Yaniv Preiss

WIIFM (what’s in it for me): you will see how simple and quick it is to give feedback.

Here “directs” is short for “direct reports.”

The following is based on the podcast, “Manager Tools,” which has researched real workplaces with thousands of managers and directs for many years. During this time, they explored workplaces worldwide. It is not my opinion or anecdotal experience, nor is it the only way to do it.

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Let’s think about these questions for a moment:

• What is feedback to directs?
• When was the last time you gave feedback to a direct?
• What was the outcome of this feedback?

DALL·E Salvador Dalí painting style of a car dashboard and a road ahead

Feedback purpose

Feedback is all about future behavior, not about the past.

Positive — encourage specific behavior
Negative — discourage specific behavior

It is a basic managerial tool to achieve effectiveness, i.e., results and retention.

What is Behavior

The words you say

The actual content.

How you say them

There are many factors, such as how you say these words, including volume, speed, emphasis, and intonation.

Read the following sentence, and each time, emphasize a different word. Notice how the meaning of the same content changes.

• I didn’t say you were slow
• I didn’t say you were slow
• I didn’t say you were slow
• I didn’t say you were slow
• I didn’t say you were slow
• I didn’t say you were slow

Facial expressions

Imagine someone saying, “sure, I will do it,” either

• with a smile
• rolling their eyes

Body language

Imagine someone saying, “sure, I will do it,” either

• With a thumbs-up gesture
• With one hand over the forehead, loudly exhaling

Work products

• Timeliness
• Quantity
• Correctness
• Quality
• Documentation
• Safety

When to give feedback

As close as possible to an event. That may look like the following:

• On the spot
• After a meeting
• Later that day or the day after
• On the next 1:1

The idea is that the feedback has to be timely to be effective, and it shouldn’t interrupt the current activity.

Imagine a basketball coach giving you feedback six months after a game — not very effective.

A performance review is not the place to give new feedback. It’s only a summary of known and discussed feedback. Performance review is for succession planning and documenting for the organization.

Before giving feedback

While delivering the feedback is important, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on yourself:

• Did you set expectations?
• Did you define success criteria?
• Did you assume the direct *should* know? Common sense is not that common; it needs to be explicit
• Did you consider the skills and maturity vs. the task? (Not too challenging, not too boring)
• Did the direct receive the required training and guidance?
• Did you have check-ins and ask about obstacles and progress?

How to give feedback

The simple model takes a few seconds and is identical for positive and negative feedback:

1. Ask: “Can I give you some feedback?”
2. Use the formula: “When you did X, it caused Y. Can you please…?”

Why do we ask first? If they say “no,” respect it. They might be very busy or stressed and will not receive the feedback. Therefore, it will not be effective. Repetitive “no”s (let’s say five) are unacceptable. Employees are obliged to receive feedback.

The formula is about the specific behavior (as defined above), not the personality or judgment.

Examples

• “When you supported your arguments with visualized data in the meeting, it effectively reached that decision.”
• “When you were four minutes late to the meeting today, it set a bad example for others after we had agreed to start on time. Can you do better next time?”

How NOT to give feedback

• Too many words — obscures the message
• “Shit sandwich,” a.k.a sugar-coating. This method opens with positive feedback, gives the real negative one we intended, and finishes with another positive one. Directs tend to focus on the positive ones
• Addressing the person/personality instead of the behavior. This can be perceived as an attack or a wrong psychological assessment. Addressing the intention, mindset, emotions, motivation, and attitude is irrelevant
• Being generic — lacks information on how to behave in the future

Examples

“You must be a better communicator.”

What do you understand from it?

• Grammar?
• Vocabulary?
• Frequency?
• Verbal? Written?
• Content?
• Terminology?
• Channel?
• Recipients?
• Gestures?
• Tone?
• Volume?
• Accent?
• Passive-aggressive?
• Use fewer words?
• More precision?

“You must be a team player.”

What do you understand from it?

• Offer help to others?
• Ask for help?
• Be kind?
• Make jokes?
• Teach, share knowledge?
• Identify issues and suggest solutions?
• Stop gossip?
• Communicate what you’re working on?
• Volunteer?
• Admit mistakes?
• Stay late?
• Smile more?

“You gave a great presentation.”

What would you understand from it?

• Length?
• Content?
• Examples?
• Fit for the audience?
• Conquered fear of public speaking?
• Funny?
• Hand gestures?
• Slides?
• No filler words? (Ehm, um, kind-of, so, essentially, basically)
• Good research?

Why should you give positive feedback?

The purpose is to encourage more of a specific desired behavior.

The common objections of managers to giving positive feedback are “My directs should know when they do a good job” and “My directs will get addicted to it.” When you think about yourself, don’t you like to hear you did your manager say you did something good so that you can continue this?

Another objection is the time investment in giving feedback. As you can see in the described model, it takes a few seconds.

According to research, the effective ratio is 5:1 for positive feedback!
If you’re only starting the practice of giving feedback or have new directs, give only positive feedback for a while.

Negative feedback is crucial, but without positive, there is no trust. Directs might think “the boss hates me” or “only criticizing,” therefore leading to ignoring the feedback.

Another problem with giving only negative feedback is the need for psychological safety. It might create fear, which leads to errors, cover-ups, no initiative, doing the bare minimum, using their brain for worrying instead of doing meaningful work, and learning less.

An experiment was conducted in healthcare, where researchers wanted to examine the performance of psychologically safe teams vs. non-safe.

