How to Give Effective Feedback That Leads to Positive Change (7 Key Characteristics)

OVERVIEW: What are the characteristics of effective feedback? How do you give someone feedback that leads to positive change instead of resistance? What are some effective feedback examples? This guide answers these questions and more.

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Coaches stand on the sidelines, peering over their players in movement.

When they see a player doing something suboptimal, they pull their player aside to offer feedback.

The coach’s objective is to improve the performance of their players. Masterful coaches and leaders see things the players on the field can not see.

Outperforming entrepreneurs, chief executives, and managers often have this coaching style of leadership.

Offering effective feedback is a skill. Like all skills, this skill can be learned and continuously improved upon.

This in-depth guide provides insights into how to give effective feedback based on over 25 years of coaching others.

Let’s dive in …

What is Effective Feedback?

Feedback is critical for any healthy learning environment.

Feedback is effective when the recipient can receive the information and adjust his or her behavior accordingly. That is, effective feedback leads to positive change.

Effective feedback derives from a spirit of individual and team improvement.

Effective feedback offered by a coach or manager moves the individual toward the best version of themselves in sports, work, education, and life.

What Effective Feedback is NOT

Effective feedback is not criticism, condemnation, or judgment.

Effective feedback is not a command or an order. “Do it like this!” is a command—not feedback.

Ineffective feedback creates internal resistance within the recipient, leading them to shut down.

With ineffective feedback, there’s no positive change or momentum.

Seven Benefits of Effective Feedback

Providing effective feedback can produce the following benefits:

  1. Increases employee and student effort
  2. Improves work performance
  3. Leads to better organization and team outcomes
  4. Improves the individual’s self-regulation skills (a key attribute of emotional intelligence)
  5. Promotes more loyalty within an organization or team
  6. Supports continuous learning and personal growth
  7. Enhances interpersonal relationships

Effective feedback plays an essential role in any high-functioning organization, team, or learning environment.

effective feedback characteristics

Seven Characteristics of Effective Feedback

Here are seven principles and characteristics to keep in mind when offering feedback to your employees, team members, students, athletes, or children.

Effective feedback is:

  1. Continuous and in the moment
  2. Honest and conversational
  3. Inquisitive instead of forceful
  4. Based on a larger vision
  5. Highly specific, not general
  6. Descriptive, not critical
  7. Mainly focused on building strengths instead of highlighting weaknesses

Now, let’s take a closer look at each characteristic with effective feedback examples:

1: Effective Feedback is Continuous and in the Moment

The most effective feedback is given right at or near the time the issue requiring feedback is raised. This is the case in organizations, on the field, and even with dog training at home.

Most new dog owners, for example, struggle with training their new puppies not to pee and poop in the house. Feedback needs to be in the moment.

So if your puppy poops on the rug during the day and then you come home and reprimand him for his mistake, this is ineffective feedback. No learning or change takes play in this context.

If you don’t catch your pet making the mistake in the moment, you can’t provide effective feedback.

Similarly, if you observe him making a mistake and don’t provide immediate feedback, you’re sending mixed signals, which is also not effective feedback.

The same principle applies to people. Effective feedback needs to be continuous, consistent, and as salient as possible.

2: Effective Feedback is Honest and Conversational

A supportive leader doesn’t talk down, condemn, or berate others. Backhanded comments or passive-aggressive behavior undermine the feedback process.

Instead, effective leaders and communicators are real with others. They acknowledge others as human beings. They communicate with emotional intelligence and a genuine concern for other’s well-being.

As psychologist Daniel Goleman’s research confirms, outperforming leaders have high levels of emotional intelligence.1Daniel Goleman. “What Makes a Leader?” Harvard Business Review, January 2004.

With emotional intelligence comes empathy. Empathy enables a leader to communicate feedback honestly and conversationally with their recipients. They understand the nature of internal resistance to feedback because they have faced this resistance within themselves (see examples below).

3: Effective Feedback is Inquisitive Instead of Forceful

Forcefulness leads to internal resistance. Resistance blocks positive change.

Another characteristic of effective feedback is that it helps the individual arrive at the desired change on their own.

Effective feedback empowers others to make changes by using self-directed questions.

