Guidelines for Effective Feedback
- Focus your feedback on the person’s behavior, not on his or her personality. Refer to what the person does, not to what you imagine their character traits to be.
- Focus your feedback on descriptions rather than on judgments.
- Focus your feedback on a specific situation rather than on abstract behavior.
- Focus your feedback on “here and now” not the “there and then”. The more immediate the feedback, the more helpful it is.
- Focus your feedback on sharing your perceptions and feelings rather than on giving advice. By sharing perceptions and feelings you leave other people free to decide for themselves – in the light of their own goals in a particular situation at a particular time – how to use the perceptions, reactions, and feelings.
- Remember that feedback is given to help people become more self-aware and to improve their effectiveness. It is not given to make you feel better.
- Limit the amount of feedback you give. Do not give a person more feedback than they can understand at the time.
- Focus your feedback on actions that people can change.
- Own your feedback by using “I” statements.