How to Give REALLY Great Feedback

(where reacting badly can be defined as reacting with anger, resentment, defensiveness, etc.)

That’s why, when giving feedback as a team, we’re always looking to have the recipient FEEL HAPPY + GRATEFUL that I’ve offered it.

When you give REALLY great feedback:

• recipients don’t feel the need to apologize.
• recipients don’t feel awful about themselves.
• recipients feel grateful, not embarrassed.

Powerful feedback revolves around gratitude: giving and feeling thanks for another’s efforts.

Here’s a recent REAL-LIFE example communication from one of our team members to another, to give you a taste of what powerful feedback can look like:

Hey XXX,

Thank you SO much for the conversation we had around the GP document. I’m so grateful for your feedback about what wasn’t working for you, and I’m also grateful you shared your feelings with me. I love it that we trust each other enough to have these kinds of conversations!

On reflection, I can definitely see how some of the principles have been applied as rules, and wasn’t my intent.

On our next call, let’s discuss how we might more clearly write and apply these so they help our decision-making processes.

(I’m excited to have that conversation with you.)

Finally, here’s a link to GPX document to give you an idea of what I was going for.

Looking forward to chatting about it Wednesday!!!!!!

Quite a bit different than, “This doesn’t work. You’re really off the mark, please make sure you fix this by Wednesday.”

Practice powerful feedback and you won’t dread difficult conversations — because your team will feel good about receiving it.