TL;DR: Most managers under-give feedback, and it costs their teams and their culture. Feedback is a learnable skill, and small improvements pay off fast. This post collects the lessons I found most counterintuitive, the practices that worked and those that didn’t, a few ways to find more feedback to give, my favourite resources, and our free 1:1 feedback template.
AI disclosure: The ideas, arguments, and examples in this post are my own. I gave Claude my raw notes and asked it to help draft them into a post, then substantially rewrote and edited the result myself, with Claude assisting on a final copyedit pass.
When I became a manager, most of my early mistakes came down to one thing. I did not give enough feedback, and I did not give it on time. My first report struggled with meeting deadlines, and I let it go unsaid for too long. That was bad for them because they never had the chance to improve in that role, and it was bad for me because the late work stressed me out. Learning to do this well took me a long time, and I still count it among the hardest parts of the job.
My rough estimate is that feedback skills account for something like 40% of your success as a manager. Even small improvements pay off quickly. Better feedback lifts your team’s performance and shapes your culture and your ability to attract and retain great people.
My experience seems common. Feedback is not something most of us are taught. It rarely comes up at university, and the training new managers get is often thin. People carry a lot of fear around it, so they avoid practising, and they improve slowly.
I wrote up the lessons that helped me most, including the ones I found least intuitive and the mistakes I made along the way. It paid off: feedback is now one of the parts of Hive's culture my team says they appreciate most. I'm still learning, and I would love to hear any great tips I've missed.
Start by naming what kind of feedback you’re giving
One idea that reframed feedback for me more than any other is from "Thanks for the Feedback" by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. They argue there are three kinds of feedback, all of them essential, and people get confused when you mix them:
- Appreciation: recognition and thanks. It tells someone their effort is seen and valued.
- Coaching: guidance to help someone learn, grow, or improve.
- Evaluation: where someone stands against expectations, such as whether they are on track or whether a role is working out.
The practical move is to say which one you are offering. If you launch into coaching, the receiver can hear the evaluation and assume their standing is in question. Give warm appreciation when someone asks for a critique and leaves unsure what to fix. Naming the type up front tells them how to engage.
A related habit: separate global feedback (how someone is doing overall) from local feedback (this specific piece of work). That way, a single note on one task does not get read as a verdict on the whole person.
In my other post, the accountability gap, I also wrote about how it helps to separate your comments on the work from your evaluation. For example, you can leave some comments on a new piece of work to help improve it, but it’s still worth telling your direct report whether this report draft met your expectations or not.
Care personally and challenge directly
Another framework I keep coming back to is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. She plots feedback on two axes: how much you care personally, and how directly you challenge. That gives four quadrants:
- Radical Candor: you care, and you challenge. The goal.
- Obnoxious Aggression: you challenge but don’t show you care. Blunt and cold. Some of the worst feedback I received as a report myself fell into this category.
- Manipulative Insincerity: you neither care nor challenge. Flattery to someone’s face, criticism behind their back.
- Ruinous Empathy: you care, but you hold back the hard truth to spare someone’s feelings.
Scott’s point is that most managers fail in the same direction: Ruinous Empathy. You like the person, you don’t want to upset them, so you soften the message until it disappears, or you say nothing at all. It feels kind in the moment, and it leaves the person worse off, because they never learn where they stand or how to improve.
That was me in my first role as a manager. I cared a great deal and challenged far too little, and I told myself I was being supportive. My team paid for it. The fix is to keep the care and add the challenge, the same move as “clear is kind.”
The lessons I found most counterintuitive
- Praise far more than you criticise. One widely cited study of business teams found the highest performers received roughly six positive comments for every critical one. The exact figure has been contested, but the direction holds up across separate research. Being the "chief noticer" of your team's good work helps them believe in themselves and makes criticism easier to accept.
- My motto is to never go into a 1:1 without at least one piece of constructive criticism for yourself and your report. There is always something you two could have done better. Criticism can be shared, e.g. “I think we both could have done this better. I own the delivery part, and I think you could have prepared more thoroughly”.
- Trust comes first. People need to believe you give feedback because you care about them and their growth before they can take the hard stuff from you.
