Guide: how to ask for, give, accept and process feedback

My former colleague recently asked me to share a document on how to give feedback. I came up that I had written a lot on this topic: how to work with feedback for performance reviews, how to criticise and highlight problems to get them fixed, and which methods help in this process. I decided to compile all of this into one article, and here it is.

First, I’ll remind you why we do this at all. Then I’ll go into detail on different scenarios: when and how to request feedback, how to share it with others, and how to receive and process feedback. Here and below I’m writing about the direct feedback as it is, given to the other person in words and sentences, in text or out loud.

Why feedback is useful

Reflection helps us improve ourselves and others. We analyse our actions and skills and decide what to change and how to improve. To trigger reflection, it’s worth gathering feedback or sharing it with others.

The main thing that helps in exchanging feedback is respect and care for the companion, and a desire to help and support. This mindset is more important than any mechanical technique. Look for this examples:

“You did a great job, especially considering your current level of experience. Keep trying, and maybe you’ll get it right next time”. At first it looks polite and supportive, but in fact it undermines the effort and suggests a person is inexperienced or incompetent. That what could happen with mechanically good wording but unsuitable mindset.
“Uh, yeah, so your presentation was, like, pretty good, but, um, you, uh, didn’t look at the people. I decided at first, that you were just checking the picture on the screen, huh. No offence. I just wanna say, um, if you could, like, try to look at me and Bob, and the other fellows next time, it might, though it might not of course, make us more engaged.” It looks more clumsy and uncertain but still it is an actionable advice that suggests specific improvement.

Why should I respect and care

In fact, that’s not obvious. It might even be counter0intuitive, as the most obvious option is to try to save as much energy as posiible, not wasting it on such things. Or it could be forgotten, especially when you’re stressed, angry or disappointed by the colleagues’ actions. That happens, it’s fine. First, you should just take your time to chill out the situation. Then, you can use the following statements to get in the right mood. That’s what helps myself.

Here’s the list to remind, why your colleagues deserve to be respected and taken care of, even in tough times:

Your colleagues are also beings of flesh and blood. They experience the same range of emotions, challenges, and aspirations as you do. They might be stressed, pressured, scared, downed. Or just do their best but in different understanding of what is best. Showing some empathy can help to overcome these local downturns.
Your collegues have their rights and opportunities to mistake, as well as you do. Of course, that means that they should deal with consequences of mistakes made and learn something out of those cases. But the right to mistake is natural, and it’s better focus on future: how to avoid all the same mistakes, how to fix the root causes — and on the personality who triggered the failure.
Your colleagues got hired and still work in the same company as you. Most probably, that means that they are good enough professionals to run business with. Of course, there might be some exceptions, like that the company’s in deep crisis and you’re there to and it. Or when you’ve made a mistake accepting offer. Or there are particular people who don’t suit their positions. But I believe those are more rare cases.
You and your colleagues are mutually dependant. Each one contributes to the team’s success and the organisation’s goals. The end valuable result likely is a combination of efforts of several people. So, your success depends on others, as well as others’ and company’s success depends on you. I believe cooperation is the best long-term strategy in that context, comparing to rivalry or other options.
You’re playing non zero sum game. Just play this game, as it’s one of the best explanations of what I mean here.
You’re building a community to foster skills. Personally, I wanna be better professional than I was yesterday. My team is the best environment that can help me to achieve that: team with a suitable condition works like a passive buff to my growth. To achieve that condition, it’s mandatory to respect and care of each other.

All that leads to a global profit, like positive work culture, effective communications, reduced anxiety and boosted reputation. That means, you’ll more probably enjoy your work.

This subject is quite psychological and deep. If you feel any problems or misunderstanding here, it’s better to participate in the training or take some in person coaching sessions — where you can give out your concerns and receive some guidance.

Returning to techniques, combined with the mindset they can help you get more out of feedback. Here are some for three situations: when requesting, sharing, and receiving feedback.

