Give The Difficult Feedback

Everyone screws up. Progress starts the moment you give voice to the problem and bring it into the light.

Why Giving Feedback Feels Hard

You are probably a new manager. You have never had to tell someone that something about their work is not meeting expectations. Worse, you still carry a few scars from badly delivered feedback in your own career, so you project that pain and pull your punches.

Ask yourself how you would want to hear it if these mistakes were yours. You would want to be told, and told straight; with clarity and a plan to fix it. Feedback feels hard for the giver, yet it is a gift for the receiver.

Why Direct Feedback Matters

Design work is subjective but business outcomes are not. When someone drifts from established patterns, processes, or quality bars; the product suffers, timelines slip, and engineering slows. What you tolerate becomes the culture.

Clear, directional, actionable feedback protects standards, accelerates iteration, and signals that you care about growth more than comfort.

Prime the Conversation

Open with a straight signal:

I need to give you some direct feedback.

One sentence sets expectations and switches the receiver into listening mode. No coffee-chat preamble. Capable people usually sense when they are missing the mark; you are just making the implicit explicit.

Feedback Is Meant to Help

Feedback that is specific, unemotional, and tied to impact is not a personal attack, (though it can still feel that way). Skip vague phrases like "people have noticed." State the impact and probe for the thinking that produced it. Never assume you know the reason. You can never truly improve without understanding the 'why'.

Impact → Behaviour → Curiosity

"Engineering are having to rework more designs recently because they stray from our patterns. Can you walk me through your choices on the latest release? I'd like to understand this from your perspective."

Tailor Feedback to the Behaviour

Pinpoint the category before you respond.

Attitude – how someone shows up in meetings
Effort – pace and volume of output
Quality – whether deliverables meet the bar
Process – alignment with systems and timelines

Whatever the category, run Observation → Impact → Action and finish with a concrete next step.

Make It Part of the Review Cycle

Capture each item and an agreed action in a shared doc. Revisit progress in every one-on-one. Quarterly or biannual reviews then become confirmation, not a surprise.

Focus each one-on-one on one theme until momentum is clear, then move on. You're not looking for perfection, just progress.

Turning Feedback Into Weekly Habits

Feedback sticks when it turns into routine.

Anchor the action step to your weekly one-on-one. "We'll check in next week so keep a note of ways you think you've addressed this and I will as well."

Define what better looks like: a behaviour you can see or a deliverable you can inspect. Remember to make it clear and definitive. "Post an in-progress design in Slack every day this week"

Add a small side quest that lets them practice the new behavior in a low-stakes context or lean in. This is normally something that might be difficult to observe directly.

Normalizing this cadence de-stigmatises feedback. It is just how we work.

Handling Pushback with Safety and Curiosity

Prepare for an emotional response. Reinforce that one-on-ones are a safe space.

Acknowledge – "It seems that this has caught you off guard."
Probe – "Why do you think people have raised this?"
Guide reflection – "How prepared did you feel for last week's meetings?"
Challenge your own assumptions – "Is there something happening that I should be aware of?"

If insight does not emerge, agree on a visible experiment: "We will debrief for five minutes after each meeting for two weeks." A persistent lack of self-awareness—unfortunately—should trigger a formal performance review path.

Translating Feedback From Others

If a stakeholder gives feedback in public, address it right after the meeting: "What do you think they meant by that?" If the feedback comes to you privately, translate it through Observation → Impact → Action before passing it on. Emphasise the business consequence, not the personal critique.

Measuring and Closing the Loop

Most signals are qualitative but you can rate them 1 to 5 to track trend. Check with the original observers: "Have you noticed a change?" Look for new blind spots that surface as the old one shrinks.

Direct feedback is not criticism; it is evidence that you believe improvement is possible and worth your time.