Giving and Receiving Feedback
Feedback is the atomic unit of coaching. Get it right and growth compounds. Get it wrong and you either crush people or, more commonly, never tell them anything real until it is too late. This note is the mechanics, including the appraisal Do's and Don'ts straight from the governance model in my leveling system.
#My point of view: feedback is a gift you owe people
The kindest thing you can do for a colleague is tell them the truth about their work, clearly and early. Withholding it to spare their feelings is not kindness. It is a quiet betrayal that lets them keep failing in ways they can't see. The most common feedback failure is not being too harsh. It is saying nothing real for months and then ambushing someone at review time with a problem they could have fixed in a week.
#The Do's and Don'ts
I codified these as appraisal governance, but they apply to any feedback, any day.
- Focus on job-related feedback. The work, the behaviors, the outcomes, never the person's character.
- Give both positive and constructive. People need to know what to keep doing as much as what to change.
- Use first-hand evidence. Things you observed yourself, anchored to specific examples.
- Make criticism constructive. Tied to a path forward, not just a complaint.
- No personal or personality comments. "This doc buried the recommendation" is fair. "You're disorganized" is an attack on who they are, and it is useless.
- Not only-negative. A barrage of criticism with no acknowledgment is demoralizing and gets tuned out.
- No rumors or allegations. "People are saying…" is not feedback. It is gossip with a tie on. If you didn't see it, you can't coach it.
- Don't sugarcoat. Softening the message until it disappears is as much a failure as cruelty. The person leaves the room feeling fine and learns nothing.
The two failure modes, only-negative and sugarcoating, bracket the whole problem. Coaching lives in the narrow band between them: honest and kind, specific and forward-looking.
#Giving feedback well
- First-hand and specific. Vague feedback like "be more strategic" is worse than none, because it implies a problem without naming it. Specific feedback ("in that review you led with the solution before you'd framed the problem") is something a person can actually act on.
- Regular, not annual. Give it through frequent touchpoints, not saved up for the review. Feedback six months late is an ambush. Feedback the same week is coaching. The annual review should contain zero surprises (Running a Performance Review).
- Tailor the delivery. Same content, different wrapping per person (The Manager as Coach). Bluntness for the confident, scaffolding for the shaky.
#Receiving feedback well
This is the half everyone skips, and the one that gates your own growth. If you get defensive, people quietly stop telling you the truth, and you go blind.
- Assume good intent and just listen. Your first job is to understand it, not rebut it. Argue in the moment and you have taught them not to bother next time.
- Separate the signal from the delivery. Even clumsily delivered feedback usually contains a real signal. Don't throw out the message because you disliked the wrapping.
- Close the loop. Thank them and then visibly act on it. Nothing makes people invest in your growth like seeing their input change your behavior.
Before delivering hard feedback (or going into a review), run the self-check from my governance model. Have I considered their strengths and weaknesses? Can I substantiate each point with a specific example? Have I anticipated how they will react? If you can't substantiate it, don't say it yet. Go find the evidence first.
It flows in every direction: to peers, up to your own manager, across teams. Some of the most valuable feedback I have given and received was lateral. And you don't need a title to give it. A senior PM coaching an APM is doing exactly this work, long before Team Leadership formally applies to them (Coaching and Feedback).
#Continue Reading
- The Manager as Coach for feedback as the engine of coaching.
- Running a Performance Review for where feedback gets formalized, and the prep self-check.
- Coaching and Feedback is the cross-domain companion in Influencing People.
- Common Assessment Pitfalls for the biases that distort feedback if you let them.
- Communication is the broader skill that good feedback is a special case of.