How to request feedback

Let’s take a look at the situations where it’s convenient to request feedback. Or to get it even when you didn’t ask:

Submitting and reviewing code. When you submit a request and expect comments. How to conduct a great code review could be a separate article, but generally they are useful because of some feedback provided.
Proposing an idea. When you suggest doing something new or doing something differently at a meeting or in a chat, like during a retrospective. And other participants react to your proposal.
Writing design docs, ADRs, or RFCs. When you explore a problem, the options to solve it, choose and justify the best one, document it, and share it. Or when you comment on someone else’s document.
Presenting a result. When you tell others that you have launched a feature, completed a project, and all that: via a chat message, a recorded video, or live demo. It’s an opportunity to gather likes and discuss what went well or not so well in the process, and what thoughts there are about the outcome.
Leading or speaking at a meeting. Afterwards, you can ask participants what they think of your participation. One-on-one meetings are a special case. This is an individual meeting where you can exchange feedback, not necessarily between an employee and their manager. My article with details.
Reviewing performance. Where exchanging feedback with colleagues: managers, reports, and peers — is an important part of the process itself.

When requesting feedback, it’s useful to get more than just general comments like “how am I doing?” but to ask for opinions on specific things:

What do you think of my code in the last three requests you reviewed? Is there something common that you can point out that I can improve?
How did you find the retrospective last Friday? What could I have done better as a facilitator?
How well did I handle the incident last week? What should I consider from your perspective in the future?

How to share feedback

There is a Netflix method for delivering feedback. I found it in Reed Hastings’ and Erin Meyer’s No Rules Rules. It’s called “Stop, Start, Continue”. They suggest each person in a pair tells their colleague one thing they should start doing, one thing they should stop doing, and one thing they’re doing really well and should keep doing. After that, they switch turns and repeat until they have no points left.

I believe that idea could be more general, with Stop and Start being criticism points, and Continue being a praise point. Here are some recommendations applicable for any feedback:

Aim to assist. Feedback should be given with positive intent. Giving feedback to vent frustration, intentionally hurt the other person. Just be and act friendly.
Suggest an action. Your feedback should focus on what the recipient can do differently. If you can suggest specific options, do so. Wrong feedback on cross-cultural communication would be: “Your presentation is undermining its own messages.” Right feedback: “The way you ask the audience for input results in only Americans participating.” Even better: “If you can find a way to solicit contributions from other nationalities in the room, your presentation will be more powerful.”
Provide details. Abstract feedback is hard to decode and easy to misunderstand. Of course, you can start from the general but don’t forget the specifics: after “everything is good,” specify what exactly you mean. Is it about a week, month, quarter, or year, which process or result, all tasks or just one type, and so on? Specific details about the situation help your recipient to understand the borders same as you.
Be concrete. Clearly explain how a specific behavior change will help the individual from your perspective, their own potential perspective, team’s perspective and company’s perspective. “The way you pick your teeth in meetings with external partners is irritating” is wrong feedback. Right feedback would be: “If you stop picking your teeth in external partner meetings, the partners are more likely to see you as professional, and we’re more likely to build a strong relationship.”
Address issues in time. It’s strange to receive feedback about something that happened long ago. This often leads to confusion, like, “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Ignoring the situation can also be problematic — the person might not realise their actions caused an issue and will likely repeat them. Or not repeat them in case they caused some success. There are different loops of feedback — sometimes the results comes in months, even in years — it’s not long time ago in some context. The idea is, to feedback something as early, as you obtained enough knowledge on the subject.
Add something informal. Even a smiley will do. Just to defuse the situation a bit, if it’s appropriate.

How feedback is exchanged also depends on the trust between you and the other person, the history of your relations. If you’ve been we’ve been through a lot together and value your relationship, even poorly delivered feedback will be understood. Or they won’t be offended by feedback given incorrectly and harshly: “Dude, what’s wrong with you?! You’ve done it million times. C’mon, pull yourself together already”.

Still, in general, it’s not a bad idea to invest more into your feedback, it’s sense and form. It will reduce the likelihood of conflict and help maintain the relationship.

To provide or exchange feedback, you can use the following algorithm:

List the situations you want to discuss. One is enough, but you can batch several. Discuss each one individually.
Define each situation: the facts that occurred, the context, and the boundaries of the discussion.
Ask what the other person thinks about it. How do they see this exact situation? Use open-ended questions like, “How do you feel about it?”
Share your perspective on the situation. Voice possible consequences.
Share your expectations: what you want the person to continue, start, or stop doing.
Ask for their thoughts on the feedback itself. Process their replies and move on to the next situation.

Let’s talk in more detail about how the above points work for praise and criticism and their peculiarities.

