How to Give Feedback
Your Ultimate Guide to Giving & Receiving Feedback That Works
You’ve probably heard the trite expression that “feedback is a gift.” Does it cause you to cringe like it does me? Most feedback isn’t fun; it’s frightening and sometimes feeble, ferocious, or even fictitious. Fortunately, the problem isn’t with feedback itself, which is an important and valuable source of information about how your actions and choices land in the world. No, the problem is more often user error. People think they’re delivering feedback when really they’re passing judgment, giving advice, or telling you what to do.
None of that is feedback.
Feedback is novel information about how one person’s behavior impacts another. The gift in feedback is that the person giving the feedback shares candid information about themself, taking a risk to let you know what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. That’s incredibly valuable insight to get.
So, it’s time to fix our feedback so we can get the benefit of increased self-awareness, improved relationships, and enhanced effectiveness. Read on for more on the difference between feedback and other developmental dialogues (like coaching, instruction, advice, and evaluation) and learn how to both give and receive feedback that will support your own effectiveness and that of your team.
IN THIS EDITION:
- Why Is Feedback Important?
- Fundamentals of Effective Feedback
- Exercise: Is Your Feedback Really Feedback?
- Strategies for Giving Feedback
- How to Avoid Common Feedback Mistakes
- Tips for Giving Feedback to Leaders
- The Role of Body Language in Giving Feedback
- Feedback in Virtual Work Environments
- Feedback for Different Generations
Why Is Feedback Important?
You’ve probably heard the expression “feedback is a gift” and been on the receiving end of endless requests to share your feedback.
What makes experts so keen on feedback? How could this form of awkward, uncomfortable conversation be so valuable? Why is it so central to personal growth, team development, and organizational productivity?
The answer to those questions starts with a good definition of what feedback is—because it’s not what most people think.
What Is Feedback?
Feedback is information about how a person’s behavior and choices affect another person.
Feedback takes the form of “When you did x, I experienced y.”
That’s it.
Now, we can return to the question of why feedback is important. The reason is that most of us don’t have insight into how our actions land with others. A multi-year study conducted by Dr. Tasha Eurich found only 10-15% of people are self-aware about how they’re perceived. Even more alarming is the finding that self-awareness drops as you get more senior in an organization.
Thus, feedback is important because it’s the only way to bridge the gap between what people think they’re putting out into the world and how it’s being received. Feedback is the only way to separate intent from your impact.
What Isn’t Feedback?
The reason many attempts at feedback create defensiveness, deflate confidence, and erode trust is that most of us confuse feedback with judgment.
Judgment is one person sharing their opinion of another. Judgment is when you tell someone whether they are good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, worthy or unworthy. Not surprisingly, that often creates friction and makes it less likely that the person will be open and learn from the message.
Judgment is unhelpful, but there are other, more valuable types of developmental conversations that are also confused with feedback. They include:
Coaching: Supporting a person to find options for how to better fulfill their intentions.
Advice: Sharing your perspective to help a person learn more easily. (This is a great video by Michael Bungay Stanier about the risk of giving advice.)
Instruction: Providing information about the correct way of doing something.
Recognition: Bringing attention to the positive impact of someone’s behavior.
Evaluation: Assessing the quality of a person’s contributions.
There’s a role for each of these, but they’re different from feedback.
The Importance of Feedback in Organizations
Feedback is valuable to organizations at many levels:
Feedback helps individuals learn and grow: Feedback helps individuals adapt their behavior and become increasingly effective in their roles. Research has shown that individuals who work in organizations with strong feedback cultures have greater role clarity, job satisfaction, and career motivation.
Feedback supports healthy team dynamics. Feedback is a form of transparent communication that bolsters trust and encourages candor. This trust forms the basis of productive conflict, which is essential to a high-functioning team.
Feedback supports efficiency and effectiveness. At the organizational level, feedback is an important tool for iterative learning and a key contributor to innovation.
Baker et al. (2013) cite evidence that feedback:
“binds organisational goals with continuity and fluidity, boosts creativity, propels trust, and drives motivation in individuals (Mulder, 2013). More generally, it aligns performance with the overall objectives and missions of the organisation (Sharma & Marandure, 2011).”
Book Me To Speak At Your Next Event
If this article is proving useful to you and you’d like to share these insights with other members of your team or organization, I have a whole talk on how to get the most out of your feedback. Use the link below to make an inquiry:
The Fundamentals of Effective Feedback
There are a few important components of a feedback conversation. Let’s break them down.
