Giving feedback is an indispensable tool that great leaders use to grow and develop their teams.

Organisational studies are clear that a strong feedback culture fuels higher employee engagement (Deloitte 2016) and deeper intrinsic motivation (Tagliabue et al 2020), both of which help to increase individual and overall practice performance.

Yet the thought of delivering feedback fills many leaders with dread.

It is seen as either a nuisance or an unnecessary evil and many are unsure about how to deliver meaningful feedback in a way that actually produces lasting change.

As a result, our teams may receive minimal feedback for their efforts and be left in the dark about how to continue developing their skills or, if they do receive feedback, it may be given so poorly that the message delivered is distorted or entirely missed, which over time leads to dissatisfaction and disconnection.

The feedback sandwich

This concept encourages the leader to layer the critical constructive feedback within two pieces of positive praise— praise, constructive, praise.

The idea of the feedback sandwich is that starting and ending with praise is supposed to soften the sting of the feedback.

Sounds great in theory, but it just doesn’t work. Here are two reasons why.

It muddles the message

Our brains are wired to scan for negative or threatening situations in our environment (Alberini 2010), so when you sandwich the constructive feedback between praise, the team member isn’t able to fully absorb either message.

They either walk away remembering only the positive praise and disregarding the constructive feedback (this has happened to you if you’ve found yourself repeating the same feedback multiple times!) or overemphasise the constructive feedback and become overly discouraged and stressed (which can be a precursor to burnout).

It’s self-centred

Using the feedback sandwich makes the leader feel good in the short term but erodes trust in the long term.

You are inadvertently training your team to hear any praise or compliment as a precursor to something negative, even if it isn’t.

Over time, this breeds cynicism and decreases the level of influence in what you say as a leader.

How, then, should we give feedback?

Here are five strategies to quickly boost your effectiveness in delivering feedback to your team.

Focus on one thing at a time

Our feedback should focus solely on either constructive feedback or positive praise as separate conversations.

This way, the team member is able to fully process and appreciate the positive or constructive feedback, which allows the experience to transfer to long-term memory and ultimately shape their growth and development.

A note on positive feedback—this should be delivered frequently (with a 5:1 ratio of positive to constructive feedback; Losada & Heaphy 2004), in a timely manner (as close as possible to when the positive behaviour was observed) and very specifically (highlighting the actions or results of the positive behaviour).

The following four strategies are specific to delivering constructive feedback.

Gregory Goh.

Prepare well

Preparing ahead of time what you are going to say will help you to be concise and specific in the constructive feedback you deliver.

Also, prepare how you will say it. Taking into account the team member’s personality type and style of communication will help what you say land with effectiveness.

Shaping your wording, approach and style to suit your team member will set up the interaction well so that the feedback you deliver is clearly received and understood.

Keep it objective

The constructive feedback should focus on specific actions and behaviours to improve on or change, and not on the individual themselves.

This helps to keep the feedback on track and avoids the impression of a personal attack against the team member, which would quickly shut down any chance of reception or growth.

Another benefit is that the more objective and specific you can be with your feedback, the clearer the picture you paint of the type of person you want your team member to grow into.

To quote Stephen Covey: ‘Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.’

Ask questions

Receiving constructive feedback activates our natural ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response, which can hinder any chance of growth and learning.

To help bypass this defence response, ask questions rather than doing all the talking.

This invites the team member to be an active participant in the discussion, giving them a feeling of control over the situation and therefore space to reflect on the feedback you’ve delivered.

As an example, instead of saying, ‘I want you to improve on retaining your patients’, you could try, ‘Why do you think that your list is so quiet compared to the rest of the team?’

Agree on the next steps and follow up

To conclude the feedback conversation, there must be agreement on what objective actions should happen next.

Ideally, this should be written down somewhere easily accessible to both parties so that the expectations are clear and there is accountability following the conversation.

Lastly, you as the leader need to keep in touch with your team member and follow up on their progress.

This fulfils your mutual accountability and, more importantly, shows your investment in their continued growth in your team.

Used correctly, feedback is an effective tool to boost and unlock your team’s capabilities.

As leaders, we owe it to our team members to deliver feedback, either positive or constructive, in a way that is encouraging, nurturing and inspiring so that in turn they can better serve their patients.

The next time you have constructive feedback to deliver, I encourage you to follow these steps to greatly improve your feedback delivery.

You may just feel less dread about it too.

>> Greg Goh APAM is an experienced physiotherapist with a private practice, Back In Motion, in Mount Barker, South Australia. Greg is also a leadership consultant and is passionate about developing the next generation of leaders within the healthcare industry.