Feedback

This is how I like to give and receive feedback with members of my teams and my peers.

In all feedback, I like to take an approach that marries the concepts I’ve learned in Radical Candor and in Impact feedback.

1/ Show you “care personally” (both in work and life) about the person you’re providing feedback to. This isn’t just step 1. This is also what you do all the time as part of how you build trust.

2/ State what happened. No story, no emotions — just what was observed. For example, “You raised your voice in that meeting, talking over others and not allowing them to speak”.

3/ State the impact of what happened on you. This has to be about you. Of note, if you’re the manager, state where it is this impacts you (even if it is eventually about how it impacts the team, make it about yourself). The impact should show how you are suffering emotionally and your vulnerability. It’s the crucial part of bringing this into a project to work on together, instead of an attack. For example, “the impact on me is, I’m worried, because I don’t know how I’m going to get this team working effectively together — I might not have the skills to fix this”.

4/ State the impact on the person who is receiving the feedback. For example, “if this is doesn’t change, we will have to find you a new team”.

5/ Work together to come up with some next steps for what can be done.

6/ Agree on a system (can be formal or informal, whatever works for you as long as you stick to it) in place to follow up.

7/ Revisit “caring personally”.

An important lesson to gain from Radical Candor is to avoid making the feedback “muddy”. Caring about the other person should not be mixed with the directness and importance of the feedback and the plan.

Feedback Forms

Feedback can take many forms. So first, in terms of modality, provide a diversity of ways to give and receive feedback between managers and their reports, as well as, peer to peer. For example, a shared document, casual one-on-one conversation, brief moments between meetings, and formal one-on-one meetings. It is worth noting, my observations are that feedback-givers feel awkward and tend to want to make these situations less awkward by providing less formal situations. It’s important to take into account if this less formal approach will have the impact you are aiming to achieve with your feedback.