How to give feedback without being a jerk

Feedback. Sigh.

Feedback, just the word makes me roll my eyes. Ineffective leaders can use feedback as a way to power trip, flex their authority and express their anger with their employees. Hence the eye roll.

Effective, epic leaders use feedback as a gateway to insightful, powerful conversations that strengthen relationships, empower employees and create meaningful change.

HOW can you do that? 

Well, there’s plenty of feedback models out there to use. Here’s just a few:

• SBI Feedback Model (Situation Behaviour Impact). 
  I give this a 7 out of 10. 
  I think that it encourages rational thinking, the focus on impact is really valuable too BUT there is a lack of action focused dialogue.
• BOOST Feedback Model (Balanced, Observed, Objective, Specific, Timely)
  This is also a 7 out of 10 for me.
  The inclusion of ‘specific’ is WILDLY important, there’s nothing worse than feedback in the form of some vague, sweeping statements with zero examples. That sets you up for a confusing conversation and an inability for your employee to actually change because they don’t know *exactly* what they are doing that’s not working.
• 💩 Sandwich Feedback Model (Something nice, something ‘constructive’, something nice).
  This is a 0 out of 10. 
  When putting something constructive between two compliments, it erodes the value of all three statements because the compliments seem tokenistic and the ‘constructive’ comments can get lost or hidden (and therefore ignored).

There's some good recommendations and solid options there for you to use - but wanna know my secret? I've created MY OWN feedback model that I use with my team and my leadership clients too.

 It’s cool…

The COOL Feedback Model (by Brighten Project)

Provide CONTEXT to your feedback

• Ask for permission to provide feedback. E.g. Hey Sara, I’d like to give you some feedback if that would be ok. 
• Provide content of the feedback. E.g. It’s related to our Production Meeting this morning.

Share the behaviour that you observed.

• What did you see, specifically. No emotions, just facts.
• Describe the situation in detail, or provide specific examples.
• E.g. You appeared to be really disinterested in the meeting, I noticed you were on your phone while others were presenting as well.
• When Hayley asked for your thoughts on the new media project it seemed like you were caught off guard and had to ask her to repeat the information she’d shared and the question too. 

Explain the impact that you observed

• How did their actions impact the situation? (for better or worse)
• What is the gap between the actions vs expectations (below or above).
• No emotions, just facts - don’t show any judgement or assumptions as you explain the impact, because you never know what is going to come out during the Learning discussion. If they share that something bad is happening in their personal life you’re going to feel like a jerk. 
• E.g. I wanted to chat to you about it because the Production Meetings are really important. They only happen once a fortnight and it’s the one place where we get all the information and updates for the projects that we contribute to. 
• If you’re not focused you can miss important information. 
• My other concern was that we show respect for our own work, and other’s work by being present, paying attention and listening - that’s how we build our team culture. 

Create space for a learning discussion to move forward.

• Switch into curious, kind, questioning mode for a conversation about what happened.
• Common questions that I’ll ask during this conversation:
  • How is everything going, are you ok?
  • Were you aware that was happening?
  • Why did it happen?
  • What can be done to move forward?
  • What would you do differently? 

He’s a 10 but… 

Nothing. This framework is a 10.

 The reason that I’ve found this approach to be so powerful is because

• From the beginning it creates a collaborative environment by asking if you can talk about some feedback. 
• There’s a focus on specific examples.
• When you talk to the impact, you also highlight the gap vs expectations giving you a chance to celebrate overachievement or to be crystal clear where there’s been underperformance.
• The learning discussion is future focused. The conversation becomes less about “you’ve made a mistake” and more about “let’s work together on this problem and figure out how to avoid it in the future” vibes.

Try out my framework next time you want to provide feedback to your team - let me know how you go!

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What do you do if they say “No” to receiving feedback?

How can you use this to coach your team?

How can you use this to manage under performers?

How does this fit within your overall leadership communication strategy?

 Join me inside the Epic Self Leadership Program and I'll show you. Apply for the next intake over here: Epic Self Leadership Program