to use this mental model of a third-party observer to check your own biases and assumptions and be sure your communication is entirely focused on actionable behavior.

Imaging a third party also allows you to confirm that you are not becoming preoccupied with perceptions of intentions. As much as we can try to infer someone's intention for a particular action, we could be wrong. As wholesome as their intention might be if their behavior does not produce the desired results, a change is still needed.

Keeping advice and feedback specific, behavior-based, and outcome-driven will help others to be more successful and help you feel more confident in your communications.

It can take some self-awareness and introspection to master these three psychological approaches to giving feedback, and when we do, the results can be significant and positive.  

As Mike later told me, "These tools are simple but powerful. They help me avoid wandering off track during the conversation and help me mentally and emotionally prepare for it. I have noticed that I feel more confident in giving feedback to my employees, and I also notice that they are better at receiving it and implementing it.

So, next time you need to give feedback, in addition to thinking about what you are going to say, take a moment to review these three tools to help you plan how you are going to say it:

1) Take a moment to consider the perceived "power differentials" in play.

2) Try replacing the idea of "feedback" with the concept of success advice.

3) Keep feedback and advice as specific as possible and focus on behaviors rather than intentions.

You may not get each step perfect every time, but simply getting curious and considering these feedback elements will help you communicate more precisely and professionally.

Most importantly, the depth of consideration you take in forming your thoughts around the feedback will help you keep your brain and nervous system firmly inside the Window of Resilience. This will help you feel better and subconsciously impact others, helping them stay calmer and more focused during your interactions.

Doing so will help you consistently bring your best to your professional life and build a more resilient team or organization.