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1. The Uncommon Art And Science Of Giving Feedback
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© Robert Bacal, 2013. Reproduction in any form is prohibited. For more information about our services and other publications & Help
Cards, call at (613) 764-0241 or email us at: ceo@work911.com
The Power of Feedback
We know that for someone to improve their performance on
ANY task, the learner; an employee, trainee, adult, or child,
needs to know what s/he did well, and didn’t do well. The psy-
chological research is absolutely clear. Feedback is ESSEN-
TIAL for learning. Whether the performance is an artistic one,
an athletic one or job-related, the principles are exactly the
same. They apply equally to adults, and children. Feedback is
the mechanism that provides the person with the information
that is absolutely essential to better learning and performance.
For Managers And Supervisors
It’s a manager’s responsibility to organize and coordinate work
to meet the goals of the work unit. To get work done properly,
managers need to help employees understand what is required of
them, and how to do it, to the satisfaction of the manager. Pro-
viding feedback to employees is a basic and critical part of
managing others. Not only is it a management responsibility,
but effective feedback benefits the employee, manager and or-
ganization through its power to improve performance. Remem-
ber: Feedback is about helping someone learn.
For Trainers And Group Leaders
Most trainers know how important it is that learners receive
feedback, but unfortunately, most trainers know only basic
“rules’ of feedback. Without a better understanding of how feed-
back works, even experienced trainers may be losing out on
“learning efficiency”.
For Parents and “Regular Folks”
In the first five years of life, and often for long after, parents are
the prime teachers of kids. Part of that is giving feedback to help
children learn, from tying shoe laces, to how to interact with
other kids. And of course, since we’re social beings, even regu-
lar folks often help others learn, so understanding feedback can
make the process much more effective, and a lot less “painful”.
That’s because poor feedback can harm both learning and the
motivation to learn. You CAN learn to give feedback to friends,
your spouse and co-workers without pain and discomfort, and in
a helping way.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad advice on giving feedback.
Feedback is NOT a touchy-feely process that always has to fol-
low touchy-feely rules. It’s a mechanism for improving perform-
ance and even to help others become better human beings.
The good news is that you don’t have to have a PhD in Psychol-
ogy to become an effective feedback giver. We’re going to teach
you just enough theory to understand the PRACTICE of giving
effective feedback.
Three Kinds Of Feedback
Feedback serves three major functions:
1. To maintain and encourage EFFORT.
2. To help learners alter what they DO through providing in-
formation about what they need to change to improve per-
formance.
3. To enable learners to take what they’ve learned and per-
form the task when you are not present.
Since there are three functions for feedback, there are also three
different kinds of feedback tied to each purpose. We’re going to
look at the first two feedback forms, before tackling the third
type a bit later.
Emotionally Loaded Feedback (Attaboy, or Motiva-
tional)
Emotionally loaded feedback is intended to encourage EFFORT
and MOTIVATION during learning. Positive emotionally loaded
feedback tells the learner that you are happy with the person and
his performance. Negative emotionally loaded feedback
(criticism) tells the receiver that you are dissatisfied.
Positive feedback can also be described as “Atta boy (or girl)”,
feedback, because it is congratulatory, and recognizes the value
of the effort during learning.
Emotionally loaded feedback’s major function is motivational.
By showing approval, recognizing good performance, and con-
gratulating the learner on effective performance, you encourage
effort and motivation to learn further AND use what they’ve
learned (transfer of training).
Not all affective feedback is positive, though. You can try to
build a fire under the learner by sending the message you are un-
happy with what he or she is doing. Rarely does that work. Why
not?
The more anxious and worried the learner, the less they are able
to process and learn. So, generally, negative affectively loaded
comments don’t work very well, compared to positive ones.
Examples of Positive Affective Feedback
 That’s great, John. You are picking this up very quickly.
 Wow! Pretty soon you’re going to be doing this as if you’ve
been doing it all your life.
 I’m so impressed with how well you handled that tough
situation with that last angry customer.
 You should be proud of yourself about how well you are
progressing.
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2.  You’ve been doing a great job over the last year.
Notice that the feedback is very general here? There’s nothing
wrong with being more specific with motivational type feedback,
and in fact you’ll see later that the more specific informational
feedback (a second type) can also be motivating to learners. Re-
member that we are trying to encourage the person learning to
continue to work at the learning process, and ultimately to be mo-
tivated to use what is learned even after the learning experience is
over (when you aren’t there). Since learning can be frustrating the
motivational component is really important to help the individual,
again, adult, child, employee, student, to persevere.
