10X Your Leadership Impact: Become an Appreciative and Constructive Feedback Ninja!

By: Suzanne Qualia - Published on July 18th, 2024

Many leaders I work with struggle to master the art of effective feedback delivery. In a recent 10X Leadership Impact toolkit, I focused on growth and development dialogues. Feedback is a critical component of this process, offering opportunities for self-awareness, reflection, and insights into what’s working and what isn’t. This month’s 10X toolkit will equip leaders with another essential tool: the art and science of delivering effective appreciative and constructive feedback.

Meaning:

Technically speaking, feedback is sharing information about a person, product, or situation that aims to improve performance and effectiveness. Its purpose is to foster improvement through learning, reinforcing what’s working, and creating self-awareness and action plans for areas that aren’t.

Key Concept:

Feedback, delivered well with positive intent, is always helpful. When the brain hears “negative,” it triggers a stress response, creating a fight-or-flight mode. Our brains can only be in one of two states: innovation and creativity, or fight-or-flight. This toolkit offers approaches to minimize or eliminate the fight-or-flight response.

Replace “Negative” with “Constructive,” and replace “Positive” with “Appreciative” when labeling a feedback dialog.

Instead of using the term “negative feedback,” which doesn’t create a helpful brain state for either the giver or receiver, consider calling it “constructive feedback.” Likewise, consider relabeling “positive” feedback to “appreciative.” As stated earlier, all feedback that is delivered well is positive, so relabeling will eliminate this confusion. Appreciative feedback highlights what’s going well and aims to reinforce positive behavior. Constructive feedback identifies areas for improvement with the intention of inspiring better performance.

Mindsets:

There can be some obstacles to effective feedback delivery that impact both constructive and appreciative. Here are two common challenges and solutions that solve both:

1. Constructive Feedback Obstacles

• Fear: Voices in our head like, “If I say something, I’ll ruin our relationship,” or “How do I deliver the feedback successfully?” fall into two categories: the “big lie” and “skill.

Solution:

• Abolish the big lie: Understand that providing feedback can actually increase trust and deepen relationships. It’s a “Yes, and…” vs. an “Either, or…” like our brain tries to trick us into thinking.
• Develop skills: Learn and apply an effective feedback framework for both appreciative and constructive feedback dialogs.

2. Appreciative Feedback Obstacles:

• Time: The daily whirlwind prevents us from noticing and stating what’s working well.
• Assumptions: We assume people know they did a good job and don’t need to hear it.
• Skill: Many leaders don’t realize that the power of appreciative feedback lies in the same attributes as constructive feedback. Think about it. Which scenario would have more impact for you: A.) a curt “Hey, nice job,” or B.) recounting of the project vision, noticing the specific things the feedback giver observed that you did well, and opening up the dialog to explore how to make your work the new standard procedure? I suspect B has far greater impact.

Solution:

• Refocus time: Prioritize appreciative feedback as a valuable long-term investment.
• Challenge assumptions: Recognize that expressing appreciation can significantly boost engagement, innovation, and productivity.
• Develop skills: Learn and apply an effective feedback framework for both appreciative and constructive feedback dialogs.

Motivations:

Mastering feedback matters. Here’s why:

• Engagement and Motivation: Appreciative feedback drives engagement and motivation.
• Self-Awareness and Growth: Constructive feedback fosters self-awareness and future action planning.
• Frequency: Regular feedback conversations are more effective than infrequent formal reviews. This is based on widely available research on this topic. Many companies are replacing their formal performance management annual processes with the new requirement of more frequent feedback conversations to drive elevated performance. The need for leaders to upskill in this space is becoming greater.
• Future Focus: Future-focused feedback is more likely to be accepted and lead to change. According to a well-regarded NIH study, “The recipients who rated the feedback discussion as most future-focused accepted their feedback and indicated high intention to change at all levels of feedback favorability.”

Methods:

Before we get into an ideal feedback method, let’s look at an ineffective feedback model.

Avoid the popularly used “sandwich” method, which mixes appreciative and constructive feedback in the same conversation. It’s ineffective because, over time, the feedback recipient knows the constructive portion is coming and doesn’t even hear the appreciative piece. It might make you as the feedback giver feel better, but it’s not achieving the desired outcome.

Now, let’s look at the recommended feedback method – Modified SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact). Especially take note of the last critical success factor bullet below for deeper insights on why the “sandwich” method isn’t as effective as advertised.

VpSBIvA Framework:

1. Vision (V): Start by sharing your intention to support the recipient’s overall success.
2. Permission (p): Ask if it’s a good time for the feedback conversation.
3. Situation (S): Describe a specific time and place.
4. Behavior (B): State the observable behavior.
5. Impact (I): Explain the impact of the behavior. (Impact is the key litmus test for “Is this a feedback opportunity?” If you can’t state the impact the recipient is having on the business, the project, the team, etc., then it’s likely your judgement, assumption, or preference that you are stating vs. an actual feedback moment.)
6. Vision (v): Ask the recipient to envision a better outcome.
7. Action (A): Shift to leader as coach mode and coach the recipient to create an action plan. As stated in the NIH article earlier, future-focused feedback has far greater impact than spending time dissecting and analyzing the past. Reference the past only enough to create motivation in the mind of the recipient to step into creating a new future. One could say this is the most critical step in the feedback dialog. What new actions and behaviors will create success in achieving the new vision?

Benefits of VpSBIvA:

• Effective for both appreciative and constructive feedback.
• Short and succinct, focusing quickly on future actions.
• Easy to remember and apply.

Critical Success Factors:

• Keep feedback delivery (the SBI portion) short and succinct. (More words are not better! One sentence or two at best, using the SBI words as connectors usually is sufficient.)
• Transition to coaching and action planning quickly. (the vA portion)
• Encourage the recipient’s perspective for future vision and action planning, not yours. Align the visions if necessary, but the recipient has to ultimately “own” the vision. If it’s entirely your vision, they won’t.
• Use the framework for both appreciative and constructive feedback.
• Deliver appreciative to constructive feedback in a 3:1 (minimum) and 5:1 (optimal) ratio.
  • Why is that? Because of our prehistoric neurological wiring. Our brains are 75% more keyed into threats than positives.

When humans were hunters and gatherers, survival depended on being hyper-aware of threats. This response hasn’t changed much over time. Today, instead of scanning for predators, we scan our email inboxes for threats, and in conversations interpreting inflections, tones, and body language as dangers. Our brains make quick, split-second judgments to keep us “safe.”

As a leader, if your goal is to reduce this threat response in your teams, it’s important to maintain a 3:1 (or ideally 5:1) ratio of appreciative to constructive feedback. When this ratio is implemented, trust builds and the relationship is deepened. Then when the occasional instance of constructive feedback occurs, the recipient is open to hearing it and it is interpreted through the lens of growth and development support, which was intended. This will take a lot of time and attention initially, but over time, it will become a subconscious habit, paying the long-term dividends of that investment of time and attention.

Armed with new perspectives on feedback, the necessary mindsets, and motivation, you’re now on your way to becoming a “feedback ninja,” significantly increasing engagement, motivation, creativity, and innovation on your team.

Ready to uplevel your feedback dialogue skills? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute strategy session to take the next step. Let’s do this!