1. Orient Them to the Situation
When you’ve had a reaction to a person’s words or actions that makes you want to deliver some feedback, it’s likely that it’s top of mind for you for a while. On the contrary, the person on the receiving end has likely carried on with their day or week and given little thought to the situation in question. That’s why it’s important to start the feedback dialogue with a quick orientation to the situation you’re referring to. For example, if the person said something in an email that upset you, all you need to say is, “In the email you sent this morning.”
When you orient the person is a matter of personal preference—their preference, not yours. If you’re delivering feedback about a behavior that had a negative impact on you, some people prefer to be given a heads-up so that they can collect their thoughts before the discussion. (This is less important is you’re delivering feedback about a positive impact.) This might be a quick “I’d like to talk to you after lunch about the email you sent,” or if you’re working remotely from one another, it could be in an email. Just remember to provide at least a little context for what you’d like to talk about because a generic message that says, “We need to talk” can make the person anxious.
2. Translate Judgment into Behavior
As humans, our first experience of someone’s words or actions tends to come in the form of judgment. We know what we like or don’t like very quickly. But feedback isn’t about your opinion; it’s about your reaction to their behavior. The most important step in delivering feedback is to describe what you saw or heard in objective terms that the person will recognize. If we continue with the example of the upsetting email, you need to figure out what in the email caused you to feel upset. You might describe it as “There were three places in the email where you used numbers that are out of date.”
The goal in the translation stage is to describe the person’s behavior so accurately—in a sterile, clinical way—that they first recognize what you’re talking about and then agree that it’s a fair description. A good test of whether you’ve avoided any opinion, judgment, or subjectivity is to think about how you can describe their behavior without using any adjectives. Adjectives are open to interpretation and often trigger defensiveness. So, think about how you can avoid words like sloppy, rude, innovative, or hostile and replace them with nouns and verbs like “included three errors.”
Don’t forget that this formula is just as important when you’re giving positive feedback. You want to be clear about what choices the person made that made a good impression on you.
3. Expose The Impact on You
The novel and valuable information in a piece of feedback is contained in this component when you share your subjective experience of their behavior. As Dr. Tasha Eurich’s research makes clear, most of us aren’t self-aware. [Take Dr. Eurich’s self-awareness quiz and see where you’re at.] We focus on our intent in saying or doing things rather than on the impact those words or actions have on others. This is where you get to expose the person to your inner dialogue, which will help them develop insight. In this step, the point is to be subjective because you want them to know what you thought, how you felt, and what story you started telling yourself. You might say, “I started to worry that there are more errors I didn’t catch.”
The key thing to remember at this point is that you’re not sharing the truth; you’re only sharing your version of the truth. Your description will land best if it’s framed as what you thought, felt, and wondered.
4. Invite Their Side of the Story
At this point, you’ve delivered your feedback and helped the person to understand your version of the truth. Now it’s time to turn it from a feedback monologue into a feedback dialogue. Use an open-ended question to invite them to share their perspective. In the error-filled email example, you might ask, “What was your review process?”
The exact question you choose will depend on the situation. If you’re giving positive feedback, you might want to ask about how they arrived at such a great choice or how they could apply their skills to other situations. If you’re sharing a negative impact, you could ask about their intent, how the situation affected their behavior, or how they might remedy any issues they caused.
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This basic formula will set you up to give effective feedback—new insight about how the person’s behavior and choices impacted you. It will also give you a chance to learn and gain insight yourself as you consider their intent and the factors that contributed to their choices.
Exercise: Is Your Feedback Really Feedback?
Strategies for Giving Feedback
Beyond the mechanics of crafting a good piece of feedback, there are a few tips and techniques to ensure that your feedback lands as intended. Use these guidelines to make giving and receiving feedback as positive as possible.
Seek Permission to Share Feedback
I’m not hard-core on this. For me, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. That’s because feedback is telling the person something about you, not really about them. So, for example, if someone has overstepped your boundaries, they need to hear that whether they want to or not. That said, if your goal is for them to learn something and perhaps change their behavior, you’ll have a better shot if they are open to the message. You might say, “I would like to share my thoughts on your comments in the meeting. Are you open to that?”
