Feedback: Give It, Get It, Grow From It
Most feedback fails before it's spoken. Here's how to give feedback people can use, and receive it without armor.
Here’s the truth: most of the feedback that matters on your team is never said out loud. The corrective feedback gets softened until it means nothing. The positive feedback gets skipped because “they already know.” And the feedback aimed at you? You either brace against it or take it straight to heart, and neither one helps you grow.
That’s not a character flaw. Honest feedback feels risky because it is risky. You’re touching someone’s sense of competence, or letting them touch yours. So we cushion, delay, hint, and hope. It looks like kindness.
It isn’t. Clear is the kindest thing you can offer someone who needs to grow. And learning to hear feedback without armor is the fastest way to grow yourself. Feedback runs in both directions, and both directions are a skill you can practice.
The Real Problem
Think about the feedback you’re holding right now. There’s probably a corrective conversation you’ve been rehearsing for weeks. And there’s almost certainly praise you’ve never delivered because it felt awkward, or obvious, or small.
Both cost more than you think. Withheld corrective feedback costs the other person growth: they can’t fix what no one will name. Withheld positive feedback might cost more. Nobody can repeat a behavior you never told them was working.
The pattern underneath is the same: we treat feedback as a verdict on a person instead of information about a behavior. Verdicts feel dangerous to deliver and devastating to receive. Information is just useful.
What Good Looks Like
| The default | The practice |
|---|---|
| ”Sometimes you come across as hard to reach." | "In Thursday’s call, you answered the escalation two hours after the customer’s deadline. She’d already called my line by then." |
| "Great job on that presentation." | "The way you paused and asked the room for objections changed the whole meeting. Do that every time.” |
| Hearing feedback and immediately defending, explaining, fixing. | Listening all the way through, finding what’s true in it, then choosing a response. |
| ”It was nothing." | "Thank you. That’s useful to hear.” |
Notice what shifts. Specific moments instead of “sometimes.” Observable behavior instead of labels. Real consequences instead of judgments. And on the receiving side, a choice instead of a reaction.
The Practices
Giving: The SBI Model
Situation, Behavior, Impact. Name the specific moment, describe what a camera would have captured, then share the real consequence. It works for corrective feedback, positive feedback, and feedback in every direction, including up.
Go deeper: The SBI Feedback Model
Receiving: The Three Moves
Receiving is half the skill and the half almost nobody practices. Three moves, in order. Listen without loading: hear them out without building your rebuttal. Find the data: ask what’s true in this, separate from who said it or how it landed. Choose the response: acknowledge it, ask a clarifying question, restate it to confirm, or respectfully push back. Pushing back is legitimate, but only after the first two moves.
The moves apply to praise too. Every “it was nothing” is evidence about your own competence that you rejected on arrival.
Where to Start
Start here. Name the feedback you’re holding. One piece of corrective feedback you’ve been sitting on, and one piece of positive feedback you’ve never delivered. For each, ask: is the cost of not saying this higher than the cost of saying it? Then pick one and put it in SBI form. You’ll usually find the answer is yes, and the conversation is shorter than the rehearsal.
Go Deeper
- Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, Thanks for the Feedback (2014). The definitive work on the receiving side.
- Kim Scott, Radical Candor (2017). On caring personally while challenging directly.
- Center for Creative Leadership, the originators of the SBI model.
If you’re working with a coach, feedback is rich territory to bring in. Two questions worth exploring: “What feedback am I holding, and what’s the fear underneath?” and “What’s my signature move when feedback comes at me: defend, deflect, or absorb?”