Leadership and People Management: Foundations to Practice · Communication and Feedback
The Situation-Behavior-Impact Feedback Model
Knowing that direct, caring feedback matters is different from knowing exactly how to structure it, and a simple three-part structure keeps feedback specific and actionable rather than vague or personality-focused.
Feedback like 'you need to communicate better' or 'be more proactive' identifies a general area of concern without giving the recipient anything concrete to actually change, since these vague phrases could apply to dozens of different specific behaviors and leave the recipient to guess at what the giver actually observed and wants different going forward.
Key Takeaways
- Vague feedback like 'communicate better' gives no concrete guidance on what to actually change, since it could apply to many different specific behaviors.
- The Situation-Behavior-Impact model structures feedback around the specific context, a factual description of the observed behavior, and its actual impact.
- Describing behavior factually, without inferring motive, is harder to dispute than a claim about someone's internal intention.
- Feedback delivered close in time to the specific event is more useful and accurately remembered than feedback delayed to a later scheduled review.