Make it Timely
The best learning happens when feedback follows soon after the behavior. That’s when the person is most likely to remember what they did or said and have fresh recollections of the context. The other reason to give feedback quickly is that the longer you sit without closure, the more it amplifies. What might have been a minor issue in the moment takes on epic proportions as you replay it (and make it more dramatic) in your head. Another reason to close the loop on your impressions quickly is that the longer you leave it open, the more your perceptions will cloud your judgment of their ongoing behavior. It’s easy to start resenting the person when they’ve had no opportunity to change.
Give a Heads-up
Once you’ve decided that you want to deliver a piece of feedback, you stop being on a level playing field with the other person. You’re in the know about what’s coming, and they aren’t. When feedback seems to come out of nowhere, it can be anxiety-provoking and even more likely to trigger defensiveness or upset. I recommend giving the person a chance to collect their thoughts in advance. I don’t recommend the ominous “Time to Chat” text message, but a quick email with a little more substance should do the trick, “I want to share some thoughts on your presentation format. I’ll drop by this afternoon.”
More Positive than Negative?
Pay attention to the ratio of feedback. You want to give more (lots more) examples of choices they made that had a positive impact on you than those that had a negative impact. I’ve seen ratios of 3:1, but I don’t think there’s a magic number. Be deliberate about noticing how their behavior lands with you, and you’ll find opportunities to celebrate their choices just as often as to question them. If you aren’t deliberate, the things that have a negative impact will be much more salient and memorable to you. That’s how leaders fall into the trap of thinking “no news is good news” is a viable management approach.
Limit Your Focus
It’s no help to run through a long list of issues all at once. People can’t take in that much information at once. Running through a litany of concerns is only going to make them feel defeated. Instead, pick one issue and focus on giving them really useful examples of their behavior, candid information about how you interpreted it, and great questions to understand the reasons behind their choices. As you develop a track record of providing useful, constructive feedback with their best interests in mind, you’ll have the opportunity to drip-feed other feedback when they’re ready to hear and use it.
How to Ask For Feedback: Know Your Strike Zone
How to Avoid Common Feedback Mistakes
Avoiding a few common pitfalls can make your feedback more effective. That means it will be more useful in supporting your colleague’s or direct report’s development. It also makes it more likely it will be a constructive experience that fosters trust between the two of you rather than eroding it.
Here are a few mistakes to avoid:
Passing Judgment Instead of Giving Feedback
This is the 800-pound gorilla of feedback mistakes. As we’ve discussed, feedback is sharing information about the impact of someone else’s behavior on you. But you might be tempted to share your reaction as if it’s the truth rather than your truth.
Judgment: “Your presentation was boring.”
Feedback: “You had only text in your presentation and no images. I found myself looking at my phone after a while.”
This is a costly mistake because it is likely to trigger defensiveness and shut down learning. Be sure to share feedback rather than pass judgment.
This article by Dr. Nate Regier give more insight about giving feedback with compassion.
Being Too Generic
Feedback is about giving the person new information and insight to allow them to make better choices. That means the more specific you get, the better. If you give a vague description of their behavior (or get too wishy-washy about the impact on you), the person won’t know what they can do differently or how it might change the outcome.
Vague: “When you use all the same format in your presentation…”
Specific: “When you have 10 pages of text with no images…”
When you make your feedback too generic, the person won’t know what to change to make a more positive impact on you.
Lumping Multiple Issues into One Piece of Feedback
Have you ever tried to learn a new physical skill and tried to remember six corrections at once? Like learning a golf swing and trying to fix you grip, your shoulder, your feet, and your gaze all in one go. It’s not how we learn best.
Don’t make that mistake when you’re giving feedback. Zero-in on the most important behavior and save additional feedback for after they’ve had the chance to internalize the first bit.
[Note: this also includes making the mistake of using the sandwich rule and placing a piece of negative feedback in between two pieces of positive feedback. Too much information. Mixed messages. Ambiguous takeaways. Say “no” to the sandwich method.”]
Overwhelming: “You used only text, and referred to three case examples from a different industry, and left no time for questions…”
Targeted: “Your case examples were from a different industry than ours.”
Not Listening to Their Version
Giving feedback can be uncomfortable at first and that might cause you to dump your feedback and run. When you leave no room to hear the other person’s version of events or their intentions, you make it feel like an ambush.
Take care to conclude your feedback with an open-ended question that invites their perspective.
Monologue: “…and I found myself looking at my phone after a while.” [exit]
Dialogue: “…and I found myself looking at my phone after a while. How did you think about the format and where is there an opportunity to make it more engaging?”
