4 Tips To Provide Critical Feedback
With examples
Feedback helps peers understand their unique strengths and provide ideas that can help them grow. As yearly performance review is around the corner, providing critical feedback is difficult but necessary.
Constructive critical feedback helps develop the best. It focuses on actions that can help someone either develop in areas where they’re not strong or better leverage their strengths. These might be challenging activities, expanded project areas, or new skills to develop.
Giving feedback is also a skill. Below are 4 tips that will help you construct effective critical feedback:
1. Be Specific and Concise
- If feedback is too complex or includes too many actions, it is unlikely to be applied.
- Keep it simple and focused so that it’s easy to remember and put into practice.
- Avoid using generic ‘job descriptions’ and give specific examples where you expected different ways to drive the scenario.
- Use SBIF (Situation-Behavior-Impact-Feedback) model to keep feedback succinct and direct in articulating the concern you want to give feedback on.
- Provide specific context by defining the “where” and “when” of the situation.
Example
❌ X is sometimes reluctant to share feedback openly when X is not intimately familiar with the subject matter. X might consider writing down his thoughts before meetings so that he understands what he wants to say, or perhaps sending written criticism afterward. I believe that if X worked on his design abilities more or read up on the subject, he would feel more comfortable speaking up in team meetings. X could generally focus on broadening his horizons beyond the domain in which he is in charge.
✅ I would like to see X take more opportunities to share feedback openly, even when not familiar with the subject matter. The regular team meetings would be a great time to do this. I think the team will benefit from X’s expertise and design skills on Y domain.
2. Be Objective
- Always stick to factual information and substantiate feedback so that there is no room for ambiguity.
- Don’t base your judgment on subjective information and personal feelings and emotions.
- Describe the problematic situation rather than evaluating it and identify objective consequences.
- Use “I” Statements to give feedback from your perspective so that it avoids labeling the person.
- Keep it professional and work-related.
Example
❌ X is humble, which makes working with him so enjoyable. X is eager to learn new things, but has difficulty comprehending customer's needs and translating them to product ideas. He is unaware of the challenges our clients confront when using product Y.
✅ In recent Y meetings, I noticed that X’s suggestions were excellent, but not exactly in line with consumer issues. Connecting with client stories and attending Z training could help X discover new ways to learn about our consumers and develop a deeper grasp of the obstacles users encounter.
3. Make It Actionable
- Feedback should be articulated as a clear action receiver can choose to take. It’s pointless to criticize a piece of work if you don’t say how to improve it.
- Offer suggesting statements or acceptable alternatives that will help them self-reflect: “I would suggest…” or “Consider… to improve…” or “When…, try to…”
- Avoid the BUT word (“I think you did a good job, but…”) as it quickly puts people into defensive mode, where they will fence out your constructive inputs.
- Avoid starting sentences with ‘you’ or ‘your’ to prevent receiver from feeling attacked.
- Feedback may include specific subjects to study, resources to leverage, people to work with, or training to take.
Example
❌ Even though coding isn’t officially part of X’s job description, he supervises and works with coders, so the more experience X has with it, the more X’ll be able to relate to and help others.
✅ I’d like to see X get more involved with writing code to solve problems. A small project with implementation and testing phases would be a suitable starting point. This would assist X in providing support and direction to others.
4. Be Progressive
- Forward-looking feedback focuses on solutions and hence, promotes development.
- People hate criticism but are always open to new ideas for the future.
- Feedback usually leaves the person receiving the feedback with a sense of failure. Progressive feedback raises hope for improvement and is more empowering.
- Provide feedback that helps to establish/reestablish expectations for the future.
- Prepare for how to move forward in the future emphasizing what a person can do next to develop and improve like “You could try to… in the future”
Example
❌ Sometimes X’s communications are not clear or persuasive. X has sent out several communications to a wide audience that included no background and did not explain the actions that needed to be taken or reasons for them. It negatively impacted the customer experience.
✅ X could work on writing clear, persuasive communications. For example, when sending communications to a wide audience after a rollout, provide some background, or explain which actions need to be taken and why. This would drastically improve the customer experience.
Be Empathetic and Encourage Growth!
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