- Ask for feedback before you give it, and show that you can take it well (thank them and don’t be defensive). Max Dalton offers great suggestions for responding when you disagree with constructive feedback.
- Not all feedback should state your opinion. Starting with questions and coaching is often the better route, especially for the toughest feedback.
- Clear is kind. Telling someone, in plain terms and on time, that something is not working can feel like it will upset them. Staying quiet is worse. If you are unsure what to say, just say all the things.
- Good delivery is your job. It is your responsibility to deliver constructive feedback in a way that is less likely to trigger defensiveness. The receiver has to take it well, too, and it starts with how you give it.
- It’s ok if people sometimes feel upset. Even well-delivered hard feedback can sting, and that does not always mean you got it wrong. Sometimes people need time to process feedback before they can see it constructively.
- It can be scary and sometimes even upsetting to deliver hard feedback, but it gets easier with practice.
- Model it. Sharing feedback you have received about yourself and how you plan to change builds psychological safety. You can do this both privately with your directs and publicly with your team (e.g., in team meetings or Slack channels).
- Adapt to preferences. People want feedback in different ways, and it is your job to learn theirs. Some reports want critical feedback in writing before we meet, so they can think it over first.
- Silence is a red flag. Giving no feedback at all can leave a report feeling that you are not invested in their growth or that you are holding back criticism that could help them improve.
What worked for me
- A twice-monthly feedback cadence with each report, with both of us doing prep beforehand, plus smaller constructive notes and appreciations sent as DMs in between.
- Making “notice good work and say so immediately” a daily habit. Because I’m an Executive Director, I also try to send notes to everyone, not just my direct reports. I’ve noticed that the team has also started giving each other shout-outs more often, so it’s contagious!
- Using the SBIN structure: Situation, Behaviour, Impact, Next steps to deliver feedback. E.g. In our last team meeting (situation), I’ve noticed that you interrupted people a few times (behavior), and it prevented people from sharing their ideas fully (impact). How can we ensure that everyone can share their thoughts going forward? (next steps prompt)
- Using coaching to deliver hard feedback, so your report spots the issue and reaches their own solution. Before giving my view on a project I thought took too long, I might ask, “You put so much effort into this. How do you think it went?” Then I keep asking questions like “What do you think about the time it took to complete it?” etc.
- Keeping a management diary (a simple spreadsheet with a date and notes) for things I notice but want to raise in person at our 1:1. Some people write straight into a feedback doc. I prefer time to process my thoughts and spot patterns.
- I keep a tick box next to each bit of feedback in my management diary to keep myself accountable for delivering all the feedback I have for the person.
- Pushing my team to give me constructive feedback and thanking them for it. When someone says they have nothing, I ask again and wait, and if nothing comes, I ask them to bring something next time. It takes a while for people to feel able to criticise you. When they do, I give them extra appreciation for it (”you’re on a constructive feedback streak”).
- Asking for specific feedback sometimes works better than asking for general criticism. For example, if your report comes up with nothing you can improve, you can ask right after a call or event, while it’s fresh in their head: “How do you think that call went? What did we do well, what could we have done better, and what could I have done better?” Make sure to thank them for their criticism and don’t be defensive; otherwise, they’re unlikely to offer it again.
- Asking for feedback in advance. E.g., if I am giving a talk and a team member will be there, I ask them to watch for one or two things I could improve. Knowing I expect it makes them more likely to spot it and feel more comfortable naming it.
- Asking for feedback on my feedback: “How did that land for you?” and “What could I have done better here?”, or even “How did this conversation go?” after a tough conversation. It reminds me that feedback is a skill I can keep improving, and it takes some of the fear out of getting it wrong.
- Linking constructive feedback to a person’s goals, for example: “This presentation felt a bit rushed and brushed over the next steps. You said before that you want to build your leadership skills, and clear public speaking will help you get there.”
What didn’t work
- Delivering tough critical feedback over text. I lose body language and the chance to find a shared solution in conversation.
- Sitting on urgent feedback because no 1:1 was scheduled soon. If it’s urgent and you don’t want to send it over text, ask to hop on a short call.
