Making feedback count

Feedback that fuels success: Master the craft of powerful feedback. 

“Thanks. Love your work.”

Doesn’t acknowledgement feel great?

And of course, you want more, and you’re wondering, “What exactly did I do right?”

Would that be the millions of drafts, the long hours, the many conversations, the frequent emails? Was it the color and font size, or the witty humour? Was it the timing? Was it finished at just the right time – not too soon, nor too late?

Or maybe, it wasn’t something you did. What if the work was just so important anyone who completed it would have received the same praise?

Vague feedback is like asking someone to navigate through a cacti maze in the dark. You’ve given them a torch, but no batteries.

Worse, feedback can be affected by bias. Research has shown the frequency, nature and detail of feedback can be heavily influenced by our personal biases.

This article explores how biases affect feedback and provides a super simple framework – SOW or SO What to mitigate the impact of biases. By the end of this article, you’ll know how to give impactful and career-building feedback!

How bias affects feedback

Feedback can be significantly impacted by bias in various ways, often leading to distorted, unfair, or inaccurate assessments. Bias refers to the presence of preconceived notions, prejudices, or inclinations that influence decision-making and judgment.

The feedback giver may perceive and emphasise certain aspects of performance based on their biases, while overlooking or downplaying other aspects. This can result in an incomplete or skewed view of the person’s performance.

Bias can lead to feedback that inaccurately reflects a person’s actual performance, which can result in misguided decisions about promotions, raises, and other opportunities.

If a feedback giver communicates biased expectations to the recipient, it can affect the recipient’s confidence and behaviour, potentially leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy where the person’s performance aligns with the biased feedback.

When bias influences feedback, it can manifest in several ways:

Confirmation Bias: Feedback givers may interpret behaviours and actions in a way that confirms their pre-existing beliefs. They might emphasize instances that align with their biases and disregard contradictory evidence.

Stereotyping: Bias can lead to feedback that is based on stereotypes about certain groups, rather than an individual’s actual performance. This can result in unfair generalizations and inaccurate feedback.

Halo and Horn Effects: The halo effect occurs when a single positive trait or action leads to an overall positive assessment, while the horn effect occurs when a single negative trait or action leads to an overall negative assessment. Bias can amplify the influence of these effects, causing feedback to be overly positive or negative.

Implicit Bias: Sometimes, bias operates on a subconscious level, and feedback givers might not even be aware of their biases. This can make it difficult to provide objective and fair feedback.

Cultural Bias: Cultural differences and misunderstandings can lead to biased feedback. What might be considered positive behaviour in one culture could be seen as negative in another, leading to misinterpretations.

Gender Bias: Stereotypes and societal expectations related to gender can influence how feedback is given. For example, women might receive feedback that focuses more on their interpersonal skills rather than their technical abilities.

Confirmation of Low Expectations: If a feedback giver holds biased low expectations of a person, they might inadvertently provide feedback that aligns with those expectations, hindering the person’s growth and development.

The feedback formula to address biased feedback

Regular and timely feedback is absolutely pointless if your feedback sets the wrong expectations and provides zero direction.

Giving good feedback is surprisingly easy. And it’s not just for people leaders. Anyone can give effective feedback that helps set others up for success.

So what is good feedback?

Think SOW or if you’re not into the seedling reference you can go with “SO What”.

S ⇒ Specific

O ⇒ Objective

W ⇒ What next?

S for Specific

This means being very specific and clear about you’re providing feedback about. When we’re specific, the person receiving the feedback knows exactly what you’re referring to and they’re no longer guessing. This specificity helps them identify precisely what needs improvement or what they are doing well.

Stick to observations. When you share what you noticed, your statement avoids judgement or assumptions. Observations are less open to interpretation and subjective bias, making the feedback more credible. This also helps to avoid misunderstandings and disputes.

And highlight the impact. This helps the person understand the real world consequences of their behaviour or actions.  Just remember to be factual and balanced when stating the consequences. Avoid exaggerating or focusing on the slim or highly improbable outcomes. 

Here’s an example.

Situation: Let’s say you’re providing feedback to a colleague who frequently arrives late to team meetings.

Without specific details: “You’re late.”

With specific details: “You’ve been late joining our last three team meetings by ten minutes. Your lateness to our team meetings has resulted in several negative consequences. For instance, it disrupts the flow of our discussions, making it challenging to maintain focus. Team members who arrive on time have to wait for you, which can be frustrating and demotivating. Additionally, it affects our ability to stay on schedule and cover all the agenda items, leading to incomplete discussions and potentially missed opportunities for decision-making.”

