The Feedback Your Managers Think They Are Giving

Ask managers whether they give their people regular feedback and most will say yes. Ask their teams whether they receive it and most will say no. Both groups are being honest. The feedback is leaving the manager and not arriving with the person, and the reason is almost always the same two things: it is too vague, and it comes too late.

A rating at the annual review is not feedback anyone can act on. Neither is a general comment about a trait. Feedback only works when it is attached to a specific, recent moment, and delivered while that moment is still real.

Why given is not received

The gap between feedback given and feedback received opens in predictable places:

• Too general. Feedback about a trait, not a moment, is not actionable.

• Too late. Saved for the review, it has lost the event it refers to.

• Too one-way. A verdict is heard defensively; a conversation is heard openly.

Your managers are not withholding feedback. They are giving it in a form nobody can act on.

Specific, timely, and checked

Closing the gap does not take a new performance system. It takes a few habits, practised until they are automatic:

• Anchor to a moment: in that call, at this point, here is what I saw.

• Deliver it soon, within days, not at the review.

• Make it forward-looking: here is what would change it next time.

• Check it landed: what are you taking from this, rather than, understood?

Not sure whether your managers' feedback actually reaches their teams? The ten-point check below measures the gap between giving and landing.

Yzerly builds the feedback habit into your management layer, so the skill is practised, not just mandated. We find where feedback stops landing, coach the specific-moment behaviour, and prove it in teams that improve between reviews, not only at them.

Written by Resham Tharani, Yzerly.