How to praise

Why praise is important

I suggest adopting the default of giving a high-five when you see good work. Recognition is a motivator. It may be stronger for some than others, but it still improves the overall atmosphere and makes sharing easier.

Be sincere

If you feel that a compliment is not working or feels forced, don’t give it. It’s normal not always to feel like giving praise. Sometimes it’s hard to understand why something is great, and that’s okay too. If this is one of those cases, it’s okay to skip the high-five. There will be another chance in the future.

Praise publicly

Praising privately is also wonderful. Still, publicity tiggers other people also to praise, say thanks or somehow comment the case. It also shows people what an expected or exceeding expectations behaviour is.

Highlight achievements

It’s how details in praise works. You mention exactly what was good, why, and who was outstanding. Be careful to mention all the participants and their efforts not to disappoint people you’ve missed. Something like that:

Hey!

Our frontend team launched redesigned website and they’ve managed to do it earlier than the last ETA. I wanna congratulate all of us and say special thanks to:
— Max, who designed everything on time and carefully reviewed all the prototypes;
— Alex, who defended the idea to rewrite our template engine and did it;
— Anna, who found problem with ad blockers and static assets so we haven’t messed everything up on the launch;
— Andrew, who negotiated several blockers along the way;

P.S. If I missed someone, please, send me a direct message or mention them in comments so I’ll edit the initial list.

How to criticise

Why criticism is important

If something bothers you, it’s important not to stay silent. If a feature, process, or code isn’t working well, say something about it. Addressing problems is a necessary, although insufficient, step to fixing them.

Not giving constructive criticism can increase the likelihood of learned helplessness. This is when you and those around you become used to a problem and its consequences instead of trying to fix it. Problems accumulate until work becomes unbearable.

Negative feedback can be challenging to accept. Often, the natural response is to defend yourself. To handle this reaction and effectively communicate your thoughts, consider the following strategies.

Criticise targetly

It’s not helpful to stay silent about problems or to complain in private chats:

— These notification emails are useless! I keep getting garbage…
— I agree, how long are we going to suffer this? It’s annoying!

It’s better to find the responsible person — someone who worked on or maintains the task — and address them directly:

Mike, I’m receiving too much emails about my article being liked. I was pleased at first, but now I’m annoyed because I don’t know what to do with this information, and I get five emails a day.

Criticise Privately

Often, feedback is given in a general chat, and this has consequences: responsibility gets blurred, responses take longer, everyone watches a thread that doesn’t concern them, and it demoralises people — they worked hard and had reasons for such results.

It’s more effective to criticise in person with a voice call or a private message. This makes it easier for the other person to accept the criticism and less likely to feel defensive since there’s no other audience, they don’t risk their public reputation nor status.

If you don’t know who to contact, ask your manager or in a most related chat, but in context “who’s responsible for…” or “who’s maintaining …”

It’s not a good idea to write in a chat with 40 people:

Hey analysts, why are the recommendations in the footer so crappy?

It’s better to find out who worked on the recommendations and write to them directly:

Sam, I was told you’re responsible for personalisation. I think there’s in an issue. The recommendations in the footer show the same articles for a month, whatever I read. Moreover, these articles aren’t interesting to me. I doubt anyone clicks on them. What do you think about this? Are there any stats related?

Create an address book

Make a list of contacts for typical issues and share it with colleagues, inviting them to add to it, for example:

Something broke on the site — in the #alerts-prod chat
Someone is harsh in the comments — drop the link in the #moderators chat and tag @admins_duty
Someone wants a partner material — screenshot and contact Sasha in a private message
…

That’ll help to address issues accordingly.

Align with the person

Remind you and the other person they you both are on the same side. On the other — the problems you observe. Also point, that criticism aims to help them improve — and maybe it’s not easy for you either to do it, but it’s the best option you see. If they find it difficult to accept feedback or if it evokes negative emotions, encourage them to express this openly to mutually decide further steps, to take a break or to involve third party.

Define the scope

State the facts you want to discuss: launching a specific feature, meeting a particular deadline. Focus on what specifically bothers you — and communicate this to the other person. The dialogue can then address the reasons. Here the message’s quite vague:

I want to discuss the low level of communication in the engineering team. It’s your responsibility as a leader to train the staff.

Better approach:

I waited two days for a response from John in the private chat, and got a generic reply. I still can’t understand if my problem’s going to be solved. I couldn’t manage to resolve it directly. Here, take look for yourself. What can we do here?