Great leaders guide individuals with questions instead of instructing them through demands. For example:

  • This doesn’t seem to be working. Do you have any ideas on how we can tweak this?
  • If there was a better way to move toward our desired outcome, what might it be?
  • Your team doesn’t seem to be responding to this approach. Do you see another way you can try communicating with them?

Look to have your team members take ownership of their work. Try to help others come to the necessary conclusions on their own.

Whenever possible, allow them to make adjustments and improve their own performance—i.e. self-regulation and self-mastery.

(You’ll find more effective feedback examples with questions in a separate section below.)

4: Effective Feedback Is Based on a Larger Vision

A football or soccer coach provides feedback based on how the play is supposed to run.

A manager offers feedback based on the larger strategic goals and vision of the department or organization.

A music instructor provides feedback based on how the instrument is supposed to sound when expertly played.

An ultimate vision or clear objective is what fuels effective feedback (not a drive for personal gain or power over others).

5: Effective Feedback is Highly Specific, Not General

“Do better!” or “This doesn’t work” is not effective or useful feedback.

Effective feedback is highly specific. For example:

  • Notice the difference when you kick the ball with your head up versus your head down.
  • When you’re communicating with potential clients, be sure to make direct eye contact. Connect with them, human to human.
  • You seemed nervous during that presentation. Next time, take a few deep, slow, steady breaths before you begin. And periodically take deep breaths while you’re presenting. It’s okay to pause occasionally to recollect yourself.

With highly specific feedback, an individual can apply this instruction right away and then evaluate the results for themselves.

Highly specific feedback is essential for learning as it creates a  positive feedback loop that leads to instructive momentum.

Offer specific feedback with clear action steps directed toward achieving an objective or increasing performance.

6: Effective Feedback is Descriptive, Not Critical

Critical or judgmental comments destroy performance as they reduce motivation to learn and improve.

Effective feedback is highly descriptive and points to specific ways for improvement.

Notice how all of the examples in the section above are descriptive.

“You did a good job” or “You did a bad job” may be evaluatory, but it’s not effective feedback.

The role of the leadership coach is to provide others with specific details on how to learn, grow, and improve.

7: Effective Feedback is Mainly Focused on Building Strengths Instead of Highlighting Weaknesses

If your feedback is always focused on the person’s weaknesses, it’s eventually going to frustrate both of you.

As Daniel Coyle points out in The Talent Code, masterful coaches focus on building strengths, not weaknesses.

If someone on the field performs ineffectively, a masterful coach is less likely to provide feedback. However, when someone exhibits great skill or improvement, a masterful coach will highlight this fact for all to hear. Subconsciously, everyone on the field takes note.

So when giving feedback, do your best to work around certain weaknesses and capitalize on the employee or team member’s best qualities and attributes that ultimately serve themselves and the organization/team.

This form of effective feedback anchors in positive associations with making changes and performing at one’s best.

how to give effective feedback

Why Many People Have Resistance to Receiving Feedback

The challenging part about giving feedback is that most individuals have a negative association with receiving feedback.

In their minds, feedback equals criticism. Early childhood conditioning from parents and teachers is usually the primary source of this negative association.

As psychologist Carol Dweck highlights in her 40+ years of research, many individuals have what she calls a fixed mindset.2Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, 2007.

Individuals with a fixed mindset are afraid of looking stupid and appearing incompetent. They don’t like hearing about their flaws.

Said another way, the ego of the average person (especially nowadays) is fragile. It likes to think it’s perfect; it hates hearing that it’s not.

This early childhood conditioning, and in many cases, trauma, can create a massive barrier to giving feedback to others.

In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset, thrive on feedback as a tool for learning and development.

The Four Stages of Learning

Another common reason that individuals have resistance to feedback is that they aren’t aware that learning follows a specific multi-stage process.

The four stages of learning, or competence, are:

  1. Unconscious Incompetence (Ignorance)
  2. Conscious Incompetence (Awareness)
  3. Conscious Competence (Learning)
  4. Unconscious Competence (Mastery)

Individuals who have resistance to genuine feedback most likely don’t understand or appreciate this process.

