How to Give Feedback People Can Actually Hear | Simon Sinek + Alex Simon

So FBI, it's just a mnemonic, and it's just a technique to give feedback in a way that other people can hear it and take accountability. That stands for feelings, behavior, and impact. How do I feel? What is the behavior that you perform that made me feel this way? And if the behavior doesn't change, what will be the impact? The feedback you give has to be based on something specific, so general feedback doesn't work, like you're always late to meetings. And even if it is repetitive behavior, you choose the most egregious or the most recent, and you should always prepare your FBI statement before you do it. Should never be done on the fly. So something like, I'm concerned when you came to the meeting late on Thursday. It made the rest of us feel like we were less important to you than anything else you're doing. My fear is that if you continue to come to meetings late, it will have serious implications for morale. And then you shut up and you go into listening mode. If they get defensive or deny it, the reason you've written it down is you can't get flustered or take the bait. You're like, let's talk about that later. Yeah, want to hear your feedback. And you simply repeat the statement and you just let them go through it and you let them solve their own problem, they'll be like, "You know, I should probably just like put it in my schedule that I can set the alarm in the schedule." Go on, what else? "Well, I think that would really help." Okay, I'm really glad you gave me this feedback. Thank you. You know, the best thing about FBI is it works fantastic for positive feedback as well.

It makes positive feedback even more powerful than just saying, "Hey, good job." And it also helps positively reinforce the behaviors that you want to see more of. Vague praise like, "Great job last week." I don't know what I did well. "Great job on this, this, and that." It's like, "Oh great, now I know I can do more of that."