You’ll be surprised how often you learn something valuable when your feedback conversation leaves room for each of you to share your truth. You might even realize that you could do some things differently to make you both more successful.
In addition to mistakes in how you craft the specific piece of feedback, there are also ways you can go wrong in your overall approach.
Skewing to Only Positive or Negative Feedback
If your goal is to support the person’s growth and development, you’ll want to provide a balance of feedback about behaviors that had a positive and a negative impact on you. Delivering nothing but bad news is demoralizing and might leave the person feeling there’s no point in trying to change because you’ll never be happy.
Although it might feel better in the moment, commenting only when the person’s behavior had a positive impact on you is equally unhelpful. What’s next? How could they continue to improve? Where is the growth opportunity?
Shoot for at least a 2:1 ratio of positive to negative feedback. If you’re struggling to get there, look for subcomponents of the behavior you’re looking for and reward those. And hold back on new negative feedback until you’ve seen progress on the first issue.
Providing Feedback Infrequently
To forge a tight connection between behavior and impact, you want your feedback to come close in time to their action. If you wait too long, you weaken that connection. You’ll be less likely to remember their behavior in detail, they’ll be foggy on what you’re referring to, and the whole thing will feel like old news.
When you have agree on a strike zone for feedback, you will be in a position to give feedback regularly. If the person knows the feedback is coming, you can share it while walking back from a meeting, in a quick email, or when you have a five-minute gap in your day.
Mixing Feedback and Evaluation
Finally, and this isn’t one that you and I are going to fix easily, but mixing up feedback and evaluation is a bad idea. But that’s exactly what most performance management processes do; you are in a feedback dessert all year and then you walk into your annual performance review, get a heap of novel negative feedback you’ve never heard before, and then get told you got a “meets expectations” and don’t quality for a year-end bonus. Yikes.
Ideally, feedback should come in tiny increments weekly, or even daily. Then, when it’s time for your manager to evaluate your performance, the conversation should include no new feedback, only an assessment of how well you used that feedback to drive the outcomes you were meant to achieve.
If it’s year end and you don’t already know how others are experiencing your behavior, that’s your manager’s failing, not yours.
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Tips for Giving Feedback to Leaders
We often talk about feedback as a one-way street, starting from managers and going to their direct reports. But what if you have some negative feedback to give to your boss? Is that okay? Could it be a career-limiting move? Are there ways to deliver the message so you don’t make the boss angry? Great questions!
Should You Give Feedback to Your Boss?
If you have a healthy relationship with your manager, giving feedback is one way to show that you’re just as invested in their success as they are in yours. If your relationship is not quite at that level, you might want to test the waters. Here are three things to try if you want to give feedback to your manager but you’re not sure how it will be received.
- Share what you’re working on as a development priority. Ask for your manager’s feedback. Then, ask if there’s anything they’re working on that they would value your perspective. If they say “no,” you can say, “Okay, just let me know,” and let it drop.
- Ask their permission to share feedback by saying, “I’ve been thinking about our interaction in the meeting this morning. Would it be okay to share how I felt afterward?” If they say yes, great. If they say “no” or otherwise squirm or deflect, it’s probably best to wait.
- Rather than giving them feedback about how they aren’t providing what you need to be successful, try asking for what you need directly. For example, you might say, “I’m feeling unclear on what you are looking for. Could we take a few minutes for you to share what good would look like on this?”
How to Give Feedback to Your Boss
The basic formula for good feedback applies whether you’re giving it to the summer intern six levels below you or to the CEO: orient, translate, expose, invite. But there’s room to tailor the content when you’re giving feedback to someone with more power than you.
Orient: There are no changes in this step just because you’re speaking to your boss. Tell them the situation you’re thinking of. “In the town hall meeting this morning.”
Translate: This step is crucial when giving feedback upward because you need the person to recognize and accept your description of their behavior. Be highly objective. “When you mentioned marketing but not sales.”
Expose: Here’s where you might want to keep the emotional content more contained than if you were giving feedback to a peer or direct report. Tell your manager the impact their behavior had on you, but don’t overplay it. “I worried that the sales team would feel that we don’t recognize their contributions.” (Notice that you’re softening by using “we” instead of “you.”)
Invite: When it comes to the question to open up the discussion, be careful not to be accusatory. This is not the time to go for, “What were you thinking?!?” Instead, you might give your boss a chance to share their intentions by asking a question like, “What do you think contributed to the success of the project?” or “How might we acknowledge the role sales played in this win?”