Again, with a fixed mindset, there’s limited growth because the individual is often mortally afraid of feeling or looking incompetent.

Yet, as you see above, unconscious incompetence (ignorance) is the first stage of learning anything. We simply don’t know what we don’t know.

The role of master coaches and those providing effective feedback is to find ways of guiding individuals around their resistance and through these learning stages, helping them build awareness and ultimately improve.

How to Overcome People’s Resistance to Feedback

The seven characteristics of effective feedback listed above offer numerous ways of overcoming people’s resistance to feedback and change.

How do you offer feedback in a way in which others will be receptive to hearing it?

First, let’s highlight what we don’t want to do. The following ways of communicating increase resistance by raising people’s ego defenses:

  1. Talking down to others
  2. Being forceful, general, or critical
  3. Focusing on people’s weaknesses

In contrast, the following ways of giving feedback reduce resistance and make others more receptive to listening:

  1. Being honest and conversational in your communication style (characteristic #2)
  2. Being inquisitive and asking thought-provoking questions (characteristic #3)
  3. Staying focused on a larger vision (characteristic #4)
  4. Being highly specific and descriptive with your feedback (characteristics #5 and #6)
  5. Focusing mainly on building strengths that lead to positive momentum (characteristic #7)

The more you’re able to apply these characteristics of effective feedback, the more receptive individuals will be to making positive change.

Unleashing the Power of Questions

Let’s go through additional effective feedback examples that utilize characteristic #3 (be inquisitive) because this is a particularly powerful way of overcoming resistance.

Masterful coaches and leaders deploy the artful use of questions as a way of inducing positive change.

When you’re reviewing an employee’s proposal, for example, you might ask:

  • What’s the primary objective of the proposal? (focusing them on the larger vision)
  • Do you feel this proposal has achieved this objective? (self-assessment)
  • Do you see places where the project may be improved?
  • If there was a primary message that needed to be clarified, what might it be?
  • What is the ideal response you’re looking for from this pitch?
  • How else can you help ensure that it will receive that response?

This line of questioning allows the individual to become aware of areas of improvement and take ownership of the changes.

Well-crafted questions circumvent the ego’s defense mechanisms.

Pro Tip: Try this Technique to Help Overcome Resistance to Feedback

Of course, your tone and intention in engaging others is another important factor.

If you come across as arrogant, all-knowing, and impatient, it doesn’t matter how well-crafted your questions are.

If, however, you genuinely want to see the person succeed, he or she will intuit your intention and push for higher performance.

To overcome the feedback barrier: Don’t command, criticize, or dictate. Instead, ask permission.

May I offer a few suggestions on this project?

Criticism raises people’s defense mechanisms; compassion reduces it. Ask questions to bring out the best performance and best qualities in others. If you do, everyone wins.

Feedback Insights from Self-Determination Theory

Finally, it’s useful to keep in mind the insights from self-determination theory that author Dan Pink highlights in his bestseller, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Research shows that money is not our primary driver for motivation. Managers who mainly use the old “carrot and stick” approach to motivation (do this and you’ll get a financial incentive) are rarely outperforming leaders.

Self-determination theory highlights three primary drivers to achieve psychological growth:3Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101860

  1. Purpose (Connection; relatedness)
  2. Autonomy
  3. Mastery (Competence)

Notice how all three of these drivers relate to the characteristics of effective feedback listed above.

When you communicate with others honestly and genuinely, you help them feel connected (so they can better relate to you).

When you are inquisitive with your feedback, you help others have autonomy.

And, when you provide descriptive and specific feedback based on their strengths, you help others foster competence and move toward mastery.

The Art of Giving Effective Feedback

Finally, an effective coach is always available and listens to his players. He owns his feedback.

Yes, you can ask for feedback on your feedback. If your team members trust you, they will feel comfortable giving you honest comments upon your request.

Players listen to great coaches not because they are authority figures, but because they respect their coach and know that the coach has the players and the team’s best interests in mind.

Your employees will welcome your feedback when they feel you genuinely care and want to support them.

All effective communication comes from the heart. Business may be business, but people are still people.

When people know you genuinely care, they will genuinely listen.

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About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource publishing in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrative practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books including Creativity Revealed.

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