The rise of feedback: Why feedback skills have become urgent
Humans have grappled with feedback skills for a long time now. As far back as 500 BC, Confucius spoke of the importance of delivering a difficult message well. And yet, people continue to struggle with it. LifeLabs Learning’s feedback skills program has been our most popular workshop and is present in every individual and management training curricula that we offer to companies.
This is largely due to the rapidly changing nature of work. As the era of artificial intelligence picks up pace and people continue struggling to adjust to remote collaboration, so much hinges on communication—and the ability of employees to give one another feedback and handle it, too.
“The human body is a feedback organism,” says LeeAnn Renninger, our co-founder. “For example, when we try to walk, we can only learn by moving, seeing how it lands, then correcting.” Workplace feedback follows that same principle. While they can be taught, a solid foundation is needed for feedback skills to develop: a new feedback mindset.
So let's get into it. In this article, we cover:
What feedback skills are
5 reasons why feedback is so important
Why people are afraid of giving feedback
3 obstacles to building a feedback mindset
How to give feedback
What are feedback skills?
Feedback is information that helps us adjust (or maintain) our behavior to get what we want. It may be delivered in written, verbal, or even gestural forms, be positive or negative, and come from anyone: managers, peers, subordinates, clients, and other stakeholders!
Feedback skills bring together many aspects of communication skills, including active listening, empathy, clarity, and self-awareness. Our book, The Leader Lab, explores these in detail.
Cognitive psychologist and co-founder of LifeLabs Learning, LeeAnn Renninger, shares an evidence-based approach to giving constructive feedback.
5 reasons why feedback is so important
Imagine feeling your way around in the dark in an unfamiliar hotel room to find your bed. At first, you feel totally lost. Why? There is no visual or physical feedback, no cues helping you understand how close you are to your destination, and you feel vulnerable, disoriented, and a little nervous.
In the workplace, we often wander around in the dark in much the same way, wondering if we are heading in the right direction, unsure how our steps will impact others and even ourselves. But it’s important for this situation to change for the following reasons:
1. Decisions are incredibly complex, with no clearly visible right or wrong answer. As the pandemic raged in 2021, a Gartner study discovered that 65% of decisions made today are more complicated than they were two years ago, involving more people or choices. We cannot rely solely on the environment for providing the feedback we need to make rapid adjustments.
2. Access to information is distributed, meaning the source of truth no longer lives with one person. As Renninger said, organizations have to function more like organisms, pulling in data, sharing it, and applying it independently and in alignment. Without human-cued feedback, everyone sits and awaits instruction or pulls in hundreds of disorganized directions.
3. Feedback drives employee engagement. In 2022, Gallup reported that 80% of employees who reported receiving meaningful feedback in the previous week were found to be fully engaged. Furthermore, employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to do outstanding work when their manager provides feedback daily, as opposed to annually at performance reviews.
4. We are working more collaboratively than ever before. A 2022 workplace survey by scientist and author Deb Mashek extrapolated that in a 40-hour, five-day workweek, people spend an average of 3.2 hours per workday collaborating with others!
5. We can't learn how to work well together just once. As team membership changes faster and teams grow in diversity, we have to keep adjusting to new people and new teams again (and again) very (very) quickly. Humans quite simply need human-cued feedback to work better with humans.
Why are people afraid of giving feedback?
In 2022, a pilot study showed that only 2.6% of people actually provide constructive feedback even when they notice a problematic situation (e.g., a mark on someone’s face) that could be easily fixed via their feedback.
We’ve seen this firsthand. Giving feedback makes some managers want to throw up. At LifeLabs Learning, we train over 400,000 managers, executives, and individuals at over 1800 companies, including Reddit, Instacart, Venmo, and Lyft. This exposure gives us a front-row seat to how people handle feedback at work. And... It's not a pretty picture.
Let's return to the analogy of stumbling around in the dark, searching for your bed. Only now, imagine there are dozens of people in the room with you, wearing night vision goggles and not saying anything (except for maybe occasionally complaining about you to someone else). You can't see them, of course, but even if you could, they would ever-so-politely neutralize their facial expressions, making it impossible for you to guess what they think of you or your valiant bed-seeking efforts.
Why do they stay silent as you stumble around awkwardly, perhaps even trampling over their toes in the process? Why does this happen? In our experience, there are four reasons that commonly come up:
They simply don't know how to tell you.
They don't want to hurt your feelings.
They're not sure it's their place to say something.
They second-guess themselves, thinking their feedback might not be valid.
The result? You waste a lot of time wandering. And sooner or later, you hear that awful CRUNCH and feel the searing pain of colliding with a solid object or perhaps even a human. That's still feedback, but by then, it hurts really badly and is much harder to learn from.
In the workplace, the equivalent we see people getting fired because of a problem they didn't know about until it was too late, people quitting because no one fixed a problem that no one knew existed, disappointed clients, lost businesses, and, in extreme cases, serious accidents that could have been prevented through a simple exchange of feedback.
