Thread by @benskuhn

A lot of managers (including me!) find it hard/scary to give critical feedback.

I realized recently that this is often downstream of a less obvious blindspot—giving people enough *positive* feedback! If you've done that, critical feedback "magically" becomes much less fraught.

Basically, the hard part of giving people critical feedback (at least for me) is worrying that it'll make them feel bad (as opposed to motivated to improve). The biggest thing that makes people feel bad is worrying that their manager thinks they overall suck at their job.

So you need to give positive feedback not just for things that are *surprisingly* awesome (which I think is many managers' default), but frequently enough that the positive:negative ratio accurately reflects how good they are at their job.

(There’s a meme that the optimal positive:critical ratio is 5:1, but that was (a) an observational study (b) about tone in meetings, not feedback (c) unreplicated. Regardless though the best ratio is definitely higher than many people’s default!)

This is also the reason why people recommend the "feedback sandwich" method—say something positive, then say your feedback, then say something else positive.

Also known as the shit sandwich, which accurately describes my feelings about it.

The problem is that a feedback sandwiche makes it obvious that you're Using A Management Technique, so puts people on guard.

("Jones, great presentation you gave today." -> "Uh oh, here comes the shit")

Eventually it will condition people to flinch away from your compliments!

What I'd rather do, as with many such Management Techniques, is to replace them with a habit. Instead of executing a formula, I'd rather become *the kind of person* who *naturally* gives a lot of positive feedback.

So far, I'm building the habit by noticing when I think "yay" to myself about someone, and saying it out loud to them too!

I'm still not good at this yet, because knowing you should have a habit is not the same as having it. But it's been great when I've remembered to do it 🙂

PS: the *main* reason you should give people positive feedback is that it nourishes their soul, not because it makes it easier to critique them!

I was just surprised by how much mgmt advice discusses critical feedback without discussing the praise that's a prerequisite for it.