Leading a group of people requires you to give and take feedback. Sometimes, the art of giving feedback to your team can be extremely difficult. Situations arise where you just don’t know what to say.
That’s one of the reasons there are so many different feedback models.
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Feedback Models
You may have heard of the feedback sandwich. This is a feedback method in which you start with a piece of positive feedback, move to the negative feedback, and then swing back around for a positive feedback nugget to leave the meeting on a positive note.
There’s also the IDEA feedback model. This model reminds you to
- Identify the issue or topic
- Describe the situation or behavior
- Encourage the person receiving the feedback
- Including an Action step for the person to take
It’s a great feedback model as well. The IDEA feedback model walks you through the steps needed to reach a positive resolution when giving feedback.
Don’t forget about the SBI feedback model. This model, once again, uses an acronym to remind you of what to do. With the SBI model, you:
- Describe the Situation you’re giving feedback about
- Tell them about the Behavior you’ve observed and what you have to say about it
- Share the Impact the behavior is having on the team, individual, or the organization
It’s a simple model that helps you air your concerns and helps the employee understand the situation and what they’ve done.
Feedback models are great. They give you a step-by-step process for processing a situation that needs to be discussed. But… I feel feedback models fall short and we need to think outside the box.
If you find the current models ineffective, it could be because of how you deliver the methods. You may have the best intentions at heart, but you still struggle to give feedback appropriately. That’s what you’re going to discover in this post.
How To Give Great Feedback To Your Team
Practice your delivery:
The delivery of your feedback matters. If you go into a feedback meeting feeling high and mighty or upset, your mental frame of mind will come through.
Begin with practicing how you want to deliver the feedback. You might run through a few of the feedback models you’ve discovered over time. Do a dry run with a trusted confidant or record yourself speaking the feedback.
Get an understanding of how your delivery will come across. Do you come across as heartless? Or do you come across as caring?
The delivery matters. Nail it.
Make it a conversation:
Going into a feedback session, people are tense. The person receiving the feedback may feel under attack or that they’ve done something wrong (there are plenty of times to give feedback when a person is doing things right).
When you enter into the feedback, ask for their thoughts and ideas. Get their take on the situation. Ask them what they think about their actions. Or you might ask them to help you understand the situation better.
By engaging them in the conversation, you will discover the feedback given is more likely to be taken to heart and applied. They’re less likely to see the feedback as an attack and more as a way to help them improve.
Bring specifics:
General feedback is worthless feedback. Telling someone they did a good job or need to improve doesn’t tell them what actions led to the feedback.
Learn to bring specifics to your feedback sessions. Specifics look like:
- I noticed you were on Facebook at least 5 times during your workday.
- During your presentation, I felt you didn’t address topics A, C, and D. You did a good job touching on B and E. How could we flesh those missing areas out?
Specifics will give your team members something to focus on. They can understand what they missed or did wrong. Get to the specifics.
Let them know the impact:
Sometimes, team members don’t understand the impact their actions or inactions have on an organization. They believe their work is good enough, but they fail to understand how their work isn’t going far enough and how it impacts those around them.
Help them to see how their actions impact their team members, leadership, and organization. You can be positive and correcting in this area. Let them know how their increased communication has raised the positivity in their department. People now feel like they’re getting the whole picture and that’s helped people rally together. Or it could be they’ve struggled to arrive on time, but their work is still complete. Let them know that others notice when they’re tardy. This tardiness has now washed over to others in the organization, and they’ve begun to take advantage of it the same way they are. Because of this, productivity is down.
Give Good Feedback
Feedback is worthless if it isn’t good and actionable feedback. The tips and actions above will help you give feedback that your people can take action on.
Begin working on your feedback methods. Before long, feedback will become a natural part of who you are as a leader. More importantly, your people will take notice and appreciate the feedback they’re receiving. After all, it’s something they can take action on.
