To Give Better Constructive Feedback, Split It In Two

Constructive feedback is a funny thing. It’s both one of the greatest gifts that you can give to someone who cares about their work and career, and it can feel them like a baseball bat to the ego upon delivery. As a manager, giving constructive feedback is critical to boosting your team member’s performance and helping them grow their career, but it can be tricky to do this without souring your relationship with them and unintentionally reducing their confidence.

This balance is especially delicate when managing high performers. Most people who do a great job care deeply about the quality of the work they do, which can cause the initial sting of constructive feedback hurt worse. Frequently receiving constructive feedback has the potential to make someone feel like they’re not meeting their current role’s expectations, even if that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth is absolutely everyone has things that they could practice or tweak to drive better outcomes. While asking for constructive feedback I’ve always joked that if there’s nothing I could be doing differently or better, it means I should move on to a new role since I’ve clearly “mastered” this one (hint: I haven’t).

So how do you help your team members achieve better outcomes and grow into their next role through constructive feedback, while helping them hold an accurate gauge of performance in their current one? I like to accomplish this by clearly separating my feedback into two buckets: Gap-based Feedback and Opportunity-based Feedback.

Gap-based Feedback

Gap-based feedback is delivered when someone isn’t meeting current role expectations in some way. This could be in regards to outcomes (missed goals, lack of meaningful output, repeated failures, etc.) or behaviors (toxicity, selfishness, lack of in-role growth, etc.). If there’s a gap between someone’s outcomes or behaviors and what’s expected of them in their current role, this should be messaged ASAP. The messaging should be firm, but contain a path towards closing the gap and clarity that you believe in their ability to turn things around, given some hard work and reflection on their part. Ideally speaking your team member should walk away with an accurate understanding of what they need to work on, the confidence in their ability to close the gap, and the knowledge that you’re still in their corner and will do whatever’s needed to help them succeed. Of course there will be some situations where large gaps remain for too long, and the best step forward for everyone involved would be separation, but the team member should have plenty of time to know about and take concrete steps to turn things around before this point is reached.

Opportunity-based Feedback

Unless quite a few of your team members are under-performing, you should probably look to deliver more opportunity-based feedback than gap-based feedback to your team members. This concerns things that the team member’s doing well enough to meet current role expectations, but may hold them back from being promoted and succeeding in their next role. Contrary to popular belief, most people actively want as much of this feedback as possible, as it turns career progression from directionlessly poking through a fog to having a clear list of roles aim for and things to work on. Though less talked and thought-about than Gap-based Feedback, providing good Opportunity-based feedback is key to retaining your best people, by guiding them towards stronger outcomes and exciting future roles.

Identifying Opportunity-based Feedback

The first step towards identifying good Opportunity-based Feedback is understanding where your team member wants to go next. Much literature has been written on holding effective career conversations, but this is the approach that I like to take:

1. See what they like and don’t like about work — Too many people start at step two by targeting a C-suite executive or top-level specialist position, mainly because those roles pay well and “feel” like where a career should peak. What’s often less-considered is how much the team member will actually like this role. In my world of software development there are many people who want to stay “close to the code”. Even a non-management career path may include roles that stray too far from implementation and contain too many “meetings about meetings” for their liking. To avoid this, I like to first ask my team members about why they got into making software, what their perfect work day would look like, what makes some days more or less exciting than others, and the moments where they felt most proud of the work they’ve done (ex. when they successfully mentored a junior team member, got a piece of complicated code to work, coordinated across multiple teams to deliver an awesome feature, etc.).
2. Discuss Breadth vs. Depth — Visualize your skills and capabilities overlaid on the letter T. The top bar represents what you’re generally capable at, but no expert. The vertical line represents what you have deeper expertise in. Over time this top bar will be come broader, the vertical line will become deeper, and you may even see multiple vertical lines form as you expand into new areas of expertise. A key to career pathing is deciding how much time you want to spend on the top bar (acquiring a broader array of skills) vs. the vertical line (becoming a deeper expert on a specific skill). As my team member and I get to know their preferences, we’ll gauge how much they like learning in breadth vs. depth. Do they love becoming an expert on a few tools and frameworks, or would they rather become generally capable in as many tools as possible? Do they want to know everything possible about a specific business line, or would they rather have a broad view of the entire company’s operations? Can they see themselves itching to try various roles throughout their career, or do they feel settled in the type of work they do?
3. Identify the Pinnacle of their Career — From there I’ll present a handful of high-level or senior roles that require a lot of what they like to do, and align well with their preferred focus on breadth or depth. A love of depth often correlates to a more straightforward career path, while a the breadth-lover’s path can look more meandering (at least from the outside). Some high-level roles, like a principle engineer or director of agile practices, require deep expertise in a specific area. Others, like a C-suite executive or principle architect, require an impressively broad skill and knowledge base. Your team member’s preferred learning style can help point to a “pinnacle role” that they’d probably like, and the straightforwardness of their probable path towards it. Note that this shouldn’t feel like a commitment. People change over time, and while it’s good consistently talk about career pathing, the last thing you want is for your team member to feel “locked in” and loose passion. Remember, it’s not the plan, it’s the planning that matters.
4. Identify Possible Next Steps towards that Pinnacle — Working backwards from this pinnacle role, you and your team member can identify the skills, connections, and career capital that they’ll need to (eventually) succeed there, and some next-step roles to build these attributes. The range of possible roles depends on how depth-focused their pinnacle role is, and how confident they feel that they’ll love it. Take a mid-level developer for example. If they feel certain that they want to become a principle developer, the only logical next-step would be to become a senior developer. But a mid-level developer with soft-managing director aspirations should consider senior developer, scrum master, tech lead, and maybe even junior manager options, since all build skills that this pinnacle role needs, and all can open doors towards other career paths that may interest them more.
5. Find the Gaps in this Next Role — With these possible next steps in place, imagine if the team member was hired into one of these roles tomorrow. What would their future manager call out as performance gaps, given the role’s different and increased expectations? These are your team member’s opportunity areas. If they’re able to fill these future gaps and perform at the level expected of their next role, the hiring or promotion decision becomes a lot easier. The surest successful linear promotions are the ones where the person’s already meeting the next role’s expectations, so the promotion just feels like a title change and a salary increase. Preparing your team member for a non-linear promotion’s trickier, but not impossible. Can the team member take tasks in their current role that share similar responsibilities to their next one? Can they receive mentorship from someone experienced in that next role? Can they take training or receive certifications that would allow them to jump-start the new role’s learning curve?

Once these opportunity areas are identified, I’ll make it clear during delivery that the team member’s meeting expectations in their current role, but need to work on the following to be successful in their next role.

Finally, you may have to do some expectation setting when laying out this next-step roadmap. The team member shouldn’t walk away thinking “If I just do X and Y, I’ll immediately be promoted!” if that’s not how promotions work in your company. Promotions can depend on how many next-role positions are open, and there’s no guarantee that your team member will be the best candidate to apply. Overall the team member should walk away with a clear picture of the skills they’ll need to succeed in the next role, and an understanding of how the process works when they’re ready to attempt the leap.

Conclusion

Feedback, in both its positive and constructive form, is one of a manager’s strongest tools to drive their team members’ performance, engagement, and career growth. But it has a second edge to it. Opportunity-based feedback misinterpreted as gap-based feedback can lead to reduced confidence and engagement, while the opposite may cause the team member to underestimate critical performance gaps. Gathering and clearly identifying both types in delivery is crucial to getting this key responsibility right.