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Feedback is a crucial part of any business. It comes whether you want it to or not – so best to be ready and available for it right? A regular, reoccurring feedback system helps individuals, teams, and the company as a whole. It helps teams stay alert, connected, focused on the big picture, and in that way, it makes them more productive and inspired. How then do you deliver feedback in a way that’s actually heard and carried out? It requires a collaborative learning process connected to purpose.

1. Start With Yourself

But if I’m delivering feedback to someone about their performance, what does that have to do with me?

First and foremost it’s important to understand how you, the giver of feedback, are about to come across. Hearing feedback can trigger the amygdala – the part of the brain responsible for taking care of you if you’re under attack.

How do you support someone to hear your feedback constructively? Well, start with how you are feeling.

Are you showing up frenzied or stressed?

Are you ready to lash out and strike a “blow” to your teammate’s ego?

Is the feedback coming from a place of anger?

No matter what kind of language you use, your body language will rat you out. The person you’re giving feedback to will know, even if only on a subconscious level, that they are being punished. Check in with yourself. Find a calm and relaxed state, and maybe even a state that is connected to meaning and purpose if that is available to you, before giving feedback.

2. Get Permission

The next step when delivering feedback is to ask the person, “Are you available for feedback now?” It’s highly likely that you don’t know what’s happening for the other person. They could have received a phone call five minutes before saying their dad is in the hospital with COVID. You wouldn’t know that unless they told you – or unless you asked about their availability to hearing sometimes difficult information. Asking permission gives the receiver of the feedback the opportunity to check in with themselves to see if they’re available and relaxed/calm/open for feedback. It also allows you to support your colleague if they are in need at that moment. Showing your care for the well-being of others over your own immediate need is a leadership practice.

3. Use Constructive Language

Can you recall a time when you were right in the middle of doing something that had your full attention and someone comes up to you to tell you you’re doing it all wrong? And actually, you’ve been doing it all wrong this whole time and you should just stop and listen to how they think you should do it?

Wow. How infuriating.

Not only is it important to find a good time to give feedback, but how you land your feedback can make or break the impact you want to have – which is ultimately, behavior change.

The way to use constructive language is to make an observation of the past. Start the feedback with something that could be recorded by a video camera instead of your interpretation of what happened. Rather than saying, “You’re not a team player,” which is an evaluation of how the person is performing, say, “The last three times when I asked the team to stay late to finish a project, I never heard you say ‘yes.’”

It’s hard to argue with observation. It’s specific and observable. More importantly, it doesn’t include any evaluations or judgments, which increases the chances the other person will receive your feedback constructively. When a person feels judged, the likelihood that they will change is very slim. When people are motivated to do better out of a sense of ownership and inspiration, behavior change becomes quite effortless.

Why deliver feedback in this way?

It comes down to brain science — primarily the neocortex and the amygdala.

The neocortex is the part of the mammalian brain involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, and language. The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of gray matter that plays important roles in emotion and behavior. When you are stressed, the amygdala is firing off, coloring your perception of what’s happening, which is called amygdala hijacking.

In other words, your amygdala hijacks your ability to both hear feedback without criticism and utilize it constructively. Instead, the amygdala creates a fight (blaming), flight (denying), freeze (no response) or fawn (giving in) response and triggers the release of cortisol. That’s the stress hormone and ultimately means feedback is going in one ear and out the other, while also creating a negative association with feedback.

Often when we’re hearing feedback, many of us experience a sense of fear. This is because we’re accustomed to receiving feedback mixed with evaluation. Our amygdala is firing and we think “Wrong again. Why am I even at this job?”

or

“It’s not my fault. He just doesn’t understand me.”

or

“Why am I always the one to get blamed?”

Receiving feedback can be intense and if the person isn’t experienced with hearing feedback constructively, they may even think, “I’m about to get pulled from this project, or worse, fired.” No one wants that. Instead, you want to give feedback in such a way that it hits the neocortex because doing so changes behavior.

You hit the neocortex by following the tips I suggested:

1.) self-connect

2.) get permission

3.) use constructive language 

Feedback Culture

Although there is much more to say about giving feedback effectively, these first three steps are a great place to start. Building a culture of feedback is a process, and you must normalize it in order for it to become effortless and, dare I say, enjoyable.

When you understand that feedback is part of developing the growth mindset of your team, you begin to give each person the attention they need for change to happen. After all, feedback is never about what happened but rather about how we can all support each other to do it differently next time.

“Feedback is a free education to excellence. Seek it with sincerity and receive it with grace.” -Ann Marie Houghtailing