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How to Give Feedback That Doesn't Crush Souls: A Practitioner's Guide to Not Being a Monster

Three weeks ago, I watched a 45-year-old project manager cry in a toilet cubicle after receiving what his boss called "constructive feedback." The irony wasn't lost on me – there was nothing constructive about telling someone their presentation skills were "amateur hour" in front of the entire leadership team.

I've been training workplace communication for the better part of two decades, and I'll tell you what nobody wants to admit: most managers give feedback like they're performing surgery with a sledgehammer. They think being direct means being brutal, and they confuse honesty with cruelty.

Here's my controversial take that'll probably ruffle some feathers: the problem isn't that we give too little feedback in Australian workplaces. It's that we give spectacularly awful feedback and then wonder why our teams are disengaged.

The Anatomy of Soul-Crushing Feedback

Let me paint you a picture of what passes for feedback in most organisations. Manager sits down with employee, pulls out a performance review form (probably downloaded from HR's intranet), and proceeds to list everything wrong with the person's work over the past six months.

"You need to be more proactive." "Your attention to detail needs improvement." "Communication could be better."

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. That's like telling someone they need to "be healthier" without explaining what that actually means. The employee walks away feeling confused, demoralised, and probably updating their LinkedIn profile.

I once worked with a mining company in Perth where the site supervisor's idea of feedback was to yell, "That's not how we do things here!" across the workshop floor. When I asked him what "things" he was referring to, he couldn't give me a specific answer. He just knew it wasn't right.

The Real Problem With Traditional Feedback

The traditional feedback model operates on a fundamental assumption that's completely wrong: that pointing out problems automatically leads to solutions. It's like assuming that telling someone they're lost will help them find their way home.

Most managers approach feedback as a chance to offload their frustrations rather than genuinely help someone improve. They've been storing up grievances for months, and the feedback session becomes an emotional dumping ground.

I remember working with a marketing director in Brisbane who complained that her team "just didn't get it" when it came to campaign strategy. When I sat in on one of her feedback sessions, she spent twenty-five minutes explaining what was wrong with a campaign and exactly thirty seconds on how to improve it next time.

Her team wasn't stupid – they were starved of actual guidance.

What Actually Works: The Three-Part Formula

After years of watching feedback sessions go sideways, I've developed what I call the SBI-Impact-Next method. It's not revolutionary, but it works because it addresses the human being receiving the feedback, not just the behaviour you want to change.

Situation-Behaviour-Impact: Start with the specific situation, describe the observable behaviour (not your interpretation of it), and explain the impact it had.

Instead of: "Your presentation was all over the place." Try: "In yesterday's client meeting, when you jumped between topics without clear transitions, the client asked for clarification three times, which made us appear unprepared."

Impact on the person: This is where most people stop, but it's actually where the real work begins. You need to understand how that behaviour affects the person themselves, not just the business.

"I imagine that might have been frustrating for you too, especially since you'd clearly put a lot of research into the content."

Next steps: Be specific about what success looks like and offer concrete support.

"For next week's presentation, let's work on creating clear section headers and transition statements. I can review your outline beforehand if that would help."

The Emotional Intelligence Component

Here's something that'll probably annoy the "feedback should be objective" crowd: emotions matter more than you think. Managing difficult conversations training has taught me that people can't process improvement suggestions when they're in fight-or-flight mode.

I learned this the hard way during my early consulting days. I thought being thorough meant covering every single issue in one sitting. Turns out, the human brain can only handle about three pieces of critical feedback before it shuts down completely.

Now I pick my battles. Is the email formatting really worth addressing when someone's struggling with client relationships? Probably not.

The Timing Trap

Most organisations have created this bizarre ritual where feedback only happens during formal review periods. It's like only watering your plants once every six months and wondering why they're dying.

The most effective feedback I've ever seen happens within 48 hours of the relevant situation. Not because managers are trying to be nitpicky, but because both parties can actually remember what happened.