Overcoming obstacles to building a feedback mindset
At LifeLabs Learning, we’ve seen that equipping people with skills to deliver feedback in a constructive and empowering way builds confidence and ensures the message lands well, allowing rapid learning to happen. When people have positive feedback experiences, the cycle is reinforced until it becomes habitual.
But we need more help addressing obstacles 2 through 4, and that begins with considering and challenging the underlying beliefs that underpin these maladaptive assumptions.
1. Feedback obstacle: "I don't want to hurt your feelings."
Solution: Reframe feedback as respect.
This belief is a vestige of the Knowledge Era where being right was the ultimate marker of success. Through this lens, someone telling you that you messed up meant you were underperforming. But, to quote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the learn-it-all does better than the know-it-all. We must become learn-it-alls, infinitely adapting and adjusting to new information, environments, and people. Learning is no longer the mark of a novice. It is a life-long practice. If we accept this new premise, every piece of feedback delivered becomes a message of respect and care.
And by the way, even if feelings are occasionally hurt, so what? Is that really more dangerous than letting someone fail? And if it feels uncomfortable, so what? Would you rather have an awkward moment of someone telling you that you have spinach in your teeth or do you want to end the day realizing you've had a green tooth all day and no one said a thing? Most importantly, if you want to prioritize the relationship, reflect on what it takes to build a true relationship with others. Relationships are built on genuine care and trust – not on an assumption of fragility.
So, become a feedback puller. Don't let people suffer in silence, wondering whether and how to give you feedback. Ask for it often and thank people profusely when you get it.
2. Feedback obstacle: "I'm not sure it's my place to say something."
Solution: Just say yes.
This is one of the biggest obstacles we see employees face today, and it's a relatively easy one to overcome. Just say yes.
Yes, it is your place to give feedback on your direct reports. In fact, our most successful clients write this expectation into manager standards and job descriptions.
YES, it is your place to give feedback to your peers. We are all in this together. And we often see one another's work more often and more closely than supervisors or clients.
YES, it is your place to give feedback to your manager. The companies that do this best put systems in place to make it easier (e.g., 180 surveys and 1-1 templates with prompts to exchange feedback).
YES, it is your place to pull for feedback.
Managers, leaders, and People Ops professionals: you can do your part by setting expectations with employees about feedback-sharing norms. As an individual, this can be as simple as kick-starting this conversation with every collaborator. Start by asking: “How should we give each other feedback?”
3. Feedback obstacle: "I'm not sure if my feedback is valid."
Solution: Treat feedback as a hypothesis.
This is a totally legitimate concern. Maybe your perception is wrong. They might know something you don't. Or maybe you really are being too sensitive, and your reaction has more to do with you than them. Share the feedback anyway.
Feedback is not meant to be a mandate. It works best as a hypothesis you explore and test together in a shared search for truth. A lack of certainty actually helps! If your hypothesis is wrong, you learn something. If your hypothesis is right, they learn something. Worst case scenario, they don't use your feedback, and you've wasted a few sentences of your infinite sentence supply.
Still feeling unsure? Advertise your uncertainty! For example, you might say: "I have feedback to share with you, but it may be totally wrong/unfair/uninformed. I think I should share it anyway because it might help us/you/me. Would you be open to hearing it?"
More often than not, if you choose courage over comfort (a core LifeLabs value!) and share your feedback, the conversation will go surprisingly well. But every once in a while, it won't. That's okay, too. We're all still learning to get this right as individuals and as an increasingly interconnected and feedback-dependent society. We are still working to show up with a new set of skills and a reconfigured mindset. With every piece of feedback you share, encourage, or request, you are doing your part to help us get there.
How to give feedback
Giving feedback is a leadership skill no employee or manager can do without. We teach this in detail in our feedback skills program, but here are a few tips and concepts you’ll want to acquaint yourself with:
1. Start by getting a micro-yes
Start with a short, specific question that signals feedback is coming so that your recipient isn’t totally taken by surprise. This could be something like, "Can we do a quick check-in on how our one-on-ones are going?”
Avoid starting a feedback conversation with a direct and startling statement like “We need to talk.”
2. Use needs-forward language
Focus on what you want to move toward rather than naming what you want to move away from. For example, if a member of your team is consistently speaking over their colleagues in meetings, instead of focusing on changing that behavior (“don’t interrupt others”), convert the statement to reflect the behavior you’d like to see instead (“please allow the speaker to finish talking first.”)
3. Avoid personal attacks and focus on facts
Statements like “you’re careless” or “you’re unprofessional” can invite resistance from the recipient, first, as they come across as personal attacks, and second because they use vague terms.
Instead, you might say, “I noticed you misspelled our colleague’s name in three of her last emails, although they corrected you.” The latter focuses on clear, observable behavior.
Empower your teams with world-class skills training
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Feedback Prep Grid
The LifeLabs Learning Guide
We're sharing our Feedback Prep Grid for an easy-to-reference guide on making feedback receivable, actionable, and high-value.
