Giving feedback: saying what needs saying
In everyday leadership, the feedback conversation often gets skipped. It usually comes down to three things: the timing, a judgement instead of an observation, and the worry about the reaction.
How you notice it
- Feedback arrives bundled in the annual review rather than in the week something happened
- Praise is general, criticism is vague, neither leads anywhere
- You rehearse the conversation three times and never have it
- People talk about someone in the team and rarely with them
What sits behind it
Feedback lands as a verdict as soon as it judges a person. Someone who hears that they are unreliable defends themselves. Someone who hears that the figures were missing on Tuesday at two and the meeting was postponed because of it can work with that.
The second reason is timing. The longer an observation sits, the more interpretation settles on it. After four weeks you are talking about a pattern rather than a situation, and that is much harder to resolve.
What helps in the conversation
- Name a concrete situation, with date and context
- Separate the observation from your interpretation and mark both as such
- Describe the effect from your own point of view instead of assuming an intention
- Formulate a clear request for next time
- Then stay quiet and wait for the answer
Receiving feedback
The harder half is listening. Anyone receiving feedback wants to explain why things turned out that way. The explanation is usually correct and still brings the conversation to a halt.
What helps: ask until the situation is clearly in front of you, repeat what you heard in your own words, say thank you and decide later what to do with it. Accepting feedback does not yet mean agreeing with it.
How we work on this
In leadership training participants bring their own open conversations. We sort the situations, build the opening lines and run them in small groups with feedback from the group. Each person leaves with a commitment to themselves: which conversation happens by when.
Does that sound like your situation?
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