Situation, Behaviour, Impact - SBI Feedback

Dan North gave a presentation at QCon on "Making a Sandwich: Effective Feedback Techniques" which you can watch here: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/feedback-models-techniques/

I found the parts around the "SBI model" (Situation, Behaviour, Impact) triggered me to reflect on how I give/seek feedback. In short, the model breaks down effective feedback into 3 steps:

1. Situation - specify a real incident that happened, e.g. "when we talked with Alfred on Wednesday..."
2. Behaviour - state a fact, e.g. "you spoke across me multiple times..."
3. Impact - describe how it affected you, e.g. "I felt that I my opinions were being ignored"

For steps 1 and 2, the rule of thumb I follow is that I can only comment on "things that are observable on a video tape". So saying something like: "they don't respect my opinion" wouldn't count, but "when I described my strategy, they rolled their eyes" is valid.

Step 3 is what I find most interesting and uncomfortable. The model is pushing me to focus on how I was affected, which I feel is very self centred. This brings up an uncomfortable truth: when I am giving feedback I am an attempting to control the other person. For me it boils down to:

• Positive feedback: "...and that helped me avoid some pain - keep it up"
• Negative feedback: "...and that caused me some pain - please stop"

I feel I can give the most effective feedback when I have something to gain.  Flipping this around and looking at how I seek feedback, if I really want to improve myself then I should be finding those that have something to gain from my change in behaviour.

Curiously enough, this isn't always going to be my mentors, who I traditionally turn to for feedback. Taking the SBI model to heart, I can get effective feedback from people that I impact. If I'm not impacting the person I'm talking to, I'm unlikely to get effective feedback.

My conclusion of all of this is that I can get the most effective feedback from people that I impact the most: i.e. those that are highly dependent on me.

Time to start teaching my kids about SBI... "Last night you gave me a popsicle and read me a story, that made me feel like I love you 3000"