Examples of Negative Affective Feedback That Often De-
Motivates
 John, you aren’t trying hard enough. So, concentrate.
 You really screwed that up.
 It’s going to take forever to learn this at this rate.
 It looks like you are giving up.
You can see that these are much more likely to discourage the
learner, not to mention increasing frustration and anger. People do
say these kinds of things because THEY get frustrated with the
slow learning process, and/or feel that motivation is improved by
creating fear, and showing disapproval. That works very rarely, as
we pointed out earlier. Fear and anxiety are the enemies of learn-
ing.
Points To Remember About Emotionally Loaded Feed-
back
 Since emotion loaded feedback lacks the details that are
needed to help an employee LEARN specifics, it is best used
in conjunction with “information loaded feedback”. By using
both, you affect both the motivational side, and the “learning
to perform side”.
 Emotion loaded feedback can be general (That’s a great job,
John) or specific; You did a great job dealing with that tough
situation, John). Specific is better.
 Emotion loaded feedback will work when the learner receiv-
ing it perceives the recognition as sincere, informed, and
accurate. If the learner sees it as false, empty, or overused, it
is more likely to damage performance, since the person will
feel manipulated, or even devalued by false feedback.
 Emotion loaded feedback that is negative (e.g. That’s a terri-
ble job) is relatively ineffective in addressing performance
problems. While the hope is that the learner will “get on the
ball”, this kind of criticism is more likely to create resentment
and damage the relationship between feedback giver and
feedback receiver.
 This kind of feedback is more effective at MAINTAINING
learner motivation levels than increasing it. That is, if it is ab-
sent, the employee tends to become discouraged, unappreci-
ated and devalued. To increase learner motivation you need to
use other techniques, like focusing the learner on how it will
feel to be able to accomplish the task, or having the learner
visualize how it will FEEL to succeed.
 Be alert to “praise inflation”.
Information Loaded Feedback
Information loaded feedback is much more specific and detailed. Its
function is to TEACH, so learners develop the skills, knowledge,
and understanding to improve performance. This kind of feedback
helps people learn:
 The specific behaviors and actions that they are doing well
(and thus should continue doing).
 The specific behaviors and actions that they are doing that
could be improved (the things they can change to be better per-
formers).
 The impact of their actions on those around them.
Both are required — knowing what to do and what not to do.
Two Different Situations For Giving Information Loaded
Feedback
There are two different contexts in which we give feedback to build
skills and knowledge. The first is when you are intentionally in-
structing someone, and where the person has consented to be
taught, and is participating in a learning experience on purpose. It
also means you and the learner have some control over the learning
interaction. You can stop the learner in “mid-performance”, so you
can offer specific feedback on what he or she has just done, and
even have the person modify and repeat the action to incorporate
your suggestions.
The second involves a situation where you want to give feedback
on some behaviors that occur in the “world”, and where you aren’t
instructing per se. So, for example, you might observe someone
giving a speech to an audience, and feel you can help the person
improve. It’s after the fact; you can’t very well interrupt to provide
feedback during the presentation, neither can you control anything
during the presentation.
Feedback During Instruction: Techniques and Examples
The best feedback during instruction occurs immediately after the
specific “thing” the person is trying to learn. Imagine a task with a
set of steps, like tying a necktie, or for children tying shoe laces.
Because you can control the “practice”, you break down the task
into the specific steps, show the learner (demonstrate) the overall
process, then walk the person through each step, and have the per-
son do each step in turn.
As the learner tries each step for him/herself, you stop after each
step, and guide the individual until the step can be done on its own.
Then you go on to the next step.
Example #1: OK, John, let’s see you give it a try. Let’s do it to-
gether. Take the tie and make sure the narrower end comes down to
your belly button. Cross the two ends of the tie so they…(1)
John does the step. Good, John. One thing to watch out for is that
you have the lengths just right, or else when you finish the tie, the
narrower end is going to be too long and you will look dorky (2).
You might want to have the wider end come down longer before you
continue. See if you can fix it now.
John fixes it (3). Excellent, that’s perfect because….Now let’s do
© Robert Bacal, 2013. Reproduction in any form is prohibited. For more information about our services and other publications & Help
Cards, call at (613) 764-0241 or email us at: ceo@work911.com
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