February 23, 2025 • 13 mins
Not All Feedback Is Created Equal
In this episode, Friederike Fabritius shares her insight about the effective ways of giving and receiving feedback. She drives home the importance of intention when it comes to feedback by using real-world examples. Key points include understanding the giver's intentions, delivering bad news quickly and honestly, avoiding the 'feedback sandwich', and ensuring feedback is timely. Friederike introduces the EECC framework (Example, Effect, Change, Continue) as an effective guide for providing better feedback.
00:00 Introduction to Effective Feedback
00:17 When To Ignore Feedback
03:08 Understanding Intentions
04:29 Delivering Negative Feedback Effectively
06:43 The Problem with the Feedback Sandwich
07:47 Why Timing is Important
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to my show.
Today I would like to speak aboutfeedback, both how to give it and how
to receive it in the most effective way.
I recently went to a workshop on speakingskills, not because I have a problem
in that area, but because I stronglybelieve in working on your strengths.
(00:28):
And I saw that someone, I had read hisbooks like 15 years ago on speaking when
I started out as a keynote speaker, andI thought those books were pretty good.
And I saw that thisperson was in the area.
So I thought, Oh, letme attend this workshop.
Let's see if I learnedsomething at this point.
Like, you know, you can alwayswork on your skills, even if
(00:48):
you're really good at something.
I decided to take my oldest daughteralong because, why shouldn't she learn
something about her presentation skills?
And so I thought, no matter what,it's not going to be a waste of time.
And when we showed up, therewere two other attendees, so
we were four people in total.
Like nobody had signedup to this workshop.
(01:10):
It was like in the middle of nowherein a very, horrible little hotel.
And I said to my daughter, Oh,we're going to get the best scoop
because nobody else is here.
So we are going to get all these likesecret tips that nobody else is having.
And she was like, Okay, mom.
I soon realized my mistake.
There was a reason why nobody was there.
Everybody else who was there,was there because they clearly
(01:33):
had issues with public speaking.
And I've been on stages for 15years, so I also had some tips and
feedback for the other participants.
Because when I noticed somethingI can help them as well, but this
was not well received with theperson who was leading the workshop.
So he started giving me negative feedbackon every single thing I was doing.
(01:56):
I decided to ignore it first, butthen my daughter said to me, Mom,
he really tries to destroy you.
Just ignore what he's sayingbecause it's just stupid.
You were better before his feedback.
He was like, don't move your hands.
Don't take up so much space.
You're never making eye contact.
So it was really crazy in my opinion.
(02:17):
It didn't make sense to me.
He was like, alwayshold your hands folded.
If I'm on a stage and I just standthere with my hands folded, yeah,
maybe that will transform my speaking.
I don't think that'show you energize a room.
There were two other participants and theyreally had trouble in that area but he was
like, oh that was excellent and it wasn't.
(02:38):
Whenever I presented it waslike, oh, don't move your hands.
So I realized a few things about feedback
and that inspired me to dotoday's episode on that topic.
Because I think we all receive feedbackevery day and we give feedback every day.
And the question is, when shouldyou accept it and learn from it?
And when should you just ignore it?
(03:00):
In this case, I decided to ignore itbecause, well, success speaks for itself.
And this guy was clearly not having it.
So, the first thing I think is,you need to check your intentions.
If you give feedback out of jealousyor because you feel envy and
you want to put the other persondown, that's not going to help.
(03:21):
So, both as a feedback giver and as afeedback receiver, I think the single most
important thing is, what's the intentionof the person giving the feedback?
Because in my example in that workshop,it was very clear that it came from a
sense of envy and he felt threatenedby my presence in his workshop.
And so he did whatever hecould to ruin my self esteem.
(03:44):
Which obviously he didn't succeed,but he really tried very hard.
So when you feel that somebody doesn'thave your best intentions at heart,
that's when you should stop listening.
Also when you give feedback and it comesfrom a place of jealousy or envy, stop it.
It's not good energy.
So I think before you takeon everybody's feedback, ask
yourself one single question (04:08):
what intention does this person have?
Does this person have mybest interests at heart?
