Feedback Without the Flinch
How to say the hard thing so it can actually be heard.
The verdict problem
Most feedback lands as a judgement about who someone is rather than an observation about what happened. The moment a person hears a verdict, their attention moves from the work to their standing.
Separate the three layers
Observation: what you actually saw or heard. Impact: what followed from it. Request: what you would like next time. Keep them in that order and resist collapsing them into an adjective.
"You were unprepared" is a verdict. "The numbers came through ten minutes into the meeting, so we spent the first half guessing" is an observation.
Receiving it well
When you are on the receiving end, buy yourself a beat. Ask one clarifying question before you respond to the substance. It converts defensiveness into curiosity and it almost always produces a more specific, more useful version of the original point.
Tom Ferreira
Organisational psychologist
Tom designs feedback and performance systems for fast-growing teams.