A framework for effective feedback

Improving the way a leader gives feedback to team members comes up in almost every coaching relationship. That is not surprising. Feedback is essential for personal development which itself is a requirement for high performance in a changing environment (= everywhere, always). Yet many people (incl. managers) are hesitant to give critical feedback to others as they don’t want to offend or be seen as criticising.

This is a mistake: without feedback, we can’t learn from mistakes and grow personally and professionally. Withholding critical feedback out of concern for one’s emotions means depriving the other of an opportunity to improve and grow.

Its our job a leaders to create an environment where everyone is comfortable to receive constructive feedback and open to learning from it, without becoming defensive. Here are some principles:

The key is to provide feedback regularly and without much fuzz, rather than waiting for the annual performance review or postpone for other reasons.

Following the below step-by-step process makes it simple to achieve the above goals, especially avoiding defensiveness and getting to recipient of the feedback to own the actions of growth and learning.

I hope this is largely self-explaining. The main point: stick to observable facts and don’t make assumptions that could be wrong and would cause a negative reaction. Then be curious to understand the other view point and support learning and taking actions.

A couple of posts on this Substack are related to the topic of feedback.

Give feedback to someone who does not report to you or has more power than you, e.g. your manager or an investor.

A lot of feedback is given during 1:1 meetings. Here is a guide on how to get the most out of them.

The After Action Review is a standardised framework for generating feedback yourself that can be used by teams as well as individually.