And when the answer is no, thenI think you should feel free to
really ignore that feedback becauseit's not going to make you better.
It's going to make you worse.
Right?
So it's as simple as that.
(04:30):
The second thing is, I once did aworkshop for a client where they had to
fire a lot of people, they had to reallyreduce headcount, and they were training
people in delivering negative messages.
like big town hall meetings orindividual conversations where you
would tell people that the futureisn't so bright and that some people
(04:51):
will have to go and things like that.
As a manager, of course, noteverything is always going well.
So you have to know howto deliver bad news.
And the number one advice Igave people was to get the
message out fast and be honest.
So don't spend 30 minutes chitchatting about the weather and
(05:12):
doing small talk and then you'relike, by the way, you're fired.
Nothing destroys trust as quicklyas when you deliver bad and
critical feedback the wrong way.
I think you can earn a lot of trust inhow you do it, but you can also lose
a lot of trust in a couple of seconds.
So, if you have something negativeto say, something critical to say, be
(05:37):
honest and get it out as fast as you can.
When the police rings at your door todeliver a death message, they're not
going to sit you down for half an hourand discuss politics or something.
They're going to sit youdown and deliver the news.
And that's what you should do whenyou have something critical to say.
Don't sugarcoat it.
(05:58):
Don't delay it, don't weave itin with a lot of other things.
Just get it out, be honest,be transparent, be concise,
be clear, be candid.
So if you have bad news, get themout of the way right away, and don't
package them into some weird combinationwith small talk and unclear things.
(06:21):
You have to be pretty clear whenyou deliver something negative,
otherwise you're just deluding theother person and they can feel it.
So whenever there's a negative message,get it out quickly, transparently,
candidly, openly, honestly, all of that.
And as quick and as concise as you can be.
(06:43):
Which brings me to my third point,the beloved feedback sandwich.
A feedback sandwich is if yousay something positive, then you
package in the negative news, andthen you say something positive
again to make the spoonful of sugarthat makes the medicine go down.
That's not a good idea because peopleperceive it as dishonest and manipulative.
(07:06):
I think if you have something negativeto say, it's not a good idea to package
it into a bunch of positive stuff.
Just be clear, it's not theend of the world usually.
Don't try to do this feedbacksandwich because people have
seen it coming so many times.
So when people start like (07:21):
I like how you do this, but could you improve this?
And oh, and I also like this.
It's just not very honest.
I believe in honesty.
I think people can sense it.
So whenever you have somethingcritical or negative to deliver, I
think it's good to start with that.
I think it's good to be candid and tonot weave it into some weird sandwich.
(07:43):
People can see through thatand it only destroys trust.
Another mistake that peoplemake is that they don't deliver
feedback in a timely manner.
The best moment to give feedback is asclosely to the incident as possible.
You don't want to be the person whocomes after half a year and says, Oh,
half a year ago when you said this andthat, that really hurt my feelings.
(08:07):
Nothing destroys trustquicker than delayed feedback.
So when you hold on to something forweeks or months and then you come out
with it, people will think like, Oh,why didn't she say something right away?
Right?
So if you have something tosay, do so in a timely manner.
(08:27):
Don't drag it out because if youdo so half a year later, it will
make people wonder what else you'rethinking about and not saying.
Deliver your feedback timely alsobecause from a brain perspective,
we learn best when we're in themoment and not half a year later.
Here's why feedback issuch a critical topic.
(08:49):
We have a reward center in the brainthat lights up when something positive
happens, and we have a threat center thatactivates when negative things happen.
And the problem with feedback isthat it has the potential to really
activate people's threat circuit.
That doesn't mean that you should stayaway from critical feedback, but what it
(09:12):
means is that you need to be aware of thefact that there needs to be a balance.
If all you do all day long is to shootnegative feedback at people, you should
be asking yourself if that person isin the correct role to start with.
For example, if I review something thatsomeone has written for me and I have
to do a million corrections, then I'mmore wondering, okay, something is wrong
(09:35):
with this document in the first place.
Like, this is just not quality, and so Ihave to deal with the root cause of this.
