Peter Sorgenfrei breaks down feedback as a two-way conversation, not a lecture. When giving it, start by asking what the other person thinks went wrong. When receiving it, treat it as a problem with the task, not an attack on you, then diagnose whether it was effort, skill, or time.
Giving and receiving feedback is often something people struggle with. And so I thought I'd share a few tips on how you can be good at giving feedback and actually also get better at receiving feedback. It's very often that when we receive something that's supposed to be feedback, we perceive it as criticism. So separating ourselves from that is going to be important. But let's start. With the person giving the feedback. So how can you give good feedback? The way I do it, or used to do it a lot when I had a bunch of people working with me, is I would sit somebody down and I'd say, I'd like to talk to you about this topic. I want us to together sort of talk about how it went and what we think went well and what we think didn't go so well. And I can start if you want me to, or you can, you can share your sort of experience. And sometimes people will grab that and they will share their experience and they'll start saying something along the lines of, well, you know, I think it went pretty okay, but here and here and here, I didn't really do as well as I thought I would have done, or I kind of failed. Or essentially they start telling you about the areas that they themselves feel more insecure about than others. And if those are the same areas that you have kind of identified and that's where you want to give feedback, then you go into those, right? Then you go say, okay, yes, actually, you know, I agree on this point. I think this didn't go as well as you might have imagined or you didn't do as well as we had hoped. Why do you think that is? Or what was needed for you to succeed? So you're essentially saying, I think you did this or that wrong. You help them try to find a path themselves to what can be improved for the next go-around. If they do not offer up areas of improvement, they say, well, actually, Peter, you can, you can go first. Then you'd say, okay, so we did this thing and I actually think overall it went okay. But there's a couple of areas where I think we could do better next time around. One of those areas is in how you, for example, reported back the midterm results to me or sort of The dialogue that we had. On my side, I may not have been as open and as available to you as you've needed. But I also feel like you perhaps sometimes didn't want to come with me because the project wasn't going as well as you had hoped. Is there something to that? Right. So the thing I'm doing here is I'm essentially acknowledging that there's 2 people in this equation, me and the other person, and I have a part in why things may not have gone as well. And so we can talk about it and we can both improve. So I think a lot of time the trick to feedback is it's not one-sided. If we have a relationship in work, at work, then whatever happens with you is something that's also happening with me or because of me. Right. So feedback is not like, Susan, you did this wrong. That's wrong. This one, Susan. It's more like Susan. You and I together weren't able to have the results that we were hoping for. So that's, that's one way to give more feedback that I think motivates teams to get them to do better in the future. And then on the receiving side, whenever you're receiving feedback, if the person giving it to you is not doing it this way and doing it maybe in a way that feels more accusatory, like, hey, Peter, that's just not good enough. Then it's very difficult not to become defensive. But a moment where you kind of take a mental beat and you say to yourself, all right, is it me, Peter, the person, or is it the task that wasn't carried out? Well, it was probably the task. It's probably not personal, personal, right? Of course it's me, but it's about the thing that I was supposed to do. And when a person says that, then let me reflect on and say, why couldn't I do that? Was I lazy? I am sometimes and kind of skipped some corners. Maybe. Okay, then I'll acknowledge that saying, you know what, boss, you're right. I actually, I didn't give it my all. I'm sorry. I'll do better next time. Was it because I didn't have the skills? Well, then it's like, I know, boss, but I actually didn't know how to do it and I couldn't figure out a way to do it. But I'd like to learn how to do it. So what do we Do to get there? Was it because I didn't have the time? Then it's like, you know what? I was, I was pressed for time. I should have earlier come to you and said, I cannot accomplish this task. So trying to identify the reason for why something happened rather than thinking it's about you as an individual, but it's about the factors that affect it, will help you get better at receiving feedback. So yeah, so that was a little bit about feedback, how you can do it to motivate your teams and how you can be better at receiving it potentially. If you want me to talk about anything else like that in the one-to-one relationship with a boss or a colleague, just let me know. I'd be happy to record future videos on any topics that are of your interest.