I worked with a construction firm in Melbourne where the foreman started giving what he called "real-time adjustments" instead of waiting for monthly team meetings. Nothing fancy – just pulling someone aside for a two-minute conversation when he noticed something that could be improved.

Their safety incidents dropped by 40% in six months. People weren't making the same mistakes repeatedly because they were getting course corrections immediately.

The Confidence Paradox

Here's something that took me years to figure out: the people who need the most feedback are often the least equipped to handle it. High performers usually have enough self-awareness to course-correct without much input. It's the struggling team members who need the most support but are also most likely to interpret feedback as confirmation that they're failing.

This is where the traditional "feedback sandwich" actually gets it backwards. Starting with something positive, then delivering the criticism, then ending with another positive comment doesn't soften the blow – it just confuses the message.

Instead, I've found it works better to address the confidence issue head-on:

"I want to talk about yesterday's client call because I think you have the potential to be excellent at this, and there are a couple of adjustments that'll help you get there faster."

That's not sugar-coating – it's acknowledging that you're investing in their success.

The Follow-Up That Actually Matters

Most managers deliver feedback and then disappear, leaving the employee to figure out implementation on their own. Then they're surprised when nothing changes.

Effective feedback requires ongoing communication training and check-ins. Not micro-management – actual support.

I suggest the 2-week rule: schedule a brief follow-up conversation two weeks after giving significant feedback. Not to check up on them, but to see how they're tracking with the changes and whether they need any additional resources.

One of my clients, a retail manager in Sydney, started doing five-minute "progress chats" every fortnight. She told me it completely changed how her team received feedback because they knew she was genuinely invested in helping them succeed.

What About the Defensive Ones?

Every manager has at least one team member who responds to feedback with explanations, justifications, and sometimes outright denial. These conversations require a different approach entirely.

The key is to separate the behaviour from the person's character. When someone gets defensive, they're usually protecting their sense of competence or worth.

Instead of pushing harder with more examples, try this: "I can see this is important to you, and I want to understand your perspective. Help me see how you experienced that situation."

Sometimes their defensiveness is actually valuable information. Maybe your feedback was off-base, or maybe there are circumstances you weren't aware of.

I once gave feedback to a usually punctual employee about arriving late to meetings, only to discover she'd been dealing with her elderly father's medical appointments. My feedback wasn't wrong, but it was incomplete.

The Cultural Shift Required

Here's the thing that most organisations miss: giving better feedback isn't just about training managers to use different techniques. It requires a fundamental shift in how we think about human development at work.

We need to stop treating feedback as performance management and start treating it as coaching. Performance management is about measuring and documenting. Coaching is about unlocking potential.

That means accepting that some people will need more support than others, and that's not a failure of the system – it's how human development actually works.

The Australian Context

Working across different industries in Australia, I've noticed we have this cultural tendency to avoid difficult conversations until they become unavoidable. We'll complain about someone's performance to everyone except the person who can actually do something about it.

Then when we finally have the conversation, it comes out as six months of accumulated frustration delivered in one overwhelming session.

I blame our cultural politeness partly. We're so worried about being seen as aggressive or confrontational that we swing too far in the other direction and avoid the conversation entirely.

But here's what I've learned: most people actually want to know how they're going. They want to improve. They just don't want to be made to feel stupid in the process.

Making It Sustainable

The biggest challenge with improving feedback culture isn't the initial training – it's maintaining the new behaviours over time. Most managers revert to old habits within three months unless there's ongoing support.

I recommend starting small. Pick one team member and focus on giving them better feedback for a month. Notice what works and what doesn't. Then gradually expand to the rest of your team.

The goal isn't perfection. It's progress.

And for the love of all that's holy, stop saving up feedback for formal review periods. Your team deserves better than that.

The author has been training workplace communication across Australia for over 15 years and has probably seen every possible way to deliver feedback badly. He's based in Melbourne and still believes most workplace problems can be solved with better conversations.