The Bad of Good Feedback - Give Complete Feedback Instead

Which would you prefer – “good feedback” or “effective feedback?”

Recently I was asked to give the guest keynote to a global company bringing their team together for the first time since covid.

The session was all about building team bonds and improving how they worked together.

Afterward they asked me to give some “good feedback” on their day (because I present to a lot of these).

It got me thinking about what “good feedback” actually means.

Is it feedback that makes you feel good?

No one would admit this, but often what we might describe as “good feedback” is actually feedback that makes us feel good.

Is it feedback that focuses on the good?

While it’s a good idea to focus on one’s strengths, it is unlikely that this is what most people mean by “good feedback”.

Or is it good feedback, feedback that helps us understand our performance, contextualise it, and improve?

If this is true, then the best “good” feedback gives us the greatest perspective and the most opportunity to develop.

This kind of feedback isn’t about “good” or “bad” but rather about being helpful and generative.

The characteristics of this kind of feedback is that it is of good quality, sufficiently detailed, describes observable behavoiur, questions motives, and is constructive, positive, and encouraging.

It is rounded and comprehensive.

What is really needed is not good feedback, but “complete feedback”. There are two aspects to it:
1. Breadth
2. Tone

At its simplest, complete feedback should cover what you do well, what you don’t do well, and any other aspect that is interesting, curious or novel.

In fact, Edward de Bono came up with just such a technique years ago called simply Plus, Minus, Interesting or PMI.

The purpose of doing this technique is fairly straightforward.
- 'Plus' is behaviour that is working - you want more of that.
- 'Minus' behaviour that is not working as intended - you want less of that.
- 'Interesting' is neither of the above - it helps the receiver orientate themselves to others. It provides context.

Here’s an example of how this would look in practice.

Back to my keynote “Happy Hour Is 9-To-5” (my most popular keynote).

Afterward I undertook my own feedback using PMI.

Plus: Very uplifting session. The positive comments ratio of 6:1 surprised me. They loved how easy the tips were to grasp and apply. Could sense the uplift in energy right away.

Minus: Making the case for optimism can be threatening to some. Provide more detail around when pessimism is helpful, such as in preparing bids, or safety.

Interesting: Trying out new behaviours such as praise can feel uncomfortable at first. Seems to get easier – perhaps do two rounds of the exercise?

So next time you’re thinking about good feedback, perhaps think instead about “complete feedback”, instead.

As for tone - that will have to be the topic of another blog.