A few corrections here and there aregreat, but when you just find yourself
giving critical feedback from morningto evening because that person doesn't
get anything right, then you may wantto think about working with someone else
(09:56):
because it's just not going to work.
So if you find that you don't havethat magical balance where there's
more reward than threat, becausethat's what our brains seek, we
want more reward than threats.
We have a negativity bias.
We can't handle threats all day long.
If you find that you have an employeeor somebody in your team where all
you can give all the time is negativefeedback, something is wrong in your
(10:20):
relationship and you should fix that.
Maybe that person is in the wrong role.
Maybe you need somebody who candeliver better quality work.
But, something is off whenyou find yourself delivering
negative messages all day long.
There needs to be a certain balancebetween threats and rewards, and you
should not be having to deliver negativefeedback from morning to evening.
(10:42):
The brain seeks for a five to one ratio,so it's usually good when you have five
times more positive than negative ones.
Some people or some research evenpins towards a 20 to 1 ratio.
When you find that balance beingoff, it tells you something.
Not that you should sugarcoateverything, but that something
fundamental in your relationshipis not going the way it should be.
(11:07):
As a final offering, I would like togive you a simple feedback framework
that goes a long way, and it's EECC.
Example, Effect, Change, Continue.
So if you give somebody feedback, youcould say, Oh, yesterday when you didn't
say hello to me, that's the example.
(11:27):
The effect was that I feltlike you didn't like me.
Then continue would be if the personshould continue to not say hello to you.
And the change would be like, how aboutyou greet me or you tell me what's wrong.
So this way you've been specific.
So you first give an example,then you tell that person the
impact, the effect that had on you.
And then you either give someadvice on how to continue if it
(11:50):
was something positive or how tochange the behavior if it wasn't.
It's a very simple framework; itworks every single time, I would say.
Feedback really tapsinto our social brain.
As humans, we are wired to besocial, and that's why feedback
is such a sensitive topic.
So I would like you to be mindful ofthose tips and so I'm going to recap them.
(12:15):
The first thing is intentions matter,so check your intentions before
you give feedback and check thefeedback giver's intention if you're
on the receiving end of feedback.
The second thing is bad messages.
If you have something bad to say,do it quickly, do it honestly, get
it over with, and don't weave itinto, which is my third point, some
(12:35):
kind of weird feedback sandwich.
You also want to give feedback in atimely manner and not with too much delay.
And last but not least, the EECCframework will go a long way
in delivering good feedback.
Have a great day.
See you soon.
Bye.
Hello and welcome to my show.
Today I would like to speak aboutfeedback, both how to give it and how
to receive it in the most effective way.
I recently went to a workshop on speakingskills, not because I have a problem
in that area, but because I stronglybelieve in working on your strengths.
(00:28):
And I saw that someone, I had read hisbooks like 15 years ago on speaking when
I started out as a keynote speaker, andI thought those books were pretty good.
And I saw that thisperson was in the area.
So I thought, Oh, letme attend this workshop.
Let's see if I learnedsomething at this point.
Like, you know, you can alwayswork on your skills, even if
(00:48):
you're really good at something.
I decided to take my oldest daughteralong because, why shouldn't she learn
something about her presentation skills?
And so I thought, no matter what,it's not going to be a waste of time.
And when we showed up, therewere two other attendees, so
we were four people in total.
Like nobody had signedup to this workshop.
(01:10):
It was like in the middle of nowherein a very, horrible little hotel.
And I said to my daughter, Oh,we're going to get the best scoop
because nobody else is here.
So we are going to get all these likesecret tips that nobody else is having.
And she was like, Okay, mom.
I soon realized my mistake.
There was a reason why nobody was there.
Everybody else who was there,was there because they clearly
(01:33):
had issues with public speaking.
And I've been on stages for 15years, so I also had some tips and
feedback for the other participants.
Because when I noticed somethingI can help them as well, but this
was not well received with theperson who was leading the workshop.
So he started giving me negative feedbackon every single thing I was doing.
(01:56):
I decided to ignore it first, butthen my daughter said to me, Mom,
he really tries to destroy you.
Just ignore what he's sayingbecause it's just stupid.
You were better before his feedback.
He was like, don't move your hands.
