The Product Leader’s Guide to Giving Feedback
Good employee performance is critical to the success of an organization and the products it builds, and feedback is one of the most important factors in employee performance for good reason. As management professor Christine Porath points out in Harvard Business Review: “High-performing teams share nearly six times more positive feedback than average teams.”
But most of us are guilty of not giving enough feedback to our peers, colleagues, and direct reports. Why is that?
I think the predominant reason for this is that we often don't feel comfortable giving feedback. And there are many reasons why this is the case:
We may be too focused on keeping everyone happy and think criticism could ruin the mood of the team.
We might see that our employees are already under a lot of pressure and we think critical feedback will make their situation worse
Perhaps we are struggling to find the right words to make sure our point comes across.
Or it could be because we still haven’t accepted that feedback is a vital part of our leadership role.
But here’s an important lesson: If we are not giving feedback to our product folks, chances are that the people on our team won’t get any better. It’s hard to get better if you don’t know what better looks like. So your team needs your feedback and input to achieve mastery, gain autonomy, and find their purpose.
It’s hard to get better if you don’t know what better looks like
But how do you create a good feedback culture, what kinds of feedback are there, and how can you give and accept feedback that may be perceived as negative? Chapter 8 of my book STRONG Product People answers all of these questions. If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can download the PDF of the chapter here.
Just to mention a few aspects:
Even the most experienced leaders have to prepare for giving feedback. It does get easier over time, especially when you have some great frameworks that work for you, but it is always good to prepare for giving feedback.
Julie Zhuo—former VP of Product Design at Facebook—suggests that feedback generally falls into one of two categories: either task-related feedback or behavioral feedback. I find this a helpful distinction. The chapter includes examples for each category.
The chapter mentions that I like to use the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) feedback tool, developed by the Center for Creative Leadership, to help managers deliver clear, specific feedback. You might find it beneficial to use a tool or framework like this as well.
And last but not least, here are some more great resources about giving and receiving feedback:
Books: Radical Candor and The Making of a Manager
The Grand’s Feedback Tool helps you to structure your feedback before you actually give it.
Harvard Business Review has a useful article, Words and Phrases to Avoid in a Difficult Conversation
Ed Batista has a great blog post, How to Deliver Critical Feedback. I like this quote: "'When you show up late to our meetings, I feel like you don't care’ is not an expression of emotion—it's an asserted belief about the other person's state of mind. The key is to always follow ‘I feel…’ with an actual emotion. ‘When you show up late to our meetings, I'm unsure about your commitment, and I feel disappointed and irritated.’”
Another great article from First Round Review, The Power of Performance Reviews. Remember: Done well, performance reviews improve performance, align expectations and accelerate your report’s career. Done poorly, they accelerate their departure.
One last thing to bear in mind: Times are rough. Be kind to yourself and be kind to the people you are giving feedback to.