Eliminate ‘But’ From Your Vocabulary When Giving Feedback

You’re great, we love your work…but…

If you ever heard someone build you up only to qualify their praise a microsecond later, you know how devastating it can be. It’s the proverbial kick in the ‘but‘ that negates every nice thing they said the second before.

When it comes to feedback, everything that comes before the but is forgotten or discounted. We tend to think the praise that comes before the but is politeness and what comes after is the harsh truth the person meant to say.

And that’s a shame because receiving feedback is the most important way we learn and improve. When Professor John Hattie of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia reviewed over 500,000 studies on education for his book Visible Learning: Feedback, he found that feedback was the one element that had the highest impact on learning. If you want to give excellent feedback, forget the formula of praise followed by a “but” and try these techniques instead.

Be timely.

For someone to get the most out of feedback, it must be given close to the event. Students need it after a test, and employees need it when a project is done. Annual reviews are nice for bonuses but terrible for timely feedback. Quarterly reviews aren’t much better.

If someone needs to improve, give feedback soon after they complete the project. Studies have shown that those who received immediate feedback versus delayed feedback showed significant increases in performance.

Be specific.

There’s nothing more annoying than vague feedback. Avoid general phrases like ‘your report was good’ or ‘your writing was unclear.’ If you want to see someone repeat the same good results time after time–or eliminate bad results–then you’ll need to be more specific in your feedback.

If you say something, such as “I liked your report because it was concisely expressed with detailed research to back up your points,” you will most likely get more reports that are concise with detailed research. Or if you say, “The introduction needed more explanation of the terms,” you’ll find that the writing will be more explicit next time around.

Be direct.

If you want to cause confusion in your listener, give indirect feedback. Indirect feedback is when you hedge or ask indirect questions. For example, you might hedge like this: “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel your prototype is working correctly.” Or you might ask an indirect question: “Do you think the prototype would look better in green?”

To help people improve, use direct sentences with specific details. Your direct feedback should not just point out a problem, it should explain the problem, and provide instructions for resolving it or avoiding it in the future. For example, “Your prototype rolls for five minutes and then stops. Check the servo motor.” Or, “The red color makes it difficult to see the logo. Find a color with more contrast.”

Avoid the big ‘but.’

When giving feedback, avoid conjunctions such as ‘but,’ ‘however’, or ‘although.’ When you give feedback with a coordinating conjunction like ‘but’ people tend to forget or undervalue everything you say before the ‘but.’

Instead of ‘but,’ try using ‘and’ in your phrase. This will help when giving direct feedback. For example, you can say, “Your infographic had a really creative image and if you organize your data, the image will better support your points.” This way a person comes away feeling good about the parts of their assignment that are working and know how to improve the parts that need work.

Avoid the compliment sandwich.

The idea of the compliment sandwich is to be nice. The person will say one nice thing, then point out a problem to be addressed, and end with another compliment. For example, “We love the design of your marketing newsletters. However, we think you need to proofread more because we have errors. On the other hand, we like how you created new email lists.”

There are many problems with the sandwich. But the worst is that it takes away focus from the issue that needs to be addressed by burying it in the middle. Instead of being nice, connect the feedback to the overall goal. For example, say, “Please spend more time proofreading your next newsletter since people click away from articles when they see errors.”

Avoid focusing on the person.

Don’t make your feedback personal. Instead, focus on the work. When you say things like “You’re talented,” or “You’re bad with grammar” the feedback can become a character trait. When you make it personal, people are more likely to become defensive or feel that the critique is about an innate quality, rather than something that can be fixed or improved.