Don't take up so much space.
You're never making eye contact.
So it was really crazy in my opinion.
(02:17):
It didn't make sense to me.
He was like, alwayshold your hands folded.
If I'm on a stage and I just standthere with my hands folded, yeah,
maybe that will transform my speaking.
I don't think that'show you energize a room.
There were two other participants and theyreally had trouble in that area but he was
like, oh that was excellent and it wasn't.
(02:38):
Whenever I presented it waslike, oh, don't move your hands.
So I realized a few things about feedback
and that inspired me to dotoday's episode on that topic.
Because I think we all receive feedbackevery day and we give feedback every day.
And the question is, when shouldyou accept it and learn from it?
And when should you just ignore it?
(03:00):
In this case, I decided to ignore itbecause, well, success speaks for itself.
And this guy was clearly not having it.
So, the first thing I think is,you need to check your intentions.
If you give feedback out of jealousyor because you feel envy and
you want to put the other persondown, that's not going to help.
(03:21):
So, both as a feedback giver and as afeedback receiver, I think the single most
important thing is, what's the intentionof the person giving the feedback?
Because in my example in that workshop,it was very clear that it came from a
sense of envy and he felt threatenedby my presence in his workshop.
And so he did whatever hecould to ruin my self esteem.
(03:44):
Which obviously he didn't succeed,but he really tried very hard.
So when you feel that somebody doesn'thave your best intentions at heart,
that's when you should stop listening.
Also when you give feedback and it comesfrom a place of jealousy or envy, stop it.
It's not good energy.
So I think before you takeon everybody's feedback, ask
yourself one single question (04:08):
what intention does this person have?
Does this person have mybest interests at heart?
And when the answer is no, thenI think you should feel free to
really ignore that feedback becauseit's not going to make you better.
It's going to make you worse.
Right?
So it's as simple as that.
(04:30):
The second thing is, I once did aworkshop for a client where they had to
fire a lot of people, they had to reallyreduce headcount, and they were training
people in delivering negative messages.
like big town hall meetings orindividual conversations where you
would tell people that the futureisn't so bright and that some people
(04:51):
will have to go and things like that.
As a manager, of course, noteverything is always going well.
So you have to know howto deliver bad news.
And the number one advice Igave people was to get the
message out fast and be honest.
So don't spend 30 minutes chitchatting about the weather and
(05:12):
doing small talk and then you'relike, by the way, you're fired.
Nothing destroys trust as quicklyas when you deliver bad and
critical feedback the wrong way.
I think you can earn a lot of trust inhow you do it, but you can also lose
a lot of trust in a couple of seconds.
So, if you have something negativeto say, something critical to say, be
(05:37):
honest and get it out as fast as you can.
When the police rings at your door todeliver a death message, they're not
going to sit you down for half an hourand discuss politics or something.
They're going to sit youdown and deliver the news.
And that's what you should do whenyou have something critical to say.
Don't sugarcoat it.
(05:58):
Don't delay it, don't weave itin with a lot of other things.
Just get it out, be honest,be transparent, be concise,
be clear, be candid.
So if you have bad news, get themout of the way right away, and don't
package them into some weird combinationwith small talk and unclear things.
(06:21):
You have to be pretty clear whenyou deliver something negative,
otherwise you're just deluding theother person and they can feel it.
So whenever there's a negative message,get it out quickly, transparently,
candidly, openly, honestly, all of that.
And as quick and as concise as you can be.
(06:43):
Which brings me to my third point,the beloved feedback sandwich.
A feedback sandwich is if yousay something positive, then you
package in the negative news, andthen you say something positive
again to make the spoonful of sugarthat makes the medicine go down.
That's not a good idea because peopleperceive it as dishonest and manipulative.
(07:06):
I think if you have something negativeto say, it's not a good idea to package
it into a bunch of positive stuff.
Just be clear, it's not theend of the world usually.
Don't try to do this feedbacksandwich because people have
seen it coming so many times.
So when people start like (07:21):
I like how you do this, but could you improve this?
And oh, and I also like this.
It's just not very honest.
I believe in honesty.
I think people can sense it.
