The 5 ‘A’s to Giving Critical Feedback

Summary

• I've learned that not giving feedback was the root of many early issues in my business; I was too focused on being liked.
• Top talent craves feedback; they want to grow and not be left in the dark about their performance.
• Fast feedback loops within your company can greatly accelerate its speed and success.
• Without giving and receiving feedback, I can't fully understand the state of my company or make informed decisions.
• I recommend the "Five A's" framework for feedback, credited to Matt Mercury, for a structured feedback process.
• First "A" – Ask for feedback. I value direct questions like "If you were CEO, what would you do?" and "What are you afraid to tell me?" to open up a dialogue.
• Second "A" – Acknowledge the feedback by repeating it back to ensure understanding.
• Third "A" – Appreciate the feedback. Thank them to reinforce the behavior and make them more likely to offer feedback again.
• Fourth "A" – Accept or educate. If the feedback doesn't fit due to a lack of context, explain the reasons to educate the team member.
• Fifth "A" – Act on the feedback. Make a plan to implement changes based on the feedback received, which shows commitment.
• Encourage your team to normalize feedback. Practice giving feedback in meetings and create a culture where feedback is a comfortable and regular part of operations.

Video

How To Take Action

To grow a business or in personal growth, feedback is super important. Here's what I would suggest implementing:

• Start by asking team members for feedback. Be direct and ask, "What are you afraid to tell me?" It'll show you care and want to improve.
• When you receive feedback, repeat it back to make sure you understand. This is acknowledging the feedback.
• Always thank the person for sharing their thoughts with you. That's appreciating the feedback, and it encourages them to share more in the future.
• If the feedback makes sense, accept it. If it doesn't because they might not know everything, explain why. That's educating when needed.
• Make a plan to act on the feedback. Like setting up a bi-weekly meeting just for exchanging feedback. This shows you're serious.
• Make giving feedback a regular thing. Try practicing in meetings so everyone gets used to it.

This way, you create a team where everyone helps each other grow by sharing how things can be better. And you need to act on feedback too. It's not enough to just listen; change shows you mean it. Remember, good feedback helps everyone do better and makes your business stronger.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Feedback is the number one retention tool for top talent"

– Leila Hormozi

"Top Talent wants feedback; what they don't want is to be in the dark about what you don't like about what they're doing"

– Leila Hormozi

"Feedback is an acceleration tool for the speed of my company"

– Leila Hormozi

"If I don't give my team feedback and if I don't ask for feedback, then I will constantly be in the dark about my company problems"

– Leila Hormozi

"Feedback is a way to have visibility into things because if you give it to somebody, they're going to give it right back to you"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

