We don’t give people enough feedback. I won’t claim that I was ever very good at this, but here are 2 simple rules that I have tried to apply because I felt they made for better conversations and better performance:

1. Give feedback immediately after an event.
2. Give negative feedback in private.

My anti-rules (don’t do these):

3. Only give balanced (positive and negative) feedback.
4. Use tools and formal feedback systems (sorry, HR).

Quick explanations:

Give feedback immediately after an event. You’re going to forget the specific point you wanted to make, and the moment to capture it will pass. So will your teammate. Don’t wait to craft the perfect feedback or your next 1:1 – give it on the way back from the meeting or as soon as possible.

Give negative feedback in private. This should be fairly obvious: it should take a really crucial issue to call someone out in front of others. The dynamics at play in these situations are always terrible, and most things can wait for a more private moment. Want to make an example out of a situation? Sorry, people still don’t like to be embarrassed publicly.

(Don’t) only give balanced (positive and negative) feedback. I tried this and it just didn’t work for me – it felt forced. Then I realized that the only reason I should be giving feedback to a person is to help them get better in some way. With this outlook there really is no negative feedback – it’s something they probably didn’t want to hear (hence my rule 2 – privacy), and therefore something they probably need to hear. You don’t want to bury that in other feedback. I could be wrong about this one (since I’ve heard balanced feedback advised so many times), but the “feedback sandwich” never felt right to me personally. It also gives you an excuse to wait until you have one thing to say or prepare the message, causing delay.

(Don’t) use tools and formal feedback systems (sorry, HR). My personal opinion is that these put your feedback on a schedule and into an impersonal tool that likely loses the context and often the original intent. If you have feedback for someone that you think will help them improve, go give it to them now and in person (I find email to be better than most tools if you can’t do face-to-face, but beware: context and tone can be really hard to get right).

I’ll close by adding a note about talking to someone’s manager: if you ever feel compelled to give feedback about someone to their manager, ask yourself whether you’ve given it to the person in question first. This can often reveal a non-desirable intent: your goal should be to help the person grow, not impact their performance review rating. As a manager, a good question to ask when someone gives you feedback about someone in your organization is to ask “what did they say when you told them that?”. It’s possible they just aren’t comfortable giving feedback or there is a repeating or serious issue you need to know about, but it’s good to check. Never give negative feedback to a manager in a performance review setting if you haven’t made a good faith effort to inform and help the individual in question.

Good luck!

-Gary