So whenever you have somethingcritical or negative to deliver, I
think it's good to start with that.
I think it's good to be candid and tonot weave it into some weird sandwich.
(07:43):
People can see through thatand it only destroys trust.
Another mistake that peoplemake is that they don't deliver
feedback in a timely manner.
The best moment to give feedback is asclosely to the incident as possible.
You don't want to be the person whocomes after half a year and says, Oh,
half a year ago when you said this andthat, that really hurt my feelings.
(08:07):
Nothing destroys trustquicker than delayed feedback.
So when you hold on to something forweeks or months and then you come out
with it, people will think like, Oh,why didn't she say something right away?
Right?
So if you have something tosay, do so in a timely manner.
(08:27):
Don't drag it out because if youdo so half a year later, it will
make people wonder what else you'rethinking about and not saying.
Deliver your feedback timely alsobecause from a brain perspective,
we learn best when we're in themoment and not half a year later.
Here's why feedback issuch a critical topic.
(08:49):
We have a reward center in the brainthat lights up when something positive
happens, and we have a threat center thatactivates when negative things happen.
And the problem with feedback isthat it has the potential to really
activate people's threat circuit.
That doesn't mean that you should stayaway from critical feedback, but what it
(09:12):
means is that you need to be aware of thefact that there needs to be a balance.
If all you do all day long is to shootnegative feedback at people, you should
be asking yourself if that person isin the correct role to start with.
For example, if I review something thatsomeone has written for me and I have
to do a million corrections, then I'mmore wondering, okay, something is wrong
(09:35):
with this document in the first place.
Like, this is just not quality, and so Ihave to deal with the root cause of this.
A few corrections here and there aregreat, but when you just find yourself
giving critical feedback from morningto evening because that person doesn't
get anything right, then you may wantto think about working with someone else
(09:56):
because it's just not going to work.
So if you find that you don't havethat magical balance where there's
more reward than threat, becausethat's what our brains seek, we
want more reward than threats.
We have a negativity bias.
We can't handle threats all day long.
If you find that you have an employeeor somebody in your team where all
you can give all the time is negativefeedback, something is wrong in your
(10:20):
relationship and you should fix that.
Maybe that person is in the wrong role.
Maybe you need somebody who candeliver better quality work.
But, something is off whenyou find yourself delivering
negative messages all day long.
There needs to be a certain balancebetween threats and rewards, and you
should not be having to deliver negativefeedback from morning to evening.
(10:42):
The brain seeks for a five to one ratio,so it's usually good when you have five
times more positive than negative ones.
Some people or some research evenpins towards a 20 to 1 ratio.
When you find that balance beingoff, it tells you something.
Not that you should sugarcoateverything, but that something
fundamental in your relationshipis not going the way it should be.
(11:07):
As a final offering, I would like togive you a simple feedback framework
that goes a long way, and it's EECC.
Example, Effect, Change, Continue.
So if you give somebody feedback, youcould say, Oh, yesterday when you didn't
say hello to me, that's the example.
(11:27):
The effect was that I feltlike you didn't like me.
Then continue would be if the personshould continue to not say hello to you.
And the change would be like, how aboutyou greet me or you tell me what's wrong.
So this way you've been specific.
So you first give an example,then you tell that person the
impact, the effect that had on you.
And then you either give someadvice on how to continue if it
(11:50):
was something positive or how tochange the behavior if it wasn't.
It's a very simple framework; itworks every single time, I would say.
Feedback really tapsinto our social brain.
As humans, we are wired to besocial, and that's why feedback
is such a sensitive topic.
So I would like you to be mindful ofthose tips and so I'm going to recap them.
(12:15):
The first thing is intentions matter,so check your intentions before
you give feedback and check thefeedback giver's intention if you're
on the receiving end of feedback.
The second thing is bad messages.
If you have something bad to say,do it quickly, do it honestly, get
it over with, and don't weave itinto, which is my third point, some
(12:35):
kind of weird feedback sandwich.
You also want to give feedback in atimely manner and not with too much delay.
And last but not least, the EECCframework will go a long way
in delivering good feedback.
Have a great day.
See you soon.
Bye.
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