Effective Feedback: Stop Dancing Around the Point

Feedback is easy when things are going well. It is considerably harder when someone is underperforming, damaging relationships, avoiding accountability or simply not meeting the standard expected of them.

That is when otherwise capable leaders can become strangely vague.

• “There are a few opportunities for development.”
• “Perhaps we could think about how this might land differently.”
• “There are some areas we could potentially strengthen.”

Everyone leaves the conversation reasonably comfortable. Nobody knows what needs to change.

Politeness without clarity is not necessarily kindness. Sometimes it is avoidance dressed professionally.

The Point of Feedback Is Clarity

Feedback should reduce the gap between how someone believes they are performing and what is actually being observed. That requires specificity.

Compare: “You need to communicate better.”

with: “The team wasn't told that the deadline had moved until the afternoon it was due. That left three people working towards an outcome that was no longer required.”

The first describes a vague deficiency. The second gives someone something they can understand, examine and change.

Effective feedback should help answer four questions:

• What happened?
• Why does it matter?
• What needs to change?
• What happens next?

If someone leaves a feedback conversation wondering what the leader was actually trying to tell them, the conversation probably wasn't as effective as it felt.

Direct Doesn't Mean Brutal

There is a strange assumption in some workplaces that leaders have two options. Be nice and vague. Or be direct and unpleasant. There is a considerable amount of territory between the two.

Clarity doesn't require aggression. It doesn't require humiliation, raised voices or unnecessarily blunt language. It requires a willingness to say what needs to be said without attacking the person hearing it.

The objective isn't to make feedback comfortable. It is to make it useful. Sometimes useful feedback will be uncomfortable. Those are different things.

Talk About Behaviour, Not Identity

There is an important difference between: “You are unreliable.” and: “You've missed three agreed deadlines this month without letting the team know they were at risk.”

One makes a judgement about the person. The other identifies observable behaviour.

Behaviour gives us somewhere to go.

• What happened?
• Why?
• Was the expectation clear?
• Was there a capability issue?
• Was the workload unrealistic?
• Was the person avoiding the task?
• What needs to happen differently next time?

This doesn't mean leaders should soften legitimate performance problems into irrelevance. Standards still matter. But challenging behaviour gives someone an opportunity to change it. Attacking identity usually gives them something to defend.

Good Intentions Don't Remove Impact

Feedback conversations often become tangled in intent. “I didn't mean it that way.” That may be completely true. It may also be largely irrelevant to the impact.

Someone can have good intentions and still communicate poorly, undermine another person, miss a commitment or create an avoidable problem. Good leaders can acknowledge both things at once. I accept that wasn't the intention. We still need to address what happened.

This is particularly important when feedback involves interpersonal behaviour. Turning the conversation into a trial of someone's character rarely helps. The question is not always whether someone meant harm. Sometimes it is simply: What was the impact, and what needs to happen differently?

Stop Saving Feedback for the Performance Review

If something matters in March, mentioning it for the first time in December is not particularly useful. Feedback works best when it is close enough to the event for everyone to remember what actually happened.

That doesn't mean every problem needs to be addressed immediately. Emotion matters. If either person is furious, embarrassed or highly defensive, waiting long enough to have a useful conversation may be sensible. But there is a difference between choosing the right moment and avoiding the conversation altogether.

Problems rarely become easier because everybody politely ignored them for six months. Clarity delivered early is usually easier to act on than consequences delivered late.

Retire the Feedback Sandwich

The traditional feedback sandwich is familiar:

1. Something positive.
2. Something negative.
3. Something positive.

It sounds considerate. It can also become remarkably transparent.

Once people recognise the pattern, the first compliment becomes a warning that criticism is coming, and the final compliment sounds suspiciously like an attempt to make everyone feel better.

Worse, the actual message can get lost somewhere between the bread.

If someone has done something well, tell them. If something needs to improve, tell them that too. Neither message needs the other to make it legitimate. Genuine positive feedback should be able to stand on its own. So should constructive feedback.

Listening Doesn't Mean Surrendering the Standard

Feedback should be a conversation.

Leaders rarely have perfect information. There may be context they don't know, competing priorities they haven't seen or a perfectly reasonable explanation for what occurred. So, ask. And then listen.

Be prepared to change the assessment when new information warrants it. But also remember. Two-way communication doesn't mean every standard becomes negotiable. A leader can genuinely listen to someone's perspective and still conclude: “I understand why it happened. It still can't happen again.” Those positions aren't contradictory.

Listening improves judgement. It doesn't remove accountability.

Sometimes It Isn't Feedback. It's a Difficult Conversation.

Leaders can also hide behind the language of feedback.

A repeated performance issue isn't always an “opportunity for feedback.” Sometimes a standard has been made clear, support has been provided and the behaviour continues. At that point, another carefully phrased developmental conversation may simply delay what needs to happen next.

Good leadership requires recognising when the conversation has moved from: “Here is something to consider.” to: “This needs to change.” And occasionally: “This has not changed, and there are now consequences.”

Calling every difficult conversation feedback can make accountability sound optional. It isn't.

Leaders Need Feedback Too

There is one final complication. The person giving the feedback may also be part of the problem.

• Expectations may have been unclear.
• Priorities may have changed without explanation.
• The leader may have failed to provide sufficient resources, authority or support.
• Or their original assessment may simply have been wrong.

Good feedback therefore requires enough confidence to challenge someone else's performance and enough humility to examine our own contribution to it.

If leaders expect people to receive difficult information without becoming defensive, they need to demonstrate the same capability themselves. Feedback loses credibility remarkably quickly when it only travels downwards.

Effective Feedback Reduces Ambiguity

The purpose of feedback isn't to demonstrate leadership. It isn't to win the conversation. And it isn't to make everyone leave feeling good. It is to create enough clarity for someone to understand what happened, why it matters and what needs to happen next.

• That may involve praise.
• It may involve development.
• It may involve disagreement.
• And sometimes it will involve a conversation neither person particularly enjoys.

That's okay. Good leaders don't manufacture discomfort unnecessarily. But neither do they protect people from every uncomfortable truth. Aleader who repeatedly avoids difficult feedback in the interests of being kind can eventually expose someone to a considerably less kind outcome.

Clarity delivered early is usually kinder than consequences delivered late.