What if the reason your feedback isn’t landing has nothing to do with what you said?
I was in 7th grade art class. I’d just finished a line drawing — the kind of careful, effortful work that a twelve-year-old actually cares about, even if they’d never admit it.
My teacher looked at it. Then he looked at me.
“You’re not a good artist.”
That was it. No context. No direction. No path forward. Just a verdict delivered by someone with authority and no apparent interest in what came next for me.
I stopped making art.
Not that week. Not dramatically. I just… quietly stopped trying. Because what was the point? The person whose job it was to see potential had looked at mine and found none worth developing.
I’m in my forties now. That moment is still in my brain.
And here’s the thing: most bad feedback doesn’t come from bad people. It comes from people who were never taught a better way.
There’s a framework called Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) that changes everything about how feedback works.
The shift isn’t just structural. It’s relational.
When you lead with situation and behavior, you’re saying: I’m not here to tell you who you are. I’m here to show you what I saw — and open a conversation about what it meant.
That’s the difference between feedback that defends and feedback that develops.
My art teacher had an opinion. What he didn’t have was a framework — or the curiosity to use one.
Your people deserve better than a verdict. Did you give them something real enough to work with?