A tactical tip for writing better feedback
#21 - 02.07.21
Brother -
When you were a freshman in college, I was completing my first year at Uber. We were back home for the holidays, and it was year-end review time. Like most people, I procrastinated until the last moment. I valued playing beer pong with you on our kitchen table rather than do any of my reviews over the break.
Finally, we needed to drive you back to campus, and I had to catch a flight back to the Middle East. As we embarked on the 4-hour car ride to Madison, I told myself I’d at least finish my review for my manager. Easy, right?
Wrong. It was agonizing. I would pour over each word, often rewriting the same thing over and over. Mom patiently listened as I asked her opinion on every sentence as she tried to help me see the bigger picture. By the end of the car ride, I had hardly completed any of the review.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten better at writing reviews and giving feedback. That said, I still don’t look forward to it. It takes a lot of energy to do well. Both reinforcing strong behaviors, and even more difficult, delivering constructive feedback in a thoughtful and actionable way.
A couple of years after that car ride, I received some of the toughest feedback of my life. Ironically, it was in the same review cycle that I was promoted. My manager wanted to help me see a blind spot - and boy did he put a magnifying glass on it. More importantly, he structured his feedback to me in a way that made it easy to follow and understand. This structure is something I’ve adopted and still use to this day for my employees.
The goal of this note is to share the structure with you. In addition to helping make your feedback more thoughtful and actionable - I also hope it is easier to write, saving you time.
The structure is simple. Choose 2-3 positive items to reinforce, and 2-3 negatives items for awareness. We have a nomenclature of calling the positive ones “T”s and the negative’s “B”s - but feel free to call this whatever you want.
For each “T” or “B”, create four sections with a few bullets in each. The sections consist of the What, Why, Examples, and some suggested Actions at the end. To help add some color, I’ll share an example “T” from my manager that year.
What:
Focus and speed of execution
Why this is important:
Uber continues to be a place where execution and a hands-on attitude is very valued. I have never seen such an impressive ramp-up of a new team leader and building an entire team from scratch with such quality and speed.
The focus and speed you had in building your team are now being translated into deliverables with high impact and high stakes.
Being an anchor in terms of focus to myself and the entire leadership team is highly valued and something we can use more of in general.
Examples:
Hired 100% of your leadership team
Ramped up the team to XX+ members
Delivered very high impact projects (XXX, XXX, XXX, XXX) with excellent expectation setting
How to improve/double down:
Ensure this focus and speed scales with your team
Now the T’s are easy - the B’s are less so. I’ll share my biggest “B” in a future letter as it’s a more complicated topic to unpack. In the meantime,
Let me leave you with a quote and question.
“In a world where information is abundant and easy to access, the real advantage is knowing where to focus.”
-James Clear
How long do your reviews take?
Enjoy the dance,
Nate