Find out why decisions were made

It’s helpful to understand why something you’re unhappy with was done that way. The author might have had a reason. This can help to build mutual understanding and sometimes lead to constructive suggestions.

— Dear fellows, having median article weight of 20Mb is inappropriate. Fix it immediately.
— Well, we took several approaches and that’s the best result. We have another focus for now.

Better approach:

— I noticed that the usual article weighs 20 MB, here’s the link. It would take 2–3 minutes to load for a user with 3G. And 20% of our traffic is from such networks. Do you know why that happens?
— Yes, it’s the images. We tried compressing JPEGs, but illustrators didn’t like the result: it looked blurry on retina displays.
— Hmm, have you tried converting images to FLAC, creating multiple resized versions, and loading the appropriate one for the device? I saw an article on this with a link to a ready tool, let me find it.

Share context of the problem

Explaining the known consequences and other context allows the other person to define severity. It’s useful to share consequences from four perspectives: for you, for the person, for the team, and for the company. In general, this remains your viewpoint, but three out of four categories can be verified with others. Don’t start with:

— My inbox is constantly flooded with junk, please fix it!
— You can just filter it.

Better describe the problem in details:

— I’ve noticed I’m being overwhelmed with notifications after each new article I release. It takes time to clear my inbox, and I have a strong urge to unsubscribe from everything. I hardly ever check comments more often than twice a day. If I feel like browsing social networks, I’ll check my articles without notifications. I asked Masha, Marina, and Olga — they suffer from this too.
— Thanks, I’ll research it. If that’s a massive problem, we’ll make a daily digest.

Suggest alternatives

Just to make it clear, if you have any proposals seem good enough for you, share them. It’s fine if you don’t have any. But if you do, reveal them. Avoid a commanding tone, try to phrase your statements as requests.

You can explicitly ask for something:

Please let me know if you can’t start reviewing my request by the end of the workday.

Or suggest less directive solutions:

Based on what I know about the situation, I would handle it this way: …

If you have multiple ideas, share them all.

Communicate straightforward and neutrally

Negative emotions complicate understanding and do not help the other person meet you halfway. Avoid words that may sound accusatory. We don’t want to blame someone, it gives no benefits. When assessing someone else’s work, Sarcasm, irony, and ridicule fall into same category can be perceived as questioning their competence.

It’s not good to leave feedback as a rhetorical question too:

Do you really think you’ll finish the work on time?

It’s better to write directly:

You won’t be able to finish the work on time with this scope of tasks. Let me share the screen, I’ll explain.

Though, there’s an option where emotions, even negative, are helpful.

Share your emotions regarding the problem

Talk about your feelings regarding events and facts. This helps the other person put themselves in your shoes and understand you. “I felt uncomfortable when I received 20 comments during that code review. I felt it was unfair and thought my competence was being questioned.” This way, your position and its causes will be clear.

Evaluate facts, not people and their qualities

Personal qualities or other attributes are hard to evaluate. You can call someone a jerk for a particular act, but upon understanding the context, it might have been the best option available. Moreover, facts and their evaluation are less likely to be taken personally, as they do not invade anyone’s boundaries.

Instead of saying, “You’re careless” or even “You code carelessly,” explain the impact of their actions: “Last Wednesday, you pushed a request that passed the pipeline but broke the logic. I had to figure out what changed and roll it back because it blocked the release. I was frustrated because I was responsible for this release and it was the second time in a row this happened.” Then, discuss what occurred and how to prevent it in the future.

Transitioning from your emotions or fact evaluation to qualities should happen only if the other party explicitly requests it or you have their permission.

Give the right to say no

You may not always be fully aware of the other person’s context, and they may not always agree with your solution. In such cases, it’s helpful to acknowledge your limitations and invite dialogue: “I might not know all the details yet, but I would do this. What do you think?”

Use the template…

When it’s hard to word feedback, take time to carefully review the other person’s results. Then, try to use the following points to fill them in with your thoughts.

