Delivering feedback that lands

When I became a manager, my anxiety levels shot up when I realized I had to start giving people frequent feedback. I sucked at feedback. I’ve always been a chronic people-pleaser. No one likes to be criticized, I thought.

It took me a few months of therapy to realize my feedback avoidance came from my own insecurities. I was terrified people would like me less if I criticized their work.

There's no avoiding feedback, though. It is my duty as a manager to ask for, give, and facilitate feedback.

The art of management lies in picking, among several competing priorities, the activities with the highest leverage. That’s what says Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, beloved in Silicon Valley.

According to Grove, what's an activity that provides leverage well beyond the others? You guessed it:

[...] a person needs measures to gauge their progress and achievement. The most important type of measure is feedback on their performance.

Fortunately, whole books have been written on the topic of feedback. So I picked them up and started reading - and I learned a lot. I also got some practice in these past few years.

This article is a summary of what I found most useful on the topic. I hope it can be helpful for new managers (or experienced ones) looking to improve their feedback game.

Be direct, clear and specific

This quote from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown is, for me, the epitome of feedback.

Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.

That's what feedback is about: candor. Feedback isn't useful unless it's direct, clear, and specific.

I fell into this trap more times than I care to admit. I avoided feedback, thinking I was being kind. I didn't want to hurt my colleague's feelings or discourage someone who did good work otherwise.

Most of us avoid clarity because we tell ourselves that we're being kind, when what we're actually doing is being unkind and unfair.

There are words to describe how I was acting: selfish and manipulative.

I was selfish because I didn't really care about my colleagues’ feelings. I cared about them liking me less.

I was manipulative because I wanted my colleagues to like me better, at the expense of them delivering sub-par work, missing out on promotions, or possibly getting fired.

How do we make feedback crystal clear? Don't try to cushion the blow. Starting with "Hey, I need to tell you something, but I don't want you to worry. It's not really a big deal, but..." builds anticipation and obscures the message.

There's also the "feedback sandwich" - offering criticism cushioned between two pieces of positive feedback. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, pushes back against this practice:

I think venture capitalist Ben Horowitz got it right when he called this approach the "shit sandwich."

Her reasoning is, the sandwich forces us to come up with two praises for each bit of criticism we have to offer. That leads us to say things that are “unnatural, insincere, or just plain ridiculous”.

I completely agree with Kim. If you have positive feedback to offer, by all means do. If all you’ve got is criticism, sandwiching it between insincere or patronizing praise will obscure the message, erode trust, and end up hurting your relationship.

It's a thousand times better to give clear, direct feedback that is somewhat harsh than flowery, couched feedback that doesn't land.

That being said, there is a method to deliver precise and direct feedback that isn't harsh.

Separate observation and evaluation

How do we deliver radically clear feedback without sounding heartless? Don't make it personal.

And how do we depersonalize it? A technique we can use is to completely separate observation from evaluation. Marshall Rosenberg wrote the book on this technique (called Nonviolent Communication):

When we combine observation with evaluation, we decrease the likelihood that others will hear our intended message. Instead, they are apt to hear criticism and thus resist whatever we are saying.

Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI)

SBI is a simple but powerful model to frame feedback in an observational way. From Radical Candor:

This simple technique reminds you to describe three things when giving feedback:
the situation you saw,
the behavior (i.e., what the person did, either good or bad); and
the impact you observed.
This helps you avoid making judgments about the person's intelligence, common sense, innate goodness, or other personal attributes.

Here are a few examples:

Instead of "You’re always trying to get your way", use:

That was the third consecutive meeting about project X [situation], where you tried to revisit decisions that were already made [behavior]. Rehashing decisions is delaying the project and frustrating other people [impact].

Instead of "You blew the launch last week", use:

Last week, when you authorized the feature launch [situation], you didn't give a heads up to the infra team [behavior]. They didn't provision extra resources, and the launch traffic brought down our site [impact].

Instead of "You sounded like an a-hole" use:

Your comments on this ticket [situation] were very brief and direct [behavior]. Some people misinterpreted your brevity as hostility [impact].

Steve Jobs was famous for offering a, let’s say, less-than-stellar piece of feedback to the people that worked for him:

Interviewer: What does it mean when you tell someone their work is shit?
Jobs: It usually means their work is shit. Sometimes it means, "I think your work is shit. And I—I'm wrong."

That's a quote from Job's The Lost Interview with Robert Cringely.

Notice how he says, "Your work is shit", not "You're shit". Don't get me wrong, it's obnoxious and full of judgment. But it still criticizes the work, not the person.

(If you're considering dishing out that kind of feedback, remember: you're not Steve Jobs.)

Be timely

Feedback ages like milk. Act while it's fresh in your and the receiver's mind. It's a lot harder to discuss facts after our memory of them has faded.

Again from Radical Candor:

If you wait too long to give guidance, everything about it gets harder. [...] you will no longer be able to remember clear examples of the problem—so you won't be able to use the "situation behavior impact" model, and you'll end up with a confused, frustrated colleague.

This is especially true for yearly reviews. Don't wait until the next review cycle comes to deliver feedback. Kim Scott has a great metaphor to describe this practice: “Going to the dentist for a cleaning twice a year doesn’t prevent you from brushing your teeth every day”.

Performance reviews should be a recap of all feedback delivered during the year, not an opportunity to provide it for the first time.

It's easier said than done

There are a few things I learned about feedback in years of managing others. The fundamental one is, the only way to improve is practicing it. No matter how much I read about it, I only saw improvement after some practice.

Here are some other short lessons I learned in the process:

The easiest way to establish trust and allow feedback to flow freely is by setting an example. Before giving feedback, ask for it, and accept it graciously.
Giving task-specific feedback (e.g., "Your presentation ran too long") is a lot easier than behavioral feedback (e.g., "You need to be more detail-oriented"). Start with the former, then move to the latter.
If you're uncomfortable giving feedback, practice before with a partner — your manager, a peer, anyone who can provide you with feedback on your feedback (meta feedback!).
Harsh feedback is better than no feedback. Aim for directness and clarity, polish it later.
Late feedback is better than no feedback. Don't skip on feedback just because it wasn't timely. To keep managers from avoiding immediate feedback, a company I know scrubbed yearly reviews. The effect was the opposite: people rarely got any feedback at all.