been doing business which is almost seven years now I can tie everything and every mistake back to really one thing that I didn't do in business and that thing that I didn't do is I didn't give people feedback a lot of the problems that stem in the first few years of business actually come from the leader not giving feedback my first few years in business I was more concerned with being liked than I was being respected and more concerned with being liked than I clearly was making sure that my employees and my teammates were growing because people don't grow without feedback what I often hear is like Layla I'm not the right person to be giving feedback because I feel terrible when I do I get super nervous my hands sweat I can't sleep tonight before like all these things all these emotions the first thought that I have is like oh my gosh I was the same way giving feedback if you do it enough times and if you have a structured way of doing it you practice can actually become something that you like doing rather than saying that you hate and avoid doing so the first belief that I've developed about feedback that's helped me is that feedback is the number one retention tool for top talent top Talent wants feedback what they don't want is to be in the dark about what you don't like about what they're doing and any job that I had I was constantly craving feedback from my boss and if a boss didn't give it to me I felt disappointed I was like I'm not growing I'm not getting invested in they don't even care they're not even paying attention to what I'm doing and then you're like what not paying attention I see all of it I'm just terrified of giving you the feedback and so once I realized that feedback is actually a retention tool for my teammates that was when I was like oh wow the best people on my team want this feedback the second is that I realize that feedback is an acceleration tool for the speed of my company if you look at companies that move quickly the reason that companies move quickly is because they have fast feedback loops within all sectors they have fast Financial feedback loops in terms of like they get their financials quickly they have fast customer feedback loops in terms of the survey and they gather information from their customers quickly and they have asked internal feedback loops which means they constantly are collecting information from their teams and getting feedback quickly as the boss the one that you have to really set the tone for is the internal feedback communication Loops getting feedback constantly the Departments how are they working well together how are you working well with your direct reports if you don't know if people are doing well or not and if they don't know if they're doing well or not then everything's going to move much slower because people are afraid to take the next step because they don't know how well they did in the last step and then the last belief that I had to embody was that if I don't give my team feedback and if I don't ask for feedback then I will constantly be in the dark about my company problems and my company will move slower and be less successful and I will have less concise information for making decisions if I give feedback to other people on my team they're going to give me feedback if I don't give them feedback they won't give me feedback and then I won't know what's going on with my company just because I didn't teach them that we can give each other feedback whatever you want from something their team is obviously what you need to give them feedback is a way to have visibility into things because if you give it to somebody they're going to give it right back to you and that's how you get visibility into departments without sitting in on every meeting without looking at every kpi without looking at every spreadsheet and so it's much easier to run a company if you can actually create a culture of feedback than it is if you don't do that and so one thing I'll say before I go into the framework for giving feedback one person I want to give credit to is actually Matt Mercury I was in a business group and he came out he talked about feedback to us and he gave a framework very similar to what I'm going to share with you and so I've iterated on that and combined it with a couple others that I found through the many books I read and that is what I've used and I've taught my teams so I call this framework the five A's the first a is ask for it so what I would do is I would sit down with my team and I would explain to them that giving negative feedback or critical feedback is cherished it is not punished we're building up that muscle of courage to basically tell someone something that we know they don't want to hear despite the fact that they need to hear it there's two questions that I really like in order to ask people for feedback the first one is if you were CEO of this company what would you do because oftentimes what you're really asking is what do you not like that I'm doing that you would do if you're running this company and I like to gain everyone's perspective so I like asking that question the second question I like to ask is what is something that you're afraid to tell me oftentimes people you say hey can you give me some feedback and they're like oh I don't really have feedback for you they're like how could I be a better boss it's like well they don't know how you'd be a better boss but they do know what they're afraid to tell you A lot of people tend to hesitate because they're afraid to tell you and you're supposed to say listen you're not going to hurt my feelings I just want to know what you're afraid to tell me so that's the first way that you can ask for it now once you've asked for the feedback and they've given you a feedback the second thing you want to do is that you want to acknowledge it you don't want to react to it you want to acknowledge it so you basically want to repeat back to that person what I heard you say so say I asked someone for feedback hey Layla I think that sometimes you're too nice and you don't give enough feedback I would acknowledge it and say okay I think what I heard you say is that I don't give you enough unsugar-coded feedback and that you would like more of that is that correct the third a is to appreciate it so as soon as you acknowledge and they've confirmed that what you just repeated back to them is the feedback that they want to give you then you want to appreciate it you want to say thank you I really appreciate you giving me that feedback you know it's something I didn't know it's something that I've actually been trying to even work on to a certain degree but hearing from you is really helpful because I didn't even know it was showing up in that area of the business and so you want to show them and you want to read reinforce their behavior to give you feedback if you thank someone for doing something that was scary for them then they're much more likely to do it again versus if you just continue on with a conversation I sometimes like to thank someone in a conversation and then I like to Ping them on slack or via email later and tell them again like hey I just want to let you know I really appreciate you doing that the fourth piece is to accept it to see is that people give you feedback and it's abs ENT resonates with you there's also going to be times where someone gives you feedback about some decision you're making in the business but they might not know that there's something else going on and because they lack that context you may not actually accept that feedback there was a time where we were in the middle of selling gym launch an employee came to me and gave me feedback about me not showing up as many meetings little did they know I'm trying to sell the company which means I'm not going to be as involved in the company meetings anymore I couldn't accept the feedback that they were giving me because they didn't have the context that we were selling the company to know why I was doing that so sometimes what you have to do is you have to educate people so that they understand why you don't accept that feedback and then the last piece is to act on it giving feedback and accepting feedback are great but if you don't do anything about it it doesn't really matter you want to inform them of what action you're going to take next so say that someone gives you feedback about how you're not giving them enough feedback right then you're going to say listen here's what I'm going to do after this meeting I'm going to set up time every two weeks just for us to meet just 10 minutes and we're just going to use it as a feedback only session I have five minutes to give you feedback you have five minutes give me feedback does that work for you you actually acted on the thing that they gave you feedback on take this video go over a few times and then tell your team hey I want to start using this I want to normalize feedback in our culture let's watch this video together and then on our next team meeting what we're going to is we're going to go into breakout rooms and we're going to each give each other feedback I do a timer for 15 minutes and then we do switch this is something that I like to do at quarterly meetings it's something I like to do on team monthly meetings if you don't normalize giving feedback and accepting criticism then your culture will never be one of feedback but if you push people to be uncomfortable eventually it will be comfortable to them it will become a normal part of your culture