Giving Feedback: Introduction | The Feedback Deck

Episode Transcript

The Giving Feedback tab card states, “Using feedback builds your skills. Giving it well helps others build theirs. It draws on all other feedback skills.” And the suit’s guide is the eagle. They patiently observe from a distance and act with accuracy. Giving great feedback requires that same careful discipline.

So let’s start with the scale of what this suit addresses. Research we cover in these cards found that twenty-one percent of managers avoid giving negative feedback altogether, mostly due to anxiety, and thirty-seven percent avoid giving positive feedback, treating it as optional. Meanwhile, seventeen percent of employees planning to leave their company cite insufficient feedback as their primary reason for going.

Hold those numbers together for a moment. People want to grow, the information that could help them grow exists, and it’s often sitting inside the people around them, and anxiety keeps it locked up. This suit exists to unlock it carefully, skillfully, and with far less suffering for the giver than you might expect.

Notice what the tab card says: giving draws on all other feedback skills. That’s the reason this suit comes last. Everything you’ve built across this deck comes with you into the giver seat. Your experience receiving tells you what it feels like on the other side of the table. Your processing skills help you sift your own observations before sharing them.
Even your seeking matters here because the best givers eventually seek feedback on their feedback. The arc of these ten cards mirrors the eagle. Observe patiently, act with accuracy. The early cards prepare the ground before a single word of, of feedback is spoken, asking permission, because unsolicited feedback can cause defensiveness.

Stating your positive intent with the discernment to know when saying it helps and when it lands as condescension, for example. Anchoring to a specific time, place, and behavior and doing it soon because delayed feedback can compound into the avalanche, something I’ve gotten wrong myself and do not recommend.

The middle cards refine the delivery, leading with what you observed rather than the story in your head about what it meant. Connecting actions to consequences, including the ones that didn’t happen this time. Naming your emotion when the relationship can hold it. Checking your tone because one sigh can outweigh fifty well-chosen words.

And then pausing. Three sentences or fewer, one genuine question, and the discipline to actually wait and be in that silence. The final cards complete the craft, limiting yourself to the one insight that matters most and saving the rest, planning your praise with the same care you plan hard conversations.

And then the card that ends the entire deck, the check-in. Following up because the giving of feedback was never the end. And when you ask, “Was my feedback helpful?” you’ve become a seeker again, and the loop that began five suits ago closes and starts over. That’s the Giving Feedback suit, ten cards for helping others grow, which you may find is where your own growth goes deepest.