5 Essential Tips for Giving Constructive Feedback

In today’s world, people often strive to improve their soft skills and become good communicators. But many overlook the important skill of giving feedback. Some people might think that giving feedback is just for managers. It’s not.

Before diving into what makes feedback constructive, let’s straighten out why we want and need it.   

First, feedback improves the quality of work. Second, feedback is crucial for responding promptly to issues that may arise. When a team member underperforms and this affects the project’s implementation, providing constructive feedback can help identify problems and relieve tension in the team.  

Here are five tips on how to give proper feedback to your colleagues:  

1. Know when to give feedback   

While you shouldn’t comment on someone’s clothes or lunch, you should give feedback:   

• When there is a mistake that needs to be fixed or a challenge that needs to be addressed   
• When there is an escalation from a customer in response to someone’s mistake  
• When someone asks you to give feedback on their work, or when a manager asks for your feedback on a colleague’s work. 

Don’t forget to praise people as well. In any sphere, including tech, it is important to respond not only to mistakes but also to achievements to motivate colleagues. But remember that there is a fine line between positive feedback and excessive praise. If you praise people all the time, your words will lose their value, and instead of helping people grow you will just stroke their egos.  

2. Assess actions, not personality  

For your colleagues to develop, you need to recognize their achievements and deliver feedback on specific actions and performance.    

Also, make sure that when you criticize, you remember a colleague’s role. You cannot expect a junior specialist to do what a senior does, and you should not praise a senior specialist for doing what is expected of a junior specialist. If you do this, your current feedback (and future feedback) will not be valued or taken seriously by the recipient. 

3. Be concise  

People can only process so much information. If your feedback gets too long, there is a good chance that people won’t take it all in. If you have a lot to say, break it down into small bits.     

4. Be balanced  

Positive and negative feedback should be balanced. Don’t give 20 seconds of praise and 20 minutes of criticism.    

Feedback should be honest, respectful, and supportive. Excessive praise risks creating complacency, overconfidence, or distrust, while excessive criticism can lead to defensiveness, discouragement, or resentment. Aim for equilibrium. Doing so promotes a culture of constructive and collaborative feedback where people improve without being overwhelmed by either unwarranted praise or harsh criticism.    

5. Structure your feedback   

Many companies with a feedback culture use the following structure:

• Start with what the person is doing well and what they should continue to do.  
• Tell them what they should not be doing and what is currently preventing them from doing their job well.
• End with advice on what they can do to improve and what corrective action is expected of them to resolve the situation. 

After providing any criticism, offer solutions. Feedback that’s just criticism is not constructive. If you do not offer a solution to the problem, your colleague will think that you do not have one. And that will mean that the decisions they made and the actions they took were the best available in the situation.  

Giving feedback is an art, and at Intellias we pay special attention to it. We conduct regular performance appraisals in the form of 360-degree assessments to help employees understand what they are doing well and what they need to improve. We then turn areas for improvement into personal development plan goals. Based on personal development plans, the Professional Development department organizes training events, workshops, and webinars, purchases books, and provides access to online e-learning platforms.