3 Simple Frameworks to Give Effective Feedback
Feedback is a vital aspect for any individual’s development. By providing insightful comments, you give someone a tremendous gift: You help them see the perspective of someone else and recognize that they have the ability to act more effectively. Despite all of its benefits, feedback — just as in any other interaction with another human being — isn’t always easy to deliver.
Since you often know what you need to say but don’t know how to present it well, using frameworks helps you simplify the feedback process tremendously. These formats provide you with an easy structure to follow for giving helpful, actionable feedback. Let us introduce you to three proven ones:
McKinsey’s model
McKinsey’s feedback model consists of three parts:
- Part A is the specific action, event or behavior you’d like someone to change
- Part B is the impact of that behavior
- Part C is a suggestion for what the person could do differently next time
Express these points in this way:
“When you did [A], it made me feel [B].
In the future, I would recommend that you do [C].”
One of the McKinsey model’s greatest strengths is that it diffuses arguments by focusing on facts so that the person you’re addressing is less likely to take your words too personally.
The Stanford method
Even simpler is a method released by Stanford called “I like; I wish; what if … ?”. In this approach, your feedback starts the sentence with either “I like”, “I wish” or with a suggestion phrased as “What if … ?” For example, here’s what it sounds like:
“I like that you were so passionate presenting our product this morning.”
“I wish you would spend a little less time explaining all the features as the prospect had some very specific questions that we then had to rush through.”
“What if you leave a little more time for questions during your next presentation?”
People respond well to this technique because the structure describes your feelings in a very non-accusing manner.
The “SKS” method
A very similar approach is the SKS approach, which is an abbreviation for what to “stop,” “keep” and “start” doing.
Begin your feedback by addressing the following questions:
What should the person stop doing?
What should the person keep doing?
What should the person start doing?
The SKS method is action-focused and reassuring. Nevertheless, you should be careful to not only focus on specific activities that the person should stop or start; otherwise, they may feel you’re only criticizing them.
How we give feedback internally
All of the above are great frameworks that make providing helpful feedback quite easy, especially with some practice. Here at QuercusApp, we use a combination of the above methods that works great for us:
A. State the specific event, action or behavior
B. State the impact of that behavior
C. Start with “I like” to encourage or “I wish” to change a person’s specific behavior
Let us show you an example:
“When you came late to the meeting this morning [A], the whole team had to wait before we could start [B]. I wish you would arrive earlier in the future so that the meeting can start on time [C].”
The above combination of frameworks has the advantage of providing feedback that’s highly specific and actionable for the person. Try it yourself to see how powerful it can be in your workplace. If you would like to implement frequent, real-time feedback into your workplace culture, please do not hesitate to contact us for a free-trial of our cloud-based feedback application.
