Delivering Effective Feedback

I want to talk further about feedback. You gave some great tidbits from your system there in terms of giving feedback and letting a manager know every week, the 30-5-1 system. I want to learn more about you. How do you prefer to receive feedback? What works best for you?

I think when it’s positive feedback, be really specific and be in the moment. Don’t wait to give positive feedback. If you observe something great someone said or really great work that they emailed you or whatever it may be, give that positive feedback in the moment.
I think that dopamine will help with the stickiness of the behavior that you’re trying to reinforce. They’ll immediately get the dopamine hit. They’ll remember what they did in the moment. They’ll be more likely, I think, to maximize that strength of theirs over and over.
I think for constructive feedback, I don’t love that in the moment. I think it can be really hard in the context of not knowing that you’re about to receive feedback, to just get hit with it.
And then it can distract you, and then you go into the rest of your meetings for the day, and all you’re thinking about was that out of nowhere, that constructive piece of feedback that you got, and it can totally derail you.
So, I think that step back that I mentioned, whatever the mechanism is—but I do step back with my manager as well. I think step backs for constructive feedback can be really helpful so that they’re in a safe space. You’re not caught off guard. Now, obviously, step back shouldn’t just be constructive feedback. It should be building on both. And it should be more longitudinal. I think constructive feedback, I think there should be a pattern that you can speak to, which you can only do if you observe for a while, you’re not reacting in the moment, and then you step back and present it and help me help a person understand.