Episode 46: How to give better feedback

This past weekend, I ran a workshop on how to give better feedback. This week’s episode is the tldr of the workshop I delivered.

The workshop was an interactive session, but I’m summarizing the takeaways into two sections: giving and receiving feedback.

The session was based on Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor. Here is a written tldr of the book and a 6-minute video overview of the book.

The book tldr

The book is about two concepts - caring personally and challenging directly.

Caring personally is about recognizing people are human first, employee second. Where they live, who they live with, how they grew up etc all influence how they show up each day. It’s important to think about the entire individual rather than expecting people to show up and output results each day.

Challenging directly is the other side of the spectrum. While having a hierarchy and decision-making process in companies can be helpful, it’s also important to be clear when sharing feedback, even when it’s uncomfortable.

The two concepts intentionally conflict. The goal is to have a healthy balance of both — caring personally + challenging directly = radical candor.

Giving Feedback

When giving feedback, you need to know a) if the person is ready to receive the feedback (when) and b) the best way for them to receive feedback (how).

Once you know the when and the how, then:

Giving praise

• Be specific

• Give context (or examples)

• In public and private (depending on what the receiver prefers)

Giving criticism:

• Criticize the wins

• Face-to-face

• Always in private

• Immediately after the fact

Receiving Feedback

Receiving praise

Receiving praise may not seem like something you need to think about, but similar to giving praise, it’s important to let the other person know what would be most motivating for you.

Factors to consider:

• Public or privately

• Who would be best for them to share it with (e.g. your skip level)

• Format you’d prefer (verbal or written)

• Thank them for taking the time to share

Receiving criticism

Take a moment and remember that the feedback isn’t personal. Take what’s helpful and leave the rest. No matter what you decide to do differently, you want to make sure to thank the person for the feedback and ask for more clarity.

Questions I like to ask (choose one or two):

• What’s an example of when you’ve seen my exhibit this behavior? 

• To confirm I’m correctly understanding, is this what you’re saying? 

• What’s an example of good or killing it look like? 

• Who do you think is awesome at this? 

• What would a 10% improvement look like? 

• How much does this influence your view on my overall performance 

• If you were me, what’s the first thing you’d try to change? 

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

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