This article is a short excerpt from our recent webinar, Three things every leader should know: Practical insights to overcome the COVID retention crisis, presented by Rob Luke of Allen Leigh Consulting. You can watch the full recording here.

Here’s the difference between giving feedback that will get pushed back on and giving feedback that is likely to be well received. It’s called Situation, Behaviour, Impact. And then we’ve added Expectations. The situation is the context as to what is happening. Why are we talking about this feedback? The more you can actually use trends, the better. For instance: “The last ten times on our one-on-ones you were late.” I like to address specific patterns, and I like to come with data. Otherwise, it’s natural for the recipient to shrug it off, “Oh, I was late this one time.” Then you as the manager might have a hard time arguing with that. But if it’s six times, that’s a different story.

The behaviour is actually the specific action that you were talking about. It’s the action and not the person. It’s not, “You are always tardy.” Those are fighting words that just draw the person into a fight or flight response. So the situation provides context, sets the story. The behaviour is the behaviours you’ve observed. They might be right or they might be wrong. In all feedback we have biases, and it is important to recognize that. The impact is, “I’m not sure you were aware of this, but this is how it was perceived.” It might be, “You providing me the presentation five minutes before I have to give it impacts us. I’m stumbling and we’re not going to get the financing we need.” Then you pause. Allow the person to reflect or to talk. Then you end it with the expectations you have going forward. Clarify where you would like to go next.

Here’s an example.

I want to talk to you about the last meeting. You know, you discussed the marketing ideas. I liked your question about asking the social media agency to take on the tracking. There was a point in the meeting when Susan was talking, and you were on your phone.

You can see, it wasn’t described as, “There’s a point where you were distracted.” It was the behaviour itself. The situation and then here is the behaviour. Now here’s how powerful starting with the context and the behaviours actually is. I can now say, as the impact, “I’m not sure if you realize this but it came across as uninterested and kind of rude.” Because the set up with the situation and behaviour is not personal or blaming, it depersonalizes the feedback and allows us to look at the problem at hand. I can’t actually say to the person, “You were rude on that meeting.” But by setting up the situation and behaviour in this way, we make room to specify the impact. Then we create space to consider what happened, this is the pause. Now the person can consider the impact, that someone was hurt. We can then move to: “Even if the topic doesn’t impact you and you need to check your phone, excuse yourself for a few moments and then come back.” So really, when we’re trying to talk about the feedback, we want to be able to think about it as the Situation, Behaviour, and Impact.

Want to learn more practical management tips, especially for mid-level managers? Check out the full webinar recording!

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