How to give feedback that doesn’t suck

Great feedback is worth its weight in gold. That’s probably why it’s in such short supply.

Every time someone shares work with you, they are (or should be) sharing a small part of themselves with you. It is the work equivalent of getting on stage. The presenter or sharer is exposing a small part of themselves. As a giver of feedback, our responsibility should be to respond with care and with the goal of helping make something better and more valuable. That, in turns, demands a good portion of ego-suppression: feedback is not about us, it is about the person presenting and the content they have created.

There is a simple formula for giving feedback which I learned a while back. I’ll share that shortly

I have also been party to many presentations, pitches, idea development, strategies and on and on where I have witnessed, sadly, a lot of very, very poor feedback. The poor feedbackers usually fall into a few recognizable categories, such as:

The Decider — the feedback from the decider is as predictable as it is destructive. This feedback takes the form of “I had an idea or solution in my head, but what you’ve presented isn’t it. I don’t believe anything that you’ve presented because it doesn’t fit what I had expected. You need to change the information.”

The decider isn’t giving feedback at all. They are simply lashing out emotionally. Part of this is fear: they fear admitting that they could be, or are often, wrong. The decider is usually a person of power and influence, and they like to wield it.

What I’ve learned over the years is that deciders act this way because they’ve never learned to do it another way. One decider point blank charged me with teaching them how to give feedback. Which I did.

When you get feedback from a decider, make sure you set feedback rules before you share your work.

The Ideator — these often-well-intentioned feedbackers love their own ideas most, and they have a lot of ideas! I think the Ideators get feedback confused with show and tell — since you’ve shown your ideas, they want to show you theirs. Some ideators really do have good ideas. The problem is that they show quickly that they want you to think their ideas are superior to yours. Rather than admit that they really don’t like your ideas, they start spinning new ones.

Sometimes it’s hard to turn of the feedback from Ideators — once they get going, they are hard to stop. The key challenge with Ideators is to keep them focused on what you’ve shared and how to make your work better, rather than going off on completely new tangents.

When you get feedback from an Ideator remember to constrain and focus the discussion.

The Passive-Aggressive Ally — You know that saying “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? The passive-aggressive ally is a master of honey-vinegar — feedback that sounds really friendly and supportive but is often undermining. They are not as blunt as deciders, but they try work to shift your work so that it reflects their agenda.

The passive-aggressive ally will often feign misunderstanding. More likely you’ve shared something that’s made them feel uncomfortable. Rather than admitting that (which would be great feedback, by the way) they try to make it seem like it’s your fault.

The passive-aggressive ally often has an agenda that they are not transparent with. If you find yourself getting feedback from a passive-aggressive ally, shift the conversation to focus on them for a bit. Shine the spotlight until you uncover their hidden agenda. Once you do that you can start a real feedback session.

The Grenade Thrower — Everyone should recognize the grenade thrower. When they give feedback, they set off small explosions all around us not to move us forward but to scuttle our ideas. Grenade throwers love giving feedback around statistics and facts (“Have you measured this?” “Have you read report XXX?” “We tried something similar 5 years ago and it didn’t work.”) People have written entire books about grenade throwers (VP of No, Influence).

Grenade throwers don’t care about giving feedback. They want predictable ideas, like the ones they’ve seen before, and that don’t involve too much change.

You can’t completely ignore grenade throwers. The best response to them is to not respond — say something like “Those are interesting points. Let’s talk about them in another meeting. Can we set something up in two weeks?”

That will usually defuse the situation. In two weeks, they will have forgotten most of their resistance.

Simple Rules of Feedback

If you are sharing your work with a group, large or small, the best rules of feedback for participants are this:

Listen, take notes, and then give feedback based on:

1. What did I find most interesting? Why?
2. What did I not understand?
3. What would I have liked to have heard more about?

That’s it. Time permitting you can dig into more details. But these three simple rules give all of the listeners the chance to give constructive and creative feedback without getting too personal and without running into their own specific agendas.

In my experience, this advice works wonders for presentations, pitches, creative work, and just general idea sharing. Let’s dig in

1. What did I find most interesting? Why? — this is not specifically “What did I like best?” mostly because that like might be triggering my assumptions and subjectivity. The word interesting is more powerful especially since you should need to explain why you thought it was interesting. That feedback can connect to all sorts of strategic backgrounds, insights, or surprising findings. Interesting is far more constructive than like.
2. What did I not understand? — again this is not “What did I not like?” which gets a bit too subjective and bias-related. The understanding part points to ideas that are perhaps under-articulated or not clearly communicated. Personally, I think most of the problems we face with sharing and feedback connect to poor communication. So rather than saying “I didn’t like this” this feedback gives the creator a chance to see if they might improve their ideas by making them clearer. It doesn’t mean they will work in the end, though. It still might be the case of not-so-well-thought-out ideas.
3. What would I have liked to have heard more about? — this last part is all about giving feedback to help further develop some ideas deeper or off on specific tangents. Rather than responding like the Ideators, the hearing more feedback acknowledges both underdeveloped thoughts and gaps in someone’s presentation or ideas. It is an extremely effective method of constructive feedback.

Most people are not good at giving feedback because we are too focused on ourselves not focused enough on helping other people. Feedback is all about the other person and should focus on answering the question: what can I give of myself to help this other person (or persons) succeed?

To do that, people giving feedback need to leave their agendas and egos for another meeting.

The next time you are presenting or sharing, post these simple rules on the wall, or send them in advance to the people you are presenting for. After you’ve finished presenting or sharing, go around the room and ask each individual these three questions. Keep everyone on track. I promise you that you will receive constructive feedback that helps make your work better.

Three simple steps to giving feedback that doesn’t suck. Try it.