Providing performance feedback to team members is an essential part of a leader’s task. Effective leaders are focused on the engagement and development of the people in their organization. Feedback is one of the most important tools for evaluation and communication to help individuals understand their performance and to identify and pursue growth and learning opportunities.

What does effective feedback look like? In the book, Coaching for Performance, author John Whitmore identified five levels of feedback. The following description of styles of feedback is adapted from those five levels:

Attacking Feedback – Attacking feedback, rather than addressing performance, is personal criticism. Examples would be, “You are rude!” or “Why can’t you do anything right?” This type of feedback, if we can call it that, violates all of the guidelines for effective feedback.

Judgmental Feedback – While not specifically a personal attack, judgmental feedback still has that feel of degrading the person. An example – “That report was unintelligible and worthless” The recipient doesn’t need a big leap to infer that the statement reflects directly on his/her personhood and value.

Sterile Feedback – “The report was okay, but the conclusions didn’t seem very strong” is an example of sterile feedback. It is not an attack, but it does not provide much value. Unfortunately, this is a common example of what people call feedback in the workplace today because they are afraid to step into a real discussion of performance. It doesn’t clearly identify strengths and weaknesses of performance, nor does it offer much guidance for growth and improvement.

Ownership-Oriented Feedback – Ownership-oriented feedback leaves the ball in the other person’s court. “I looked at the brochure that you just finished. What do you think about it?” Any conversation that follows is not likely to focus on any issues of performance or lead to a quality discussion of opportunities for improvement. It would be an unusual person who would identify weaknesses in his own product and seek a discussion for growth.

Growth-Oriented Feedback – Growth-oriented feedback is, of course, the best type of feedback. The purpose for feedback is not to look at the past but, rather, to use past performance as a basis for defining action for a better future. Quality feedback might sound like this example: “Now that your report is finished, can we look at it together? What is the purpose of the report? How well did you address that purpose? What was the process used to develop the report and would you do anything differently? What comments have you received and would any of them change the way you developed or presented the report, if you were to do it again?” The questions used in the discussion are driven by the leader’s perception of areas for potential growth. Quality-oriented feedback is targeted to find the opportunities for growth and development and the result is an action plan to move forward.

In another article we presented ten guidelines for effective feedback. Effective feedback should include specific examples of behavior, either positive or negative, and the effects that were the results of the behavior. From the discussion of the behavior and the results, a coaching discussion should draw out a plan to build on positive behavior or to correct negative behavior for the future. Feedback builds on an analysis of performance to identify and pursue growth opportunities.

Which style of feedback do you most frequently use? What skills do you need to develop in order to consistently give growth-oriented feedback?