- Skipping scheduled feedback sessions and just asking “Any feedback for me?” at the end of a 1:1 meeting. The answer was almost always no.
- Giving feedback before I understood the facts. State your observations and then ask: “Could you help me understand what happened?” It will surface their perspective first and help you create better next steps together.
- Waiting for someone to notice their own underperformance. It is your job to flag clearly and as early as possible when something falls short of expectations (I wrote more about this in my previous post).
- Thinking that a pattern of small mistakes and underperformance issues doesn’t warrant a conversation when the person is overall a great performer. Small things can add up to bigger issues and affect your culture, so it’s important to address any patterns seriously and promptly.
- Mixing developmental and evaluation feedback, so the person did not realise their role was on the line until it was too late. This is the same trap the three types mentioned above warn against.
- Assuming people know I care without saying it. “I am telling you this because I care about you and your growth in this role” is rarely a bad way to close, even when you’ve said it many times before.
- Jumping to solutions. Now I ask the report for their ideas first: they will be more likely to commit to their own solutions. For murkier issues, I ask, “Would you like me to coach you, or would you like advice?”
- Talking about my emotions and my story instead of observations and expectations. “You have submitted the last two reports late, and it doesn’t meet my expectations” is better than “I’m disappointed that you always submit work late.”
- Expecting that people will read your thoughts and not ask for a reflection back. It can be easy to misunderstand each other both in writing and during a call, so it helps to repeat back what each of us heard: “So that we are on the same page, checking I understand. Here is what I heard you saying…”
- Giving feedback without agreeing on what will be done differently going forward. The easy solution is to give your feedback using the SBIN model and set a reminder to return to actions at your next 1:1 to check how it’s progressing.
How to find more feedback to give
A common struggle is finding enough to say. Two weeks pass, and you are not sure what to point out. A few prompts that help:
- Watch what your reports do across the week, not just their goals: their messages, what they say on calls, what others say about them.
- Hold their work against your team’s values. Did they act in line with them?
- Check their goals for progress, even small steps.
- Connect an AI tool to your comms (Slack, email, Asana, etc.) and ask it to surface material. E.g. this prompt can work: “Please look over all the comms with person X on YZ platforms for the past two weeks and give me all the positive and constructive points for them for our 2:2 feedback session, as well as what I did well and could have done better as a manager”. It will not be fully accurate, but there is usually something useful there. Just make sure you read over everything AI suggests and check you agree with it and own it 100%.
- Revisit your past feedback. Has there been any progress on something you raised before, even a little? Name it. People love hearing that they have moved forward.
- Similarly, if there hasn’t been any progress towards your past constructive feedback, bring it up again. What stopped the report from making progress?
- Spot patterns, even in small actions, and name them.
- Offer general and specific appreciation. Maybe you value how reliable they are, how kind they are, or how prepared they always are for meetings.
Practise out loud
These notes cover what helped me most, not everything I learned from the books. I recommend reading them in full, and more than that, practising. Feedback is a skill, and skills need reps.
One creative way to practice your skills is AI voice mode. Tell it what you are working on, say "coaching" rather than "advice-giving," then role-play a feedback conversation out loud. It can tell you how well you did and suggest what to try next time. It’s a low-stakes way to rehearse before the real conversation.
If you are able, practice tricky feedback with your executive coach. My coach, Adam, has helped me give some really tough feedback when I wasn’t certain whether and how to give it. You can find movement-aligned coaches here or schedule a session with me!
Books and resources I recommend
My 1:1 feedback template
If you’d like to get started with a regular feedback cadence, feel free to use and adapt this free template we use at Hive. If you give a lot of feedback, it may be worth converting this template to a spreadsheet.
What are your feedback tips? I would love to hear the ones I have missed.
Hi, I’m Sofia Balderson. I lead Hive, a global community for people working to end factory farming. This is a link post from my Substack, Notes from the Margin to share the messier, more personal reflections that don’t fit in formal updates. If you care about leading, belonging, or building something that matters (especially from the edges), feel free to subscribe here.