Highlight strengths: What did you like about what you saw? Mention three to five points. You’ll probably find something.
Only after completing the first point, share what you would like to see improved. Be careful with your wording: Not “this part is bad,” but “this could be improved.” Not “I didn’t like this,” but “it would be great if this could be changed.”
Explain what you would like to see changed. Strengths and areas for improvement should be roughly balanced. If you genuinely liked the work, it’s okay to lean more towards the first point. Be sincere. However, if there are significantly more critical remarks, it can kill recipient’s mood or motivation. Feedback from someone who doesn’t know how to give it might look like this: “I don’t like it. The code is unstructured. It’s hard to read. I don’t understand what it does.” This form of destructive criticism offers no direction for the partner. It remains unclear where to go next. Effective feedback: “Andrew, I appreciate your punctuality. I like that you sent the task for review well in advance. I think if you separate the order payment and email sending blocks into isolated functions and rename variables according to this document (link), it would be great!” This feedback shows the partner their strengths and provides a direction for further work. The person knows what they can rely on and what still needs improvement.

… or even the simple formula

The feedback formula in general looks like: “[Person’s name], when you [describe action], it affects me/my work in this way [describe effect], and I would prefer [describe desired behavior].”

This is a framework to rely on, but your wording may vary.

For example: “Mike, when you speak to me in that tone, I feel tense and unable to focus on our discussion. I would prefer if you took a breath and changed your tone. Only then can I continue our conversation.”

If stuck, involve an arbiter or escalate

There are some situations, where you and your feedback peer just can’t get the common ground. If you just let it down, you’ll mask the conflict — and it will come up later, at an even more unfortunate time.

So don’t be afraid to suggest an arbiter:

Nick, seem’s we’re stuck here. I don’t want to just leave it like this. What do you think, if we’ll call someone to help us? Do you have any candidates?

You can also ask your manager or person’s manager for advice.

How to receive and process feedback

It’s easier not to give feedback than to give it. Therefore, it’s essential to be grateful for it, even if it’s something uncomfortable. So, begin with appreciation. Say “thank you” sincerely.

Prepare yourself for the negative

Negative feedback is harder to accept than positive one. It’s natural to provide a defence or excuse when receiving criticism, or even just to ignore it. We all reflexively seek to protect our egos and reputation. Sometimes criticism even includes an assessment of you as a person. Sometimes, feedback is just incorrect.

Actually, it’s a rare case than someone intends to offend anyone else. When receiving negative feedback, resist this natural reactions and instead ask yourself: “How can I show appreciation for this feedback by listening carefully, considering the message with an open mind, and avoiding becoming defensive or angry?”

You might need to cool down, reread the feedback, and try to find the facts, actions, or events that led to such an assessment. If there are evaluations of you as a person, try to interpret it as an evaluation of actions. Then ask clarifying questions to confirm if your assumptions are correct.

Clarify details

In both positive and negative feedback try to capture info that will help you to better understand the author or to improve yourself:

Request specific examples if something seems abstract: “Could you please tell me in what situation you felt that I didn’t push hard enough in the meeting?”
Understand the impact: This helps determine how critical the remark is. “Got it. Could you please tell me what consequences this led to?”
Ask for suggestions on what and how to do things differently. The other person may not always have proposals, but they might have some ideas, suggestions, or valuable insights.

Decide what to do and communicate your decision

Only recipient decides how to use the feedback: to accept or to discard it. Changing behaviour is not mandatory just because someone said so. You will receive lots of feedback from many people. You are required to listen and consider all feedback provided. You are not required to follow it. Usually, it’s an opinion worth analysis at first.

Both you and the provider must understand that the decision to act on the feedback is entirely up to the recipient. It might be a separate point to talk.

If, as the recipient, you disagree with the feedback, it’s important to say so directly and share your perspective. If you don’t do it, the other person may falsely believe that something in your behaviour will change after their words. If you agree, that’s also something worth sharing.

Instead of a conclusion

Once again, the key to effective feedback is the right attitude and mindset. With them, everything can go well without additional techniques. Without them, even techniques may not help. That’s a main knowledge I gained myself.

In this article I’ve covered not all the known and useful feedback models or algorithms. You can dive deeper into some others.

Also I haven’t covered the indirect feedback. Like when someone’s provide you as an exemplary engineer or you’re systematically not being invited in a meeting — and how to deal with this situations. I’ll just mention that it’s also some kind of a feedback’s possible forms.

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If you want to talk on managing engineering teams or departments, designing systems, or improving your technical product, email me at laidrivm@gmail.com or message me on https://t.me/laidrivm.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-lazarev/.

Peace!