How To Make Your Feedback Magical
Not all feedback is created equal.
Most feedback changes nothing. Most of it is forgotten quickly.
Which is a problem. Because without effective feedback, people will just go right on doing what they’re doing today. The same old stuff.
But when delivered just right, well-timed feedback can be magical.
In his fantastic book The Culture Code, DanielCoyle writes about a form of feedback that researchers have since deemed “magical feedback.” Students in a research study who received this kind of feedback worked harder on revising their work “and their performance improved significantly.” In other words, the feedback wasn’t just heard — it was internalized, acted upon, and used as a catalyst to do better work.
Giving magical feedback is simple. Here’s the phrase they used in the study — the form of feedback that not only made people stop + listen, but redouble their efforts and raise the bar on their work:
“I’m giving you these comments because I have high expectations and I believe you can reach them.”
The power of this simple phrase lies in the 3 separate cues it contains. The cues are, as Dan writes…
(1) You are part of this group.
(2) This group is special; We have high standards here.
(3) I believe you can reach those standards.
When you give feedback in this way, you strike a powerful balance by pointing out the need for improvement while sending an important signal of security. “There’s something great here,” you’re saying. “And with a little more work, I know you can find it.” Research tells us that creating this kind of safety, where mistakes and even do-overs are accepted as part of the path to game-changing work, is the #1 quality that high-performing teams share.
A few years ago, I led an offsite with one of my CEOs and her team. In that offsite, we discussed the right way to call timeout and intervene when they received work that wasn’t quite up to snuff (an important skill for a newer team with an organization that was still coming together). I taught the team about the power of magical feedback. Then I asked them to practice it with each other.
The session was a hit, and I learned later on that the training stuck. For years, the CEO carried this post-it in their notebook as a reminder of what to say when they needed their team’s best effort. (I got a photo of the post-it to prove it.)
Giving feedback is hard. It isn’t easy to tell someone their work needs work. But asking for more from your people when it counts is also an opportunity to remind them of a few important truths. A few inspiring truths. A few magical truths.
You belong.
You are one of us.
And this is what we expect from you.
Want to learn how to give better feedback, lead your team more effectively, and change your business for the better? I wrote a series about how the best leaders do just that. It’s called The Chief Reminding Officer. Click here to read it for free.
