You will rehearse giving and receiving feedback with a partner before using it for real.
Knowing the situation, behaviour, impact structure is one thing. Saying it out loud to a colleague who's frowning back at you is another. Most people who freeze or ramble in a real feedback conversation knew exactly what they wanted to say. They just hadn't said it to a person before.
This exercise is a rehearsal. You and a partner each bring a real feedback situation, practise giving it, practise receiving it, and refine your script until it sounds like you. It takes about 25 minutes. Your partner can be a colleague you trust, a friend, or a classmate on this course.
Each of you picks one real piece of feedback you need to give. It could be to a peer, to someone who reports to you, or to your manager. Choose something with real stakes. Practising on something trivial won't prepare you for the conversation that matters.
Then change the details enough to protect the people involved. Swap names, change the project, move the setting. Your partner needs to understand the situation, not identify anyone. If your partner works in the same company, change more.
Write a draft script using situation, behaviour, impact and a question, as in lesson 7.1, Describe the behaviour, not the person. Keep it under 80 words. Brief your partner in two or three sentences: who they're playing, what they did, and how that person is likely to react.
Here's a worked example. Jun Kai, an account manager at a digital agency in Paya Lebar, needs to give feedback to a designer who keeps missing internal review deadlines. He renames her "Rachel" and moves the setting to a different client. His draft:
"Rachel, about the review for the furniture client yesterday. The designs came in at 4pm instead of 10am. I had two hours to check them before they went out, and I missed a wrong price on the second banner, which the client spotted. What's been making the morning deadline hard?"
His briefing to his partner: "You're a designer, good at the work, a bit stretched. You'll probably say the brief changed late. You'll get slightly defensive."
Sit facing each other, or on video if that's how you'd have the real conversation. The person giving feedback opens the conversation as they would for real, including any "can I share an observation?" opening from lesson 7.3, Give feedback to your peers and your manager. Then deliver the script and ask the question.
Don't read word for word. Glance at the notes if you need to, but try to say it.
The partner's job is to react the way the real person might. That includes some defensiveness. If your partner is too nice, you're practising the easy version. A realistic response might be "the brief changed on Tuesday, what was I supposed to do?" or a long silence, or "okay" said in a tone that means the opposite.
The person giving feedback then has to handle it: stay calm, return to the facts, listen to the explanation and look for a fix together. Let the conversation run for about three minutes.
Here's how Jun Kai's first round went:
"The brief changed on Tuesday afternoon. I was redoing everything."
"I didn't realise. That's on us too. But the client still saw the wrong price, so we need a check somewhere."
"So you're saying it's my fault?"
At that point Jun Kai lost his thread. In the debrief, he and his partner worked out a better response: "No, I'm saying we need a way to catch it. If the brief changes late, could you send me what you have at 10, even if it's not final?"
Swap roles. The partner gives their feedback and you play the receiver, defensiveness included. Playing the receiver is useful in itself, because you feel how each phrase lands. It also gives you practice for lesson 7.4, Take criticism without defending yourself, from the other side.
After each round, spend a few minutes on two questions. What helped the conversation, and what made it harder? Be specific about words. "When you said 'always', I got defensive" is more useful than "it felt a bit harsh."
Then run it again. A second round in each role makes a big difference, because you'll try the fixes you just discussed.
A finished exercise gives you a final feedback script, revised after two rounds, that you'd be comfortable saying to the real person. Jun Kai's final version:
"Rachel, can I share something about the furniture client review yesterday? The designs came in at 4pm instead of 10, so I had two hours to check them, and I missed a wrong price that the client spotted. I know the brief changed on Tuesday, which didn't help. What would make the 10am review workable when briefs change late?"
Compared with his draft, it opens with permission, acknowledges the late brief up front so it doesn't arrive as a defence, and asks a question aimed at a solution. It came from what went wrong in round one. Expect your own final version to look different from your first draft in a similar way, shaped by the moments your partner pushed back.
Run the role-play twice in each role and write a final version of your feedback script.
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