Connecting Your Feedback to Your Boss’ Goals
One final tip is that one of the best ways to position feedback to your boss is by tying it to something that they have said is important. If your manager is on the record talking about how important it is to move fast, you can couch your feedback about unclear delegation in those terms. “You’ve said how important it is for us to move fast on this. When we cancel our weekly one-on-ones, I get stuck and can’t move forward until I can find time to get aligned with you. How might we keep a regular touch point?”
Likely, if you’re worried about giving feedback to your boss, it’s because you’re thinking only of negative feedback. Poor bosses, we forget they’re human and that they need positive feedback and reinforcement, too. If you make a point of sharing constructive, positive feedback with your boss when their choices make your life easier or better, they’ll be more receptive in those moments when you want to be candid about a negative impact.
The Role of Body Language in Giving Feedback
Your body language and facial expressions tell a story as you’re delivering feedback; the risk is that they tell a different story than what you’re conveying with your words. The best way to ensure that what you show is consistent with what you say is to do the work beforehand to ensure you’re comfortable and confident in the feedback you’re delivering. Then, try to reflect your intent in how you physically show up in the meeting.
Be Aware of the Message You’re Sending
Smile — The simplest and most important way to convey that your feedback is coming from a good place is to smile. It doesn’t have to be a giant grin—you don’t want the person to think that you relish delivering negative feedback! You do want to show warmth and indicate that they aren’t “in trouble.” You are sharing to help them learn. Side note: If you can’t smile because you are angry, or frustrated, or offended, you probably aren’t ready to give feedback constructively. Hold off until you’ve processed your own emotional reaction.
Open Up — If the person walks up to receive their feedback and you have your arms crossed in front of your chest like an angry school teacher, you’re not going to start on the right foot. Uncross your arms, open up your body, and signal that you’re not feeling threatened by the discussion. That will help the other person relax as well.
Sit Up Straight — You might be completely exhausted or feeling defeated about having to deliver yet another piece of negative feedback, but slouching in your chair or drooping your head is going to make the person feel like you’ve given up on them. That’s no way to start a conversation about growth and development. Sit up; look like you want to be there. Again, if you are faking it, you might consider holding off on your feedback until you’re feeling up to it.
Own It — If you notice all of a sudden that you’re grimacing, crossing your arms, or slouching, don’t just switch positions; take ownership of the impact that might have had on the other person and on the tenor of the room. It’s ok to say, “I was getting a bit intense there. I didn’t mean to. I’m just really invested in how this presentation goes.” You have the chance to share what you’re thinking and feeling, which will lead to better outcomes than letting them infer or jump to conclusions.
Pick the Right Spot to Give Feedback
Because facial expressions, body language, and gestures are such an important part of communication, it’s important to be deliberate about the spot you choose to deliver feedback.
Get Out From Behind the Desk
Because body language is an important source of insight (and a potential source of misunderstanding), it’s important to choose the spot where you’ll deliver feedback carefully. A common scenario is that the manager sits behind a desk, providing them with the protection of having most of their body covered. The direct report sits on the other side of the desk, often exposed and visible. Just that minor difference can create the wrong feeling in the room. Instead, pick a room where you have a similar setup.
Consider Reducing Eye Contact
Establishing eye contact can strengthen connection and show that you care for the person to whom you’re giving feedback. But this is a case where you need to know the individual and choose the spot accordingly. For many people, strong, persistent eye contact can be intimidating and might increase the stress of receiving uncomfortable feedback. As you’re choosing the right spot for a feedback discussion, consider the person and whether it would be better to pick a spot where you can sit parallel to one another or at least slightly off of direct face-to-face.
Consider a Walk-and-Talk
One way to make feedback feel less intense is to deliver it while you’re walking. As you get into the habit of delivering frequent, low-impact feedback, you’ll find that a short walk back to your desk from a meeting provides a great opportunity for a quick feedback session. For issues that you’ve been noticing and thinking about, you might go on a longer walk to provide the benefit of movement to ally any nervous tensions and twitches and to provide quality conversation without the intensity of eye contact. Again, this will only work for some people, so make sure you’re choosing an approach that helps the individual hear and internalize the message you want to deliver.
