There’s a moment I remember clearly from early in my management career. I’d prepared what I thought was a really well-structured piece of feedback for someone on my team. I’d thought about the situation, the behaviour, the impact, the whole lot. I delivered it calmly, clearly, and with good intentions. And it landed like a brick through a window.

The person shut down. They nodded politely, said “okay, thanks,” and I could see the shutters come down behind their eyes. Whatever I’d intended to communicate, what they’d received was something entirely different. That gap, between intending to give helpful feedback and having it actually received that way, is enormous. And I’ve learned the hard way, more than once, that closing it takes far more than just getting your words right.

This is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over the years, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion: feedback isn’t really about what you say. It’s about the relationship, the timing, the context, and whether the other person trusts that you’re genuinely trying to help them grow.

Continue and Consider

One framework that really clicked for me when I came across it is Jennifer Dyni’s “Continue and Consider” approach. The idea is beautifully simple: when giving feedback, frame things in terms of what someone should continue doing and what they might consider changing.

What I like about this is that it sidesteps the awkward “feedback sandwich” that most of us have been taught, you know the one, where you wedge criticism between two slices of praise and everyone can taste the filling a mile off. “Continue and Consider” feels more honest. You’re acknowledging what’s working, genuinely, and then opening a conversation about what could be different. The word “consider” does a lot of heavy lifting here. It’s not “stop doing this” or “you need to change.” It’s an invitation to reflect.

Dyni also draws on improv techniques for nonverbal awareness, which I found fascinating when I started reading about it. The idea of attunement, really paying attention to how someone is receiving what you’re saying, in real time, is something I think most of us underestimate. Are they leaning in or pulling back? Have they gone quiet? Are they making eye contact or staring at the desk? These signals tell you whether your feedback is landing or bouncing off, and being attuned to them means you can adjust in the moment rather than ploughing on regardless.

The other piece that stuck with me is the emphasis on always following up. Feedback without follow-up is just a drive-by opinion. If you’ve asked someone to consider changing something, you owe it to them to check back in, not to police compliance, but to show that you meant it, that you’re paying attention, and that you’re invested in their development.

Building a Continuous Feedback Culture

One of the things that shifted my thinking most significantly was Camille Fournier’s framework for continuous feedback. The core idea is straightforward: know your people, observe them closely, and provide lightweight, regular feedback rather than saving everything up for a quarterly or annual review.

This sounds obvious when you write it down, but in practice it’s remarkably hard to do well. When you’re managing a team of engineers and you’re also trying to stay across technical decisions, stakeholder management, hiring, and everything else, it’s easy to let feedback slip into the “I’ll mention it in their next one-to-one” bucket, and then forget.

What I’ve found works is treating feedback like a habit rather than an event. A quick “that was a really clear explanation in the meeting today” after a standup. A Slack message saying “I noticed you handled that disagreement with the product team really well.” These tiny moments of recognition add up. They build a baseline where feedback is just… normal. It’s part of how you work together, not something that only happens when there’s a Problem.

The bonus coaching element is worth calling out too. When you’ve built that rhythm of regular, lightweight feedback, you earn the right to go deeper. You can say “I think there’s an opportunity for you to step up in architecture discussions, want to talk about how?” and it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere. It feels like a natural extension of an ongoing conversation.

The Trust Equation

Vrashabh Irde makes a point that I think is fundamental: feedback is a trust-building exercise. Every time you give someone honest, thoughtful feedback, and every time you receive it gracefully yourself, you’re making a deposit into the trust account of that relationship.

This reframing changed how I think about the whole thing. If feedback builds trust, then avoiding feedback erodes it. When you don’t tell someone that their approach isn’t working, you’re not being kind, you’re being cowardly, and on some level they probably know it. The absence of feedback is its own message, and it usually says “I don’t care enough to have this conversation with you.”

There’s research that backs this up too. People who receive regular positive feedback are significantly more likely to be receptive when critical feedback comes along. It makes intuitive sense, if the only time your manager gives you feedback is when something’s gone wrong, you’re going to associate feedback with bad news. But if you’re regularly hearing what’s going well, the occasional “here’s something to consider” doesn’t trigger the same defensive response.

