Giving high-quality feedback

📤 Giving Feedback

Frame feedback as plus and delta not plus and minus.

Plus is something that the person is doing well

Delta is an opportunity for change or growth. This is not a list of things that the person is doing poorly, this should be clearly framed as a change they could be making. We purposefully mean it when we say constructive feedback and NOT critical feedback.

Give constructive feedback

Do not skip constructive feedback and only give positive feedback.

It is actually pretty frustrating to ask someone for feedback and be told “you’re doing great!” Constructive feedback is a true opportunity for growth and learning. It’s how we elevate ourselves and our careers. It’s how we level up, grow ourselves, and support each other.

Well-formed, kind, constructive feedback is a gift. As a feedback giver, you should make an effort to find ways to help the receiver grow. It’s easy to shirk your responsibility, because giving someone feedback is uncomfortable and stressful. You have to sit with that discomfort and acknowledge that by taking the time to do it well & kindly, you are being a good teammate.

Be ready to be wrong

You have to truly and honestly understand that you may be wrong. Or, you might be right and the other person might be right, too. Often we come at things with different sets of information, which leads to two perfectly valid yet conflicting conclusions.

There’s no such thing as an objective truth. You are speaking from what you’ve observed, and how you interpreted it, and your opinions of what could be better.

Try to tease these apart when giving feedback:

• What did you observe?
• What was the impact on you and the team?

Giving feedback is a conversation. Prepare for the receiver to seek to understand and investigate why you feel something. And prepare for them to share information about their actions that shows it in a new light. You don’t know all the context. Just share using “I” statements and work through the ambiguity together.

(T)ASK Framework

Timely

Ideally, feedback should be given at the time at which you notice it so that a person can understand the context while it’s fresh. After a meeting, say “I liked how you…” or “I noticed you…, maybe you could try…” Of course, this isn’t always possible, and in a speedback session this can be skipped.

Actionable

The receiver is able to do something with the feedback. Make sure they understand exactly what you want them to do in response. Avoid ambiguity by making it clear what their next steps could (or should) be.

Not Actionable	Actionable
It seems like you take a long time to finish stories.	I would like to see you communicate proactively with the team if you realize that a story is going to take longer than expected.

Specific

The receiver understands exactly what events prompted the feedback. Try not to make generalizations, and instead give examples of the behavior or situations.

General feedback is not helpful, whether plus or delta. You should specifically say: what you noticed, when you noticed, what was the outcome/impact, how did it make you feel.

Another feedback framework that gives more guidance on being specific is the STAR Method, which encourages feedback to be structured around the situation + action + result.

Not Specific	Specific
You tend to back down in meetings and not hold to your opinion. I’d like to see you stand up for yourself more often.	I noticed in estimation this week, you changed your pointing without discussing it, when it was different from everyone else. I’d like to see you defend it so that the team can benefit from your opinion.

Kind

This should be obvious. Delivering good feedback requires empathy. Even if it’s the most crucial feedback in the world, if it isn’t delivered kindly, they might just ignore it.

Not Kind	Kind
That’s a bad method name.	It’s important to make sure that variable names are clear. Calling this method meow doesn’t do a good job of showing intent to the next developer who reads this code.

Giving praise

When you give praise, don’t evaluate, instead describe specifically what you’ve seen and how it makes you feel.

Evaluative	Specific
The PRs you’ve been putting up are great. Nice work.	On your last PR I noticed you listed a bunch of really good assumptions about how this code could be extensible in the future. It makes me feel great to know that I’m working in a code base where we’re thinking about how to be flexible down the line
Nice job speaking up more in meetings recently.	Hey, I noticed during refinement you called out how the design was missing guest mode. It makes me feel more secure knowing the tickets are getting the attention they deserve.

Avoid labels

If you were to advise someone to “be more confident” - you might mean that they should “have the confidence to say when they don’t know something”. But maybe they hear “confident” and assume you mean “say things confidently even if I don’t know they’re true.”

Notice when you’re using subjective labels in your feedback, and replace it with observations. Focus on describing what you observed and the impact it had on you and the team.

Example

“Let me describe what I mean by confident, and you can ask me questions to see if I’m making sense.”

📥 Receiving Feedback

Seek to understand

Receiving constructive feedback is hard. Even harder is receiving constructive feedback that you don’t agree with. You think the other person is wrong, you think that you don’t do that, you’re not like that, that they don’t get you.

Look, they probably are “wrong” about something because they can’t possibly understand your entire being and your entire context. But they are speaking from their understanding and their context. Your job is to shift from “that’s wrong” to “tell me more”.

There’s two options most people might take when they receive feedback they feel is wrong. Avoid doing either of these.

• Defend yourself. Don’t say “Hang on, well, what about that time when I…” and attempt to debate and prove their feedback wrong.
• Hold your tongue. Don’t say “thank you for the feedback” and then ignore their feedback because they clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.

The better option is to be inquisitive and curious and seek to understand even if you think they may not be right.

Ask questions and try to get at where they’re coming from. If what they’re saying doesn’t sound like you, ask for examples and specific cases so that you can see from their point of view. Say: “Can you tell me about a time when you saw me do that?”

Provide data about your own intentions and interpretations of the situation. This is not to defend yourself, this is because the goal of the conversation is for you and the feedback giver to come to a shared higher understanding of the situation together.

The feedback giver may or may not be good at giving actionable, specific, kind feedback. Their feedback may be caught up in their emotions or interpretations about it. Your job is to ask questions to tease apart:

• What did they observe? (objective)
• What meaning did it have to them? (subjective interpretation)
• What do they want you to do?

Maintain a growth mindset

There’s a common psychological distortion that convinces a brain that constructive feedback reflects on you as a person:

Feedback received	Distorted internal response
“I saw that we ran out of time in that meeting. I think that you could have done more to watch the clock and limit off-topic conversations.”	“I’m terrible at this.”
“I’d like to see you speak up more and drive more when we pair.”	“I’m a bad developer.”

Remember to respond to the feedback given, not your distorted perception of it.

Tips for this are to:

• Identify what triggers your defense mechanisms and actively work against that conditioning.
• Practice viewing your traits as flexible and always growing. Feedback is not a verdict on who you are as a person. It is an opportunity to evolve yourself. Maintaining a growth mindset allows you to find feedback constructive instead of devastating.