Don’t Jump to Conclusions
There is a torrent of bumpf and pseudo-science about body language out there; don’t fall for it. If you pick up a feeling from how the person is sitting, the way their eyes are darting around, or the fact that they are clicking their pen incessantly, treat it as data but don’t assume you know what it means. The best thing you can do is notice and ask some questions to let the person explain what’s going on for them. “How are you thinking about this?” or “Where are you at?” Don’t be impatient for an answer because they might not even know what they’re feeling or how they’re processing it yet.
Another useful way to use their body language is to gauge your intensity. If they are dropping eye contact, closing their body language, or fidgeting, you can try lowering your intensity to see if changes their demeanor. Techniques to lower your intensity would be to reduce your volume, use fewer definitive statements and switch to phrases like “I’m wondering” or “I’ve noticed,” and to open up to discussion rather than doing all the talking.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Here are some more feedback insights from the blog:
Feedback in Virtual Work Environments
Giving feedback is challenging enough in conventional office environments, but when you add the challenges of being remote from your colleagues, it becomes especially tricky. The good news is that with a few minor adjustments, giving and receiving feedback can be as manageable and valuable for members of a virtual team as any other.
The Challenges of Giving Feedback in Virtual Teams
There are unique dynamics in a virtual team that can make it harder to foster a culture of feedback.
1. Difficulty Establishing Trust
It can be challenging to establish trust when you have few opportunities for informal interactions and little opportunity to observe your colleagues in action. When you interact primarily in meetings with defined agendas, you lose out on the casual conversations that help nurture connection. Working physically apart also detracts from your ability to gauge how a colleague will react to feedback, making it all the more difficult to summon the courage to say something.
2. Few Informal Interactions
The best way to give feedback is to do it frequently so that it’s a minor and manageable course correction. Giving high-frequency but low-impact feedback helps to make it a positive experience for both the giver and the receiver. But finding those opportunities to share a piece of feedback is harder when you can’t just pop by a colleague’s desk. Even needing to schedule time to give feedback increases its intensity and raises the stakes.
3. Lack of Signals That Something Is Wrong
Without the benefit of body language, it can be hard to tell when there’s an issue you need to address. If you’re together in an office, it’s easy to notice if someone has dropped eye contact or is avoiding walking past your desk. With virtual communications, you might be missing the cues to tell you that something is causing friction.
The Benefits of Giving Feedback in Virtual Teams
Although there are a few ways that being a virtual team makes promoting feedback more difficult, there are also benefits to being remote.
1. Increased Psychological Safety
Giving feedback can be intimidating, particularly for people who feel less powerful or confident than the person to whom they’re giving it. Creating physical distance can alleviate or at least reduce the stress and discomfort of delivering a difficult message to someone who is physically imposing or more senior than you.
2. Greater Opportunity to Prepare
Another important benefit of having to schedule time for feedback is that you have the chance to be prepared. Not only that, if you’re delivering feedback on a Zoom call or over the phone, you can have notes with examples or points you want to be sure to emphasize. Referring to notes might feel weird or awkward if you were together in person.
Choosing the Right Tools and Applications
Delivering feedback virtually means selecting the best communication vehicle for the message you need to deliver and the individual to whom you’re delivering it. The good news is that you have options.
Written Feedback
Pros: Using written feedback can reduce the pressure on getting the right words in a stressful situation. If you’re sending your message in writing, you can draft, edit, and iterate on the feedback until you’re happy with it. Beyond the benefits of editing, documenting your feedback can be important if you’re delivering negative feedback that is particularly serious or needs to be included in a formal performance management or performance improvement process. On the positive side, written feedback is particularly valuable if you’re delivering positive feedback—it means that person can save or share your kudos, which makes it even more of a gift.
Cons: One thing to remember is that the novel (and sometimes sensitive) information contained within a piece of feedback should be about you (see the definition and examples above), so putting it in writing means you can’t control who sees your thoughts and feelings. Don’t put anything in writing that you don’t want to be shared.
Video Meetings
Pros: Being able to see one another during a feedback dialogue can give you both access to visual cues such as facial expressions and body language. If you’re delivering a difficult piece of feedback but doing so with a smile and good eye contact, it conveys that you want to support the person and you’re giving the benefit of the doubt that they’ll make good use of your support. Another benefit is that you’ll be able to see if the person is becoming overly uncomfortable, overwhelmed, or emotional in response to the feedback so you can moderate your tone or pace.
Cons: Eye contact (or the fake version of eye contact that is simulated on a web call) can be intimidating and over-powering, particularly in emotionally charged situations.
