Updated July 2024.
What is critical feedback?
Critical feedback focuses on behaviour and outcomes, and can be positive or negative. It’s an effective way to give feedback in the workplace as it allows you to communicate in a healthy way.
Critical feedback provides a way to deliver praise and boost confidence and also deliver criticism that doesn’t feel like a personal attack.
Why is critical feedback important?
It is important to receive both positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback helps us understand what we’re doing well and negative feedback (criticism) helps us understand how we can improve.
In a work environment, you’re likely to encourage regular feedback, such as in an official performance management review. You’ll even give feedback during recruitment to people outside of your organisation. This can be from managers to candidates but also the other way around (often called 360 feedback). To work effectively as a team, feedback shouldn’t just come from the top.
Giving and Receiving critical feedback
Giving feedback to a young person
When giving feedback, it’s essential that you’re prepared. Any criticism is likely to knock someone’s confidence, so be careful with your words and think about what you’re going to say beforehand.
Good critical feedback should be:
- About behaviour: critical feedback isn’t a personal attack. This has to be about their behaviour, with achievable actions they can use to improve.
- Timely: try to give feedback as soon as possible so it is fresh in your mind, or make detailed notes about what you want to cover if you can’t. If the situation is particularly heated or emotional, it can be best to wait to give feedback and involve another party, such as your own manager or HR.
- Private: don’t give negative feedback in front of other people or share it with them. If you are going to share good feedback, there is less need for privacy but remember that not everyone will feel comfortable with everyone’s attention on them.
- Using “I” statements: Use “I” statements e.g. “I was upset that you showed up late” instead of “you made me feel upset by turning up late”. Presenting feedback by focusing on how it made you feel makes it easier to hear and less of an attack on the person.
- About 2 issues maximum: it would be very hard on your confidence if you received every piece of negative feedback at once. If you have a lot of criticism to deliver, you need to have a more formal conversation about your concerns. Other feedback should be delivered in small chunks to ensure the individual understands what you’re saying and knows how to improve.
- Specific: when providing criticism, we can very quickly jump to insults or unhelpful comments. Make sure you know what you want to address. Read the 5 steps below that detail how to deliver specific feedback.
5 steps to giving specific feedback in the workplace
- Describe the behaviour: what behaviour are you concerned about?
- Describe your reaction: why are you concerned? (use your “I” statements)
- Explain why you feel this way: why is this behaviour important to improve?
- Show you understand: give the individual a chance to explain why they think this behaviour is happening, and listen.
- Suggest a different way of behaving: have actions to improve at the ready, but give the individual the opportunity to take responsibility and suggest how they can improve. This shows you they understand what you’re concerned about too.
Receiving Feedback as a Manager
When you’re on the receiving end of critical feedback, try to view it as a positive experience, especially if it’s criticism. This is your chance to pause, listen, and think about what you’re currently doing, and what you can do to improve. We’re all still learning and will continue to learn through our life so we can’t expect to do everything perfectly all the time. We all have room to grow.
Try these 3 things when receiving criticism:
- Be open: prepare yourself for receiving feedback and be open to it as a way of learning.
- Listen: take the time to listen to what the person is telling you. It can be really easy to only hear that you are bad at something or did something wrong. Fight the urge to be defensive and jump in to answer. If you feel that the person is wrong, take the time to think about it and then explain why you think they might have misunderstood what really happened.
- Learn from it: ask questions about how you can improve and ask the person giving feedback (or others) what they would have done in that situation.
More: How to take feedback well when you’re sensitive to criticism.
Want to learn more?
Read more about feedback:
- 20 Examples Of Positive Feedback To Give Employees
- How To Give Feedback To Unsuccessful Candidates
- How To Encourage Employee Feedback
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