O for Objective standards

Just reflect for a moment about the nature of feedback. You’re mentally comparing what you’ve observed against a standard. This sounds like a reasoned activity that fully engages our conscious mind.

The trouble is – it isn’t.

Your brain will compare what it observed to what it expected – entirely unconsciously. This is really important to understand. Our brains are continually processing millions of pieces of information. This is way too much for our conscious brains. Our unconscious brain actually does the processing and alerts us to things it sees out of the norm. 

If your brain observes an inconsistency that it can’t reason away, it will seek to get your attention. If the behaviour ‘alarms’ your brain, your brain will trigger stress hormones to get your attention. If the behaviour ‘pleases’ your brain, you’ll get wonderful but shortlived reward of a dopamine rush. 

Now when the comparison and standards aren’t clearly defined and well articulated, your brain doesn’t send out any alert asking for the correct standards to be inputted. Your wonderful brain will find what it considers a suitable comparison based on other patterns.

So this is where your brain can unconsciously compare whether a person acted in a way consistent with:

• the way a person like them should, 
• the notions you hold for that role or activity – what do you usually see and what do they normally do, say and act like.

So bias unintentionally creeps in.

Then to complicate matters, our brains can then seek confirmation to affirm our view.

The best way to mitigate bias is to set objective standards in advance. What behaviour or actions were you expecting and wanting? Did they meet expectations, exceed or fall short?

When you don’t have pre-set or clear expectations, you can still give effective feedback, but you need to take extra care to define the standards, and you need to be aware that your view may already be influenced by bias.

W for What next?

So you’ve identified the specific area and the objective standards – the what next is where all the real opportunity lies! This is the part that pushes forward action and change.

Whether you’re giving constructive feedback or positive feedback, adding the what next statement shows that you care about the person’s development.

The ‘what next’ states what action or behaviour you’re expecting in the future. A well crafted ‘what next’:

• encourages the person to reflect on why or how they took their approach. This fosters self-awareness and opens dialogue, which can lead to more effective feedback and growth.
• Invites conversation
• May suggest alternative approaches and
• Offers follow-ups. Effective feedback is an ongoing process, and following up on progress helps ensure that the person continues to develop and build confidence. 

When you’re giving constructive feedback there’s an extra step you need to take so you consider how bias may impact your future evaluations.

We have an in-built bias to seek proof and evidence of any view we’ve gained. If you don’t plan how you’ll see the positives, your brain will actively seek evidence that it was right in the first instance.

The other “brain” factor you need to consider is how you’ll mitigate any “negative” emotion or loss you’ve experienced, and amplify the positive successes.

In ‘O’ for objective standards we mentioned that your brain releases stress hormones to get your attention, and if things are positive you get a short burst of dopamine. Research shows that when we experience a loss or an intensely negative experience, the moment is far more memorable and impactful than a positive event. Once you’ve experienced the hurt, you’re on alert for any signs that it may repeat. That’s a typical brain reaction.

So someone may have a few successes, then a failure, then more successes. On a whole their performance might meet objective standards, but emotionally the weight of the negatives mean you can’t let go of the negative view.

When you’re trying to help someone, this is far from helpful!

Now that you know your brain can’t be trusted to just objectively see their future efforts, take a moment to plan how you will notice this and set your own actions and agreement. What do you want the person to show, so you can see the change and rebuild confidence in their abilities? What support would they like? When will you follow up?  

Examples

Need to see some examples to really know the difference? Take a look below and consider what you might do to make them even better!

Situation:

An strategy analyst has prepared a business case for the Board.

Let’s look at another example.

Situation:

A new change manager has just prepared and presented the business rationale for a major transformation to the business. 

Actions

• Review feedback you gave over the past week (or perhaps opportunities you had but you didn’t use), practice rewriting these ensuring they’re specific, use objective standards and give a clear what next.
• Use the Feedback Checker to review some written feedback to see if any common stereotypes have crept in
• Set some time aside each day specifically to give feedback. Even if you’re planning to tell the person the feedback, write the comment down. This allows you to read over it and possibly identify things you wouldn’t notice if you only said it out loud. 

Learn More

If you found this article interesting, you might also like these articles:

• To say or not to say : understand microaggressions
• Achieve what matters with intentions: Set effective goals
• Unpacking Unconscious Bias to make better decisions: More about biases
• Inclusive language: a starters guide: understand how language can bring everyone along with you, or exclude
• Overcoming the Similar-to-Me Bias: understand how the in-group bias can affect your decisions and feedback