Phone Calls
Pros: Switching to the phone to deliver feedback can be a great happy medium between written and face-to-face options. One benefit is that you forego the eye contact that might be discomfiting to certain individuals or on certain topics. Another benefit of the phone is that research has shown that our emotional accuracy (our ability to tune in to the emotional state of the person we’re talking to) is better over the phone than through other channels.
Cons: You might be tempted to take advantage of the invisibility to multitask while you’re in a feedback conversation over the phone. That would be a mistake. A feedback dialogue deserves your full attention, so if you’re on the phone, find a quiet spot with no other distractions.
Steps in Giving Feedback Virtually
1. Get prepared. Think about the issue you want to provide feedback on. Come up with one or two specific examples where you can describe their behavior objectives. Process your own emotional reactions and proceed only when you’re ready to deliver the message as an ally, rather than an adversary.
2. Schedule a time. Let the person know that you’re thinking about a specific issue or situation and you’d like to share your thoughts. That’s important because if you phone them or DM them out of the blue, you’ll be more prepared for the conversation than they are. That’s likely to feel like an ambush. Instead, schedule a time to chat. Pick a time when there are few distractions or other stressors and priorities that might impact your mindset in delivering the message or their receptiveness to hearing it.
3. Prepare your notes. Document your examples and circle the keywords you want to convey. These notes will help you avoid making judgments and make it easier to stick to the objective examples you want to share. Jot down the key things you want them to know about how their choices impacted you. Finish with a couple of options for questions you can use to hand the conversation over to them.
4. Follow up. If you were together in an office, the follow-up would naturally happen as you cross paths with one another. That’s less likely to happen when you’re remote. Send an email or schedule a time to check in with the person. The idea isn’t to revisit the feedback (although if they choose to raise it, that’s great). The idea is to go back to normal and signal that everything is good in your relationship.
Soliciting Feedback
It may be difficult to get feedback flowing in your virtual team. One technique I find really useful is to ask people to share one thing they love, one thing they wish, and one thing they wonder about. “I love” encourages people to give positive feedback about processes, behaviors, and relationships that are working for them. “I wish” is a kind and gentle way to feedforward about things people want to be different. I find people are more willing to be transparent about things when you use this forward-looking, constructive framing in place of a rear-looking form of feedback. Finally, “I wonder” provides an opportunity for people to ask for feedback, thoughts, and perspectives about how their choices are affecting their colleagues.
Feedback for Different Generations
You might find other experts who encourage you to change up your feedback approach depending on the age of the person you’re giving feedback to. While there might be some merit to that idea, in general, overemphasizing the year someone was born is a bad idea. Instead, you want to think about it in three categories:
What is the person’s generation? Are they a boomer who has seen profound technological, political, and social changes in the world or Millennial digital natives whose friends are all a part of the gig economy? This might have some impact on their expectations about work culture and relationships that is worth considering.
What is the person’s age and stage? While there are some life experiences that will always set Gen Xers apart from their colleagues in other generations, some of what makes them different is the age and stage they’re at in life. Baby Boomers whose kids have left the nest might have new energy and capacity and a focus on leaving a legacy, whereas the Gen Zs are just trying to get a footing in the work world while finding a life partner and paying off student debt. Consider how their age and stage affect their performance and their goals, and incorporate that into your feedback.
What are the person’s values, personality, and styles? Before you get too caught up in the person’s generation or their age and stage, know that individual differences within any group are much larger than the differences between groups. Someone who is quiet and sensitive needs feedback with different content and delivery than someone who’s loud and self-assured. This is where you want to put the most energy. What do you know about the individual that will help you tailor your feedback to be exactly what they need?
For more on how to prevent generational tension, check out this article in Harvard Business Review.
SOURCES CITED
[1] Working with People Who Aren’t Self-Aware – Tasha Eurich | HBR
[2] How to tame your Advice Monster – Michael Bungay Stanier | TEDx Talks
[3] Feedback and Organizations: Feedback is Good, Feedback-Friendly Culture is Better – Amanda Baker Nadler, Dominique Perreault, Alain Reid, Céline M Blanchard | Canadian Psychology, via ResearchGate
[4] What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It) – Tasha Eurich | HBR
[5] Insight: The Quiz – Tasha Eurich
[6] The Key to Preventing Generational Tension Is Remembering That Everyone Wants to Feel Valued – Liane Davey | HBR