Safe teams meant members felt safe sharing doubts, mistakes, and learnings. Surprisingly, the non-safe teams did better concerning the number of mistakes and maltreatment. It took the researchers a while to realize why — the mistakes were hidden and covered up!

“Catch them doing something good” — Find real opportunities to give positive feedback.

Negative feedback — effectiveness of the formula

As you saw, the formula for giving feedback is very short and to the point, almost mechanical.

When giving feedback, do not engage in questioning, dialog, and trying to find reasons for mistakes. These are classic manager behaviors that are intuitive but ineffective.

We judge ourselves based on our intentions and effort and judge others based on their behavior. Trying to learn why the direct made a mistake (“to fix the root problem”) usually creates more justification and belief they were right.

Having long discussions takes more time for both and inflicts more “pain” on both. It’s far better to learn what to change and move on.

Making it precise, short, and simple results in managers not avoiding giving feedback and improving performance.

Remember, we already established trust and a relationship with ongoing 1:1s where we gave positive feedback beforehand.

Public or private?

“Praise in public; criticize in private” — a good rule of thumb, but not always.

Ask the direct how they prefer to receive recognition. Some hate being in the spotlight, and it’s a punishment for them.

Consider whether there is value for the whole team in giving negative feedback in public. These are rare. When there is a specific direct that requires negative feedback, e.g., for being late, do not give the feedback to the whole team.

For example, “we all agreed to start on time” because the “offender” might ignore it as it’s “everyone’s problem,” and others who demonstrate the desired behavior might get upset for being wrongly accused.

Where should you give the person feedback?

In-person? Video? Written?

In-person is best because it’s a “warm channel” of communication, and it’s much easier to experience the body language and the intonation, but many of us are remote now.

Depending on the situation, you can use anything. It is important to deliver feedback promptly. Here’s some ways to do that:

• Video call
• Email
• Slack (public channel / private message)
• Designated HR software used in the organization

Radical Candor

This book explains why and how to give feedback with multiple examples. It includes the following visualization of the behavior of the manager.

Radical Candor

On the horizontal axis, the manager on the left is giving no feedback and the one on the right does give feedback. On the vertical axis, the manager at the bottom doesn’t care about the direct, and at the top cares about them.

• Obnoxious Aggression (a.k.a brutal honesty or frontstabbing) is a direct challenge without caring for the direct. It includes insincere praise and unkind delivery.
• Manipulative Insincerity is backstabbing. It includes political or passive-aggressive behavior. There’s no direct challenge and no caring. Empty praise in their presence and criticism in their absence.
• Ruinous Empathy is caring personally and not challenging. It’s depriving information they need to know in favor of the managers’ feelings. There’s either no feedback or sugarcoating. It may feel positive, but it is damaging.
• Radical candor is when caring for the direct and challenging them. This is where real growth happens. Remember that having trust is a prerequisite.

Too small to mention?

Would it be better to ignore small things or wait for patterns? No.

Preventing any feedback is a disservice. There are things the direct is not aware of themselves, and others are, as can be seen in the Johari window “Blind Self”:

https://innobatics.gr/en/johari-window/

It’s easier to stop problems when they are small. Think of how you drive a car. You are constantly correcting the steering wheel, sometimes micro-movements. You’re not waiting until you almost fall into a ditch to make an aggressive correction. This is good for easy or difficult conversations, even when someone is picking their nose.

This aligns with the “Broken Window Theory,” a.k.a “Today’s exceptions are tomorrow’s norms.” What we tolerate and accept is the new baseline for future behavior.

Coaching

Coaching is short-term teaching of a specific skill.

Coaching includes measuring, setting targets with a target date to reach the desired goals, and identifying who and what can help. Here’s some ways to do that:

• Understand the issue or difficulty — when? with whom? how much?
• Explain the benefits of changing behavior
• Be empathetic (maybe you forgot how it is to learn something new)
• Smile — it’s the global invitation to cooperate
• Consider their DiSC profile to influence them effectively

Examples: pivoting an excel table, performing a kind and effective code review

Mentoring

Mentoring is advising on broad, long-term, strategic goals.

• Often not done by the direct manager due to potential conflict
• You can maybe help the direct find mentors

Examples: becoming a CFO, becoming a public speaker

Feedback to non-directs

We sometimes want or are requested to give feedback to our peers and managers. In this case, the following helps:

• Do not use the model per se, but rather normal human conversation. The point is again to use facts and not judgment or analysis of their personality.
• Peers — you can kindly give feedback, openly discuss ways of working, exchange opinions, etc., but do not expect behavior change. Their manager holds them accountable, not their peers.
• Managers — very risky. It’s better to change yourself than your manager. Generally recommended to avoid, and it highly depends on the relationship and evidence you have from previous feedback, the company values, and culture.
• Fun fact — usually, the person who claims it’s not true is the most powerful in the room. “People should be able to give me feedback.”

Positive feedback is always nice to give and receive. It also helps with building relationships which are crucial in organizations. The same goes here, “catch them and do something good.”

Receiving feedback

• Say thank you
• Write it down
• Think later. Do not try to explain and give excuses or clarifications
• Find ways to show you’re acting on it, as it builds trust, or follow up and explain why this cannot change

Resources

Manager Tools podcast. Actionable situations and theory

The Effective Manager book. A deep dive into the four basic tools

Radical Candor book. All about feedback

The One Minute Manager book. Small investments, great outcome

Drive book. How to motivate employees

At the Table (Lencioni) podcast

Johari Window

Crucial Conversations book

Coaching for Leaders podcast