Why “Feedforward” Works Better Than Feedback

Whether you're a frontline manager or a CEO, this tactic makes giving corrective feedback easier and more effective.

Imagine you have an employee—a high-level manager—who just delivered a presentation to the board. Unfortunately, his presentation went terribly wrong. It hit all the wrong notes, and you know it didn’t make a good impression on anyone in the room.

As a leader, what do you do?

This happened to me early in my career as CEO. I took the person aside after the board meeting and went through why the presentation didn’t meet the standard I expected. I didn’t yell or criticize him personally—I just did a post mortem on everything I thought was wrong with his portion of the meeting. Unfortunately, he left that meeting looking shaken. With the benefit of hindsight, I know now that he was probably thinking I was on the verge of firing him.

That wasn’t my intention at all. This was a very capable person and highly valuable to the organization. I just needed him to change up his presentation style. But that day, I gave feedback instead of feedforward and left my employee feeling lost and frustrated.

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