You will be able to give feedback using situation, behaviour and impact, followed by a question.
Farhan, the operations executive from lesson 1.3, Know what your reader needs before you write, has a problem with a colleague. Every morning his team plans the warehouse schedule from the booking list that Kumar in customer service sends. It's supposed to arrive by 9am. For three weeks it has come closer to 11. Farhan has finally decided to say something, and the sentence forming in his head is "Kumar, you're always late with the list, and it's really unprofessional."
He could say that. Kumar would probably get defensive, point out that he's handling twice the calls since a colleague left, and the conversation would end with both of them annoyed and the list still late. The problem with Farhan's sentence isn't that it's harsh. It's that it describes Kumar, when what Farhan needs to change is something Kumar does.
The Center for Creative Leadership, a leadership training organisation, teaches a simple structure for feedback called situation, behaviour, impact, usually shortened to SBI. You describe when and where it happened, what the person did, and what effect it had. That's all. No labels, no guesses about why.
Here is Farhan's feedback in that shape:
"Kumar, can I talk to you about the morning booking list? Over the last three weeks it's been reaching us closer to 11 than 9, and because we plan the warehouse schedule from it, the forklift team has been starting the first loads late. Twice we've missed the noon truck to the client in Tuas."
The situation is the morning list over three weeks, the behaviour is the list arriving near 11 instead of 9, and the impact is late loading and two missed trucks. Kumar can't really argue with any of that, since he could check every part of it himself, and none of it says anything about his character.
Keep the situation specific. "Last Tuesday's client call" or "the booking list over the last three weeks" works. "In general" or "always" doesn't, because the other person will immediately think of the exceptions.
The hardest part of SBI is describing behaviour. Most of us jump straight from what we saw to what we concluded, and say the conclusion. A useful test: could a camera have recorded it?
A camera could record "you joined the client call ten minutes late", but there's no footage of "you're unreliable". In the same way, it could capture you replying "noted" without answering the question in my email, while "you don't care about this project" exists only in the speaker's head. Labels like unreliable, careless, unprofessional or negative are your interpretation, and the person will defend themselves against the label instead of hearing what happened.
Here are a few rewrites:
"You're so disorganised" becomes "The slides for Thursday's pitch arrived at 11pm the night before."
"You were rude to the client" becomes "When the client asked about the delay, you said 'that's not my department' and moved on."
"You don't pull your weight" becomes "In the last two sprints, three of your five tasks moved to the next sprint."
The rewrites are more specific and, oddly, often easier to say. You're no longer accusing anyone of anything. You're describing something both of you saw.
The impact is the effect on you, the team, the client or the work, and it's the part that makes feedback worth giving, because it tells the person why the behaviour matters to anyone.
State it as a fact. "Twice we missed the noon truck" is a fact. "You've made us look bad to the client" is an accusation dressed as impact. "I had to stay until 9pm to redo the slides" is a fact about you. "You don't respect my time" is a claim about what's in their head.
Impact on you counts too. "When the plan changed without a message, I spent two hours on a version we no longer needed" is fair and honest. Keep it calm. A level voice and specific facts carry more weight than visible frustration.
SBI finishes with a question. Once you've described the impact, stop talking and ask something open:
"What's been happening on your side?"
Then listen properly, because the other person often knows something you don't. Here's how Farhan's conversation went:
"Honestly, since Jamie left I'm covering the morning calls alone, and the list only gets finalised after the last overnight booking comes in."
"Ah. I didn't know you were on your own. Would it help if you sent what you have at 9, and a short update once the late bookings are in?"
"Yes, that's easy. I can do that."
The question turned a complaint into a shared problem with a fix neither of them would have found alone. If Farhan had opened with "you're unprofessional", he'd never have heard about Jamie.
If the person gets defensive anyway, don't repeat your point louder. Go back to the facts and the question: "I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm trying to work out how we get the trucks out on time."
Think of a time in the last month when a colleague's work affected yours: a late handover, a missing reply, a meeting that ran over because they arrived unprepared. Before you write anything, check each part against the tests in this lesson. Could a camera record the behaviour? Is the impact something you could show with a fact? And what do you genuinely not know about their side of it, which your question could find out?
Write situation, behaviour, impact feedback for one real case where a colleague's work affected yours, ending with an open question.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).