Good feedback

Good feedback matters. It’s no rocket science, but it’s easy to forget about in your daily struggle. And if “death by a thousand cuts” is a thing, then so is “success by a thousand good feedbacks”.¹

In another essay on psychological safety I talked at length about its pre-requisite: people need to know you care. What else makes good feedback?

Focus on the future.

The goal of giving feedback is to encourage effective future behavior. Thus, when giving feedback, don’t get hung up on the past.² Focus on what your teammate can do differently or should keep doing in the future.

When somebody pushes back on feedback, just let it go. Don’t let yourself get sucked into an argument about the past, when the whole point of feedback lies in the future. After all, your interpretation of the past might be wrong.

You might be wrong.

Good feedback works bi-directionally. It helps clear up misconceptions on both sides. As the person giving feedback you might be missing some crucial information that puts the feedback-provoking behavior in a different light.³

Thus, replace blame with curiosity. Do not claim superiority over the facts. It is better to talk about the impact a certain behavior had on you (or how it made you feel) as opposed to postulating truth.⁴ A tinge of solipsism makes all feedback taste better.

Target behavior, not character.

So is talking about your feelings, instead of (supposed) facts enough?

"When you gave your presentation today, I couldn’t follow and it made me feel like you didn’t know what you are talking about.”? — “Well, maybe you’re the one who’s stupid, not me!"

If you don’t watch out, feedback can become personal really fast. Just as bad, some feedback is never given, because people are afraid the other person will not take it well.

The solution is to stop committing the fundamental attribution error.⁵ People are not inherently “aggressive”, but sometimes display behavior that is. Character is hard to change.⁶ Behavior less so. Don’t confuse the two. It is the latter that good feedback is about.

Timely.

Imagine how much harder it would be to learn how to drive if your car only ever budged 30 seconds after you move the wheel. Or how hard it is to build a useful product if you only ever get feedback weeks after launching a feature.⁷

Guidance has a short half-life — a few weeks later your teammate will not have the chance to fix the problem anymore. They might not even remember the problem in the first place. And wouldn’t you rather hear that something you’re doing is bad the first time you do it and not when it has become a habit?

“Whether professionals have a chance to develop intuitive expertise depends essentially on the quality and speed of feedback, as well as on sufficient opportunity to practice.” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow⁸

To help your teammates become experts at what they do, give timely feedback and give it often. Build a habit to speak up, right when you notice a behavior. Don’t wait for the next 1:1 (you might have forgotten it by then), instead take two minutes after a meeting or at the end of a conversation to share what you observed.

Specific.

Remember, the goal of good feedback? Encouraging effective future behavior. If it is not clear which behavior your feedback is trying to address, you are not being specific enough.

Fortunately, the more promptly you give feedback, the easier it is to be specific about the behavior you want to address. Fresh in memory, there will be less discussion about what happened and more time to focus on the future. Being specific also helps to avoid confusing behavior with character and makes it easier to act on your feedback.

“Often you’ll be tempted not to describe the details because they are so painful. You want to spare the person the pain and yourself the awkwardness of uttering the words out loud. But retreating to abstractions […] can actually unintentionally signal that the behavior in question was so bad/shameful that you can’t even talk about it, thereby making it hard for the person to move on.” — Kim Scott, Radical Candor

Don’t forget to praise.

Feedback isn’t just about being critical. Making sure good behavior gets repeated in the future is just as important as avoiding bad behavior.

“By explicitly describing what was good or what was bad, you are helping a person do more of what’s good and less of what’s bad — and to see the difference.” — Kim Scott, Radical Candor

Giving praise is also a great way to show appreciation. But remember to put as much effort into your praise as you put into your criticisms. Vague criticism is unhelpful and demotivating. Vague praise can be just as counterproductive.⁹

In sum

Be it praise or criticism: Good feedback focuses on the future, recognizes you might be wrong and targets behavior, not character. It is timely and specific.

Voilà. We’ve got the lemons. Time to make some lemonade.