Praise in Public, Criticism in Private

This is one of those pieces of management advice that’s been around forever, and it’s stuck around because it works. But I think it’s worth unpacking why it works rather than just treating it as a rule.

Public praise does two things. First, it makes the recipient feel valued in front of their peers, which is genuinely motivating for most people. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it signals to the rest of the team what good looks like. When you publicly recognise someone for how they handled a difficult incident, or for the quality of their documentation, you’re setting a standard without having to lecture anyone about it.

Private criticism protects dignity. Full stop. No one, absolutely no one, does their best thinking or their most open listening when they feel humiliated in front of colleagues. I’ve seen managers give critical feedback in team meetings, in open-plan offices, even in group Slack channels, and the damage it does to the relationship is immediate and lasting. Even if the feedback itself is valid, the delivery poisons it.

The private setting also gives you both space to have a real conversation. The person can ask questions, push back, get emotional if they need to, all without an audience. And you can listen properly, which brings me to something I think is massively underrated.

The Power of Silence

When I first started giving feedback as a manager, I talked too much. I’d prepare my points, deliver them, and then keep talking, explaining, justifying, softening, clarifying. I’d fill every silence because silence felt uncomfortable.

It took me a while to realise that silence is one of the most powerful tools you have in a feedback conversation. When you say something important and then stop talking, you’re giving the other person space to process. You’re showing that you value what they have to say in response. You’re resisting the urge to control the narrative and instead letting them be part of it.

This is hard. Genuinely hard. The instinct to fill silence is strong, especially when you’ve just said something that might be difficult to hear. But some of the most productive feedback conversations I’ve had have included long pauses where the other person was clearly thinking, and what they came back with was far more insightful than anything I could have prompted.

Reframing for Positivity

Patrick Pena’s work on reframing resonated with me because it addresses something subtle but important: every communication you have with your team shapes their perspective. Not just the big feedback moments, but the throwaway comments, the tone of your Slack messages, the way you respond when something goes wrong.

If your default mode is to focus on what’s broken, what’s missing, what needs fixing, even with the best intentions, you’re training your team to associate your presence with problems. Reframing doesn’t mean being dishonest or ignoring issues. It means consciously choosing to frame things in terms of opportunity and growth rather than failure and deficit.

“This deployment had issues” becomes “we learned something important about our deployment process.” “You missed the deadline” becomes “let’s look at what got in the way and how we can plan differently next time.” The facts don’t change, but the framing shifts the conversation from blame to learning.

Performance Reviews: Don’t Save It Up

I want to touch briefly on formal performance reviews, because they’re where feedback often goes to die. The single biggest mistake I see, and I’ve made it myself, is treating the annual or bi-annual review as the place where feedback happens. If someone is hearing something for the first time in a performance review, you’ve already failed.

The 360 model, where you gather feedback from peers, reports, and stakeholders, is valuable precisely because it gives you a broader picture than your own observations. But it only works if you’re using it to enrich an ongoing conversation, not to ambush someone with a list of complaints from colleagues they didn’t know had concerns.

When writing reviews, I’ve learned to focus on concrete examples that span the whole review period, not just the last month, which is what your memory will default to if you’re not careful. Keep notes throughout the year. When something notable happens, good or bad, write it down. Your future self will thank you, and more importantly, your report will get a fairer, more accurate review.

And no surprises. Ever. If a performance review contains a surprise, it means the feedback should have been given months ago and wasn’t. That’s on you as the manager, not on them.

Bringing It Together

Feedback that actually lands isn’t about mastering a framework or memorising a script. It’s about building relationships where honest conversation is normal, where people trust your intentions, and where the rhythm of recognition and growth is woven into how you work together every day.

The frameworks help, “Continue and Consider” gives you a structure, continuous feedback gives you a rhythm, and the principles around timing and privacy give you guardrails. But underneath all of it is something simpler: genuine curiosity about the people you work with and a real investment in helping them get better.

I’m still learning how to do this well. After twenty-five years, I still get it wrong sometimes. But I’ve found that the willingness to keep trying, to ask “did that land the way I intended?”, and to adjust when it didn’t, that’s what makes the difference.