Giving & Receiving Feedback
Trading the true thing in a form that survives the trip.
The behaviour, in one line: I give specific, kind feedback and take criticism without getting defensive.
Feedback raises performance on average and lowers it about a third of the time. What separates the two is largely whether it pointed at the work or at the person — and being kind about it does not fix pointing at the person.
Nothing improves without correction, and most people are bad at both ends of it — softening it until nothing is left, or hearing any of it as an attack. Giving it well means being specific enough to act on and about the work rather than the person. Taking it well mostly means not shutting the door before the useful part arrives. More of it now arrives in writing — a review comment, a thread, a line in a doc — with no face attached and a permanent record. Text lands harder than the same words said aloud, and it gets read again. The mechanics have not changed; the margin for getting them wrong has shrunk.
| What it is | What it isn’t |
|---|---|
| About the work | About the person |
| Specific enough to act on | Soft enough to be safe |
| Given while it still matters | Saved up for the review |
| Finding the true part | Judging whether it was fair |
What it looks like. Someone tells you your last deck was hard to follow. Your first reaction is to explain the constraints you were under. You do not say it. You ask which part lost them, and they tell you exactly where.
- Anyone you manage. Vague praise and saved-up criticism are the two default modes, and neither leaves anyone able to change anything.
- Work you are too close to. You cannot see your own draft from outside. Someone else can, and only for the first five minutes they read it.
- The team that stopped arguing. Silence on a pull request or a shared doc is rarely agreement. It is usually a team that has learned what happens when they speak up.
- Be specific and be quick. “This paragraph buried the point” can be acted on. “Great job” and “needs work” are both noise.
- Talk about the work. The moment it becomes about the person, everyone starts defending instead of listening.
- When it lands on you, find the part that is true before you respond to any of it. There is usually some.
- Say “tell me more” instead of explaining yourself. Understand first, and decide what to do with it second.
- Break it into parts
Four parts: being specific and prompt, keeping it about the work, finding the true part when receiving, and asking instead of defending.
- The part that carries it
Specificity. “This paragraph buried the point” is usable. “Great job” and “needs work” carry the same amount of information: none.
- The order to learn it in
- Start by giving small, specific, immediate observations about work rather than about people.
- Then practise receiving: find the part that is true before you respond at all.
- Then replace defending with “tell me more” — the hardest move, and the one that returns most.
- Put something at stake
Ask three people for one thing you should change, and tell each of them within two weeks what you actually did about it.
- Compress it
Specific, soon, about the work. When it lands on you, find the true part first, then ask for more.
- The smallest useful dose
One piece of specific feedback given and one received every week.
- Anchor it to something you know
A mirror rather than a compliment. One of them shows you the spinach; the other lets you walk into the meeting with it.
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
— Bill Gates
The interactive version is in the course. The diagram, the simulation and the four-question check for Giving & Receiving Feedback run in the free course, where your progress across all 24 skills is kept.
Open Giving & Receiving Feedback in the course →
Not sure where you stand? Take the twelve-minute self-assessment, or see the 30-day course that turns these skills into a roadmap.