4 Steps To Give Feedback That Really Works

Understand the process inherent in all successful feedback

Published in

SEEK blog

7 min readNov 29, 2019

Get each step right before you move to the next — source

It takes just four steps for feedback to be a success. Arming yourself with that know-how is essential for you to become really great at giving feedback.

This four step model is a synthesis of recent research and thinking (see Further Reading) aligned to some of my own experience.

The Four Steps

Based on the above, feedback has four steps:

Reception
Recognition
Acceptance
Motivation

You approach these steps as stage gates: tackle each in order, stop at each until you are confident it has been totally addressed, and cycle back to the top if you realise at any point the process is stuck.

Reception

Reception -> Recognition -> Acceptance -> Motivation

The first thing to do with every feedback conversation is ensure someone is psychologically receptive to discussing and respecting what you are saying.

However astute your observation and adept your feedback, they aren’t going to take up and be motivated to act if they aren’t receptive to it!

To get past this first step you need to cover both sides of the coin up-front: their mindset, and your relationship.

Mindset

Ask yourself, is this person in the right frame-of-mind to receive feedback? Literally, ask: “Hey George, I’d like to talk to you about something where I can see you could improve on, is this a good time for you?”

You may be surprised by the answer. A good time for you doesn’t equally translate for them. There are a million reasons someone has more pressing things on their mind (family, health or other personal issues).

If so, save it for another day. You, and they, have a bigger problem. Your job now is to focus on helping them get into a good state of play.

Relationship

In a similar vein, it is also vital to ensure the recipient truly understands that your intent is altruistic and you have credibility in their eyes.

“We humans do not do well when someone whose intentions are unclear tells us where we stand, how good we ‘really’ are, and what we must do to fix ourselves” (The Feedback Fallacy)

If you have any inkling about either, go away and fix that first. Feedback will just make things worse.

Recognition

Reception -> Recognition -> Acceptance -> Motivation

This step is concerned with ensuring the recipient recognises and appreciates what you observed and the impact it had.

Consider for a second: why is it when you give feedback you feel it is right; yet when you have received feedback, it is often not how you remembered it or is plain inaccurate. This gap is a particular point of difficulty in this step and what you have to close.

How do you close that gap?

Let’s first ask why that gap exists? Everyone comes to feedback using the same chain of events:

Observe a behaviour
Interpret that behaviour
React to that behaviour (i.e. how you feel)
Respond to that behaviour (i.e. define your needs of them)
You make requests about that behaviour (i.e. deliver feedback to bring about your needs)

This feels right to you as it links your observation to your feedback. However, that chain hides a number of areas where you and the recipient can get misaligned. Let’s look at those now.

Observe + Interpret

If you were asked what you had witnessed, you may say “John was just holding the team up, again”. You think that is what you observed. But the actual observation was John questioning if the team had considered some important risks. ‘Holding the team up’ is not the observation; it’s the label you give to it.

John may want the best for the team as you do, but thinks they should think more about risks upfront. Fair-enough.

My advice is, first ask what their intention was. If you find that they had benevolent intent and clumsy execution, then your role is to show that their intent or purpose is better served by an alternative approach.

If, on the other hand, the intent is in need of work e.g. “I wanted to get back at Jack for all the stuff he has done to me this year”. Then, the focus is switched to confronting the underlying intent.

React & Respond

The best advice I’ve received on feedback is to talk about how you felt as a result of the behaviour. Don’t get grandiose and talk about how it impacts the team, or the organisation. Why? How it made you feel is a more humble claim, but it cannot be refuted or challenged. Someone cannot tell you how you felt.

Framing this message so that it comes only from you, but creates sufficient impact for the receiver is the art of feedback.

Acceptance

Reception -> Recognition -> Acceptance -> Motivation

After the recipient recognises and recalls the events and appreciates the impact, you need to facilitate a conversation that relates that observation to their own self-evaluation (i.e. does it challenge or violate their self-evaluation “I had always thought I was great at public speaking, now I’m not so sure”).

This step is one of empathy, helping another person come to terms with the effect of the feedback, to the point where they take responsibility for it.

Hearing that someone has something critical to say about how you behaved, and that it may have had negative impacts, prompts questions about how you are seen by others. Maybe question if you really do have the respect and trust of your colleagues? And about how you see yourself!

We are social creatures, and can feel threatened by this and then react in unpredictable and damaging ways.

Don’t push through this step. Be patient. Understandably, people may want time to digest and reflect (sometimes days, or weeks even). I see feedback fail to land when people prematurely jump through this step without giving the receiver time to take it in and self-adjust.

Move to Motivation if the receiver:

Has accepted this assessment of external self-awareness (how others perceive you)
Has mapped this observation to their own self-evaluation (it becomes confirming and no longer disconfirming)
Is genuinely taking responsibility for their actions and impacts.

Motivation

Reception -> Recognition -> Acceptance -> Motivation

The only stage that you are not leading and driving. Consciously or not, the receiver makes an evaluation of the personal benefit to the change and decides if it is worthwhile to make the effort.

Can they live with this feedback?
Do they really want to expend the effort to improve, is it worth it?
How much effort to put into looking like they are changing and improving?

People can go to great lengths to resist, to downplay, to change the rules, to ignore, to wish it goes away. Anything but making the effort to change the habits of a lifetime.

In my experience, most intractable feedback gets stuck right here. I’ve had people tell me flat out “James, I’m just not going to put in the effort to change.” You have to respect that choice. Where does that leave you and the damaging behaviour? You can then either live with it, mitigate it, or transfer it.

However, it you have generated enough motivation for self-sustaining improvement and they are genuinely improving, for their own benefit, not yours. Well done! You’ve possibly done someone the biggest favour of their professional lives.

Conclusion

You know you have nailed the feedback if they are behaving in a way that is genuine about improving themselves, and it is sustainable enough to be accomplished.

To recap:

Feedback has four steps: Reception -> Recognition -> Acceptance -> Motivation
Be patient and treat each step as a stage-gate
Ensure the receiver is receptive to receiving feedback
That they truly recognise what you describe
Have altered their self-evaluation and accept the feedback
Are motivated to improve their behaviour over any other course of action

I hope this has helped create a reusable model for you that you can keep on using, improving and leading with.