How to Give Feedback
– Monday Mindset –

Today’s Monday Mindset: How to Give Feedback

Giving feedback to others can be difficult sometimes, and that’s why we just did a training with some of our PGC staff to help equip them in how to give feedback.

Because you can fall off the cliff one of two ways.

Either you can be overly sensitive to how the other person might receive it, and then you sugarcoat it and just sound nice and don’t say anything real to help them get better at all. Or you can fall off the cliff and not be sensitive enough and thoughtful enough as to what’s the right timing to say it.

How can I say it in a way that they can actually receive it. If you’re not thoughtful enough.

It can seem mean or mean-spirited or not being sourced from a place of being humble and thinking, “Hey, I just want to help you get better”, as opposed to, “I want to make you feel worse”.

So it’s always important when you’re giving feedback to think about how you can share the truth in love, whether you’re a coach, parents, boss, teacher, or it’s just a friendship or somebody that you want to help make better.

Kim Scott wrote a book called “Radical Candor”, which talks about this balance of how you can give feedback in a way that people can receive it without falling off the cliff. Either way, I think of it as truth and grace.

You’re going to say it as it is not meaner or harder than it needs to be, but you’re going to save in a way that they can receive it with thoughtfulness and care and wanting to make them better.

When you give feedback that way, people don’t get defensive. They’re not as likely to deflect because they can receive it.

They know you care about them, and you’ve done it in a thoughtful way. So tell the truth and do it with radical candor.

That’s my challenge, and that’s your Monday Mindset.