Is Your Feedback Invisible?

The reason for most feedback — both constructive and complimentary — is obvious. With all of the talk about managers needing to give more feedback, it's worth asking the question: Is the problem a lack of feedback regarding these things, or is it something else?

What if the problem isn't that employees aren't getting enough feedback but that they're getting too much? Or, said another way, that they're hearing a lot of words that are intended to be feedback but aren't actually effective at inciting change?

If you look more closely, you'll see that usually people have gotten feedback, but they didn't realize it was feedback they were getting.

If feedback doesn't incite change, it's just noise.

Let's imagine Molly Manager is talking with Eric Employee about missing an important deadline:

"Eric, do you have a minute? You seem to be running behind on some things. It's really important that we stick to our deadlines, is there something I can do to help?"

Does she think she gave Eric feedback? Almost certainly she does. Did Eric get feedback? What if the answer is no?

Here are three ways that Molly unintentionally took all of the juice out of her feedback:

• She forgot to include the specific problem. General rather than specific feedback makes it much harder for your colleague to self-reflect.

• She made a conclusion instead of asking a question. Perhaps Eric was pulled into two other projects without her knowledge.

• She undermined the value of her feedback by taking the work on herself. Disarming your feedback by making it a "we" thing or prematurely asking "how can I help?" is a subtle but powerful form of enabling.

How should good feedback feel? Here's where it might start:

"Eric, I didn't get the summary from you by the time we had agreed on. I know things come up, but it caused some frustration for me this morning. Will you spend a few minutes taking inventory of what happened and then we can reconnect later today to chat about it?"