Give continuous feedback, but not a constant performance review

Make feedback normal, not a performance review was the title of my eleventh newsletter issue, and I started it with the following writing about continuous feedback. There are more topics in the newsletter. This post is only an excerpt from it.

Giving feedback is a hot topic. That’s why I used this quote, “Make feedback normal. Not a performance review.” from Ed Batista, an executive coach and writer.

Giving and receiving feedback should be part of our day-by-day, should be normal, not seen as a judgment.

Giving feedback to human beings

There are several ideas, articles, and frameworks to provide useful feedback. But the truth is that we are human, we are all different, and even if we prepare it, this doesn’t assure that we will reach the goal, that is to help people succeed.

People react in many different ways to feedback, and it is something always to consider. You will find people who don’t want your feedback and anything else from you. IMHO it is a must to address this topic before any review.

It was Elon Musk who said, “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better”. A culture where people practice giving and receiving continuous feedback every day can be so powerful.

But this is about having a growth mindset. And being realistic, we cannot expect that all people are exactly the same unless we have set up clear values and hired based on them. We have to adapt based on the different people that depend on us.

Before providing feedback, we need to know the personality of who we are going to provide feedback. People always focus on the details they are willing to share, and the risk is not to establish any connection. If there’s no link between peers, the feedback won’t arrive at its destination, at least in the desired way.

Feedback fallacy

This is what The Feedback Fallacy article is about. Tells us that the available readings are great but that reality could work differently. Not all the available examples that worked in concrete cases will work out. There might be different conditions.

The article also recommends focusing on strengths and forget about weaknesses, which I don’t completely agree with. We can’t always convert all our weaknesses into strengths, but realizing weaknesses is important in personal growth.

On the other hand, there was another HBR publication, What Good Feedback Really Looks Like, as a response to the previous article, that wanted to pint out that good feedback (positive and negative) is essential to helping managers enhance their best qualities and address their worst so they can excel at leading. It says “managers”, but it is relevant to anyone.

Situation-Behavior-Impact

The previous article also recommended using the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) approach to address both strengths and weaknesses in a clear, specific, professional, and caring way, delivering feedback to minimize the threat response. Let me highlight these professional and caring adjectives because people usually forget that we are human beings before professionals.

Truth to be told, the article’s authors are from CCL, where the SBI technique was developed.

Now, give me your feedback

It is great to read articles, news, posts, tweets, but as I said before, we are humans, and it is in the battleground when we see the magic of feedback appear.

We saw the SBI approach, but I’d love to know how do you give feedback and which methodologies you use, if any. Maybe you could share some examples of past experiences.

I hope you liked it. If so, please share it! Do not hesitate to add your comments. And, if you want to stay up to date, don’t miss my free newsletter.

As, always, thanks for reading. And I’d love to hear your feedback :-)

Also published on Medium.