The Art of Feedback

A practical guide to improve your ability to give and receive feedback at work, with your friends or at home. The underlying principles, ground rules, tips and fun illustrations are based on 25+ years of experiential trainings with organizations, teams and individuals all over the World. A must read for modern leaders.

Feedback is the lifeblood of organizations, and fundamental to all human interactions. It is a key competence at the root of so many others: leadership, teamwork, communication, decision-making, influence, motivation and conflict management. It is paramount to the success of current organizational trends like Agile Working or Teal Culture.

A common fallacy is to think of feedback only as a tool for performance enhancement, thus missing its fundamental role in creating emotional bonds and nurturing relationships.

Feedback has to do with human beings, and is thus, an art form. Many factors play into this delicate, and yet powerful communication tool. With just a few words, you may drag someone down into their own negative self-image, deliver a life-changing insight, produce a long lasting misunderstanding, or establish a very special connection.

The book is not an in-depth treatise about this vast subject. Nor does it provide a standard operating procedure (SOP) for it. It is a digest of best practices observed in the field, with empirical deductions about the underlying principles. It intends to spark reflections about your own skills, and guide you with practical steps towards your next level of feedback. Like a good recipe, it may inspire you to try out something different.