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WhatGoodFeedbacklookslike.pdf

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Digital Article

Managing People

What Good Feedback Really Looks Like by Craig Chappelow and Cindy McCauley

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What Good Feedback Really Looks Like

by Craig Chappelow and Cindy McCauley

Published on HBR.org / May 13, 2019 / Reprint H04XXM

Tim Robberts/Getty Images

According to a recent Harvard Business Review cover story, it’s rarely

useful to give feedback to colleagues. The authors argue that

constructive criticism won’t help people excel and that, when you

highlight someone’s shortcomings, you actually hinder their learning.

They say that managers should encourage employees to worry less

about their weaknesses and instead focus on their strengths.

Our research and experience at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)

lead us to a different conclusion: Feedback — both positive and negative

HBR / Digital Article / What Good Feedback Really Looks Like

https://hbr.org/2019/05/what-good-feedback-really-looks-like

https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy?autocomplete=true

— is essential to helping managers enhance their best qualities and

address their worst so they can excel at leading.

There are several ideas in the article with which we agree:

• Harsh feedback does not help people thrive and excel. Indeed,

effective criticism needs to be delivered with respect and care.

Frequent or exclusively negative comments can spark defensive

reactions that cloud perceptions and dampen motivation.

• Positive feedback is critical for learning. People are often quick to

notice what’s wrong, but it’s equally important to pay attention to and

provide input on what is working to support development.

• Telling someone how to fix a problem is often the wrong

approach. You’ll foster more learning by asking questions that

stimulate reflection and coaching people into exploration and

experimentation.

However, we disagree with other points:

• People are unreliable assessors of others and thus give feedback

that is more distortion than truth. Feedback is never purely

objective since it is delivered from a human being with a unique

perspective. However, for a leader, knowing how others see and

experience her is incredibly valuable since those people make

decisions based on their perceptions—decisions about who to listen

to, cooperate with, trust, support and promote.

• Feedback about weaknesses creates a threat that inhibits

learning. Research indicates that 360-feedback recipients who get

unfavorable ratings tend to improve their performance more

than others. And, in CCL’s work, we’ve found successful executives

credit all types of potentially threatening events (e.g., horrible bosses,

HBR / Digital Article / What Good Feedback Really Looks Like

http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/Smither%20performance.pdf

https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/GroomingTopLeaders.pdf

making a business mistake, being demoted, and firing employees) as

key drivers of their development.

• People should just focus on their strengths. Our work has shown

that ignoring one’s weaknesses is one of the greatest contributors to

individual derailment in organizations. No matter how well-tuned a

leader’s strengths are, one unaddressed “fatal flaw” (e.g., arrogance,

inability to build a team or difficulty adapting to a new context) can

lead to failure — particularly if it is unacknowledged by the

individual.

• You can best help your organization by getting better at the

things you are already good at. This assumes that everyone is

already good at the right things — that they have the critical skills and

competencies that organizations need to succeed. Our colleague Jean

Leslie’s research demonstrates that this is rarely the case. In fact, she

found that leaders are weakest in the four most important future

leadership skills—inspiring commitment, leading employees,

strategic planning and change management.

When you focus only on strengths, you lull people into believing there

are no areas in which they need to improve. It also lets managers off the

hook for fostering necessary — and sometimes difficult — development

in their reports and co-workers, which ultimately compromise

organizational effectiveness.

So, instead of encouraging people to avoid negative feedback, we should

focus on how to deliver negative feedback in ways that minimize the

threat response. At CCL, we teach an approach to delivering feedback

called Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) to address both strengths and

weaknesses in a clear, specific, professional and caring way.

Feedback providers first note the time and place in which a behavior

occurred. Then they describe the behavior — what they saw and heard.

HBR / Digital Article / What Good Feedback Really Looks Like

https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Leadership-Gap-What-You-Need.pdf

The final step is to describe the impact the behavior had in terms of the

feedback providers’ thoughts, feelings or actions.

Here’s an example: “In our staff meeting this morning when we were

discussing strategies for funding the new initiative, you interrupted

Jessica while she was talking and said, “That idea will never work,”

before she had a chance to finish. This left me feeling disappointed I

didn’t get to hear more from her, and I was intimidated about sharing

my ideas with the group.”

Such feedback is not judgmental (“You were wrong to interrupt

Jessica”), not generalized (“You are always interrupting people”) and

doesn’t analyze the reasons the individual behaved as he did (“Do you

have no respect for other people’s ideas?”). As a result, it is more likely

to be heard and considered rather than defensively rejected.

By all means, we encourage organizations, managers, and employees to

recognize and leverage strengths. But you ignore weaknesses at your

own peril.

Craig Chappelow is a leadership solutions facilitator, Americas, at the Center for Creative Leadership.

Cindy McCauley is a senior fellow, Americas, at the Center for Creative Leadership.

HBR / Digital Article / What Good Feedback Really Looks Like

https://www.ccl.org/people/craig-chappelow/

https://www.ccl.org/people/cindy-mccauley-2/