Continuous improvement in a safe environment

Feedback is more than a piece of advice or a timely tip, it has a wider lifecycle, with the following characteristics:

• Goal-oriented. The information you provide will only become feedback from the moment that, within its context, it helps the other person to attain a specific goal
• Tangible and transparent. Good feedback not only has a clear goal, but also involves tangible results clearly associated with this goal
• Actionable. Concrete, specific, and useful feedback provides the necessary information so the other person can take a specific action aimed at attaining some goal
• Friendly. A piece of information will only be correctly absorbed if we take into consideration the psychosocial aspects that we’ve been discussing here. No matter how true or  accurate the information you bring to feedback is, it will only be effective if you think about the way you deliver
• Timely. Usually, the closer to the observed fact, the better. Within the deliberate practice mindset, we want to adjust our faulty actions as soon as possible
• Continuous. When you give some feedback meant to support someone else to make the necessary adjustments to her journey, you can follow up her evolution and provide new feedback based on the changes you have noticed in the period. This strengthens the continuous improvement mechanism
• Consistent. As we’ve already seen, feedback comes wrapped in a set of metadata that are read by the receiver. The items you bring to a feedback must therefore be consistent with what you practice yourself and with actions you would take yourself