Giving
Feedback

The Giving Feedback tab card states, “Using feedback builds your skills. Giving it well helps others build theirs. It draws on all other feedback skills.” And the suit’s guide is the eagle. They patiently observe from a distance and act with accuracy. Giving great feedback requires that same careful discipline.

So let’s start with the scale of what this suit addresses. Research we cover in these cards found that 21% of managers avoid giving negative feedback altogether, mostly due to anxiety, and 37% avoid giving positive feedback, treating it as optional. Meanwhile, 17% of employees planning to leave their company cite insufficient feedback as their primary reason for going.

Hold those numbers together for a moment. People want to grow, the information that could help them grow exists, and it’s often sitting inside the people around them, and anxiety keeps it locked up. This suit exists to unlock it carefully, skillfully, and with far less suffering for the giver than you might expect.

Notice what the tab card says: giving draws on all other feedback skills. That’s the reason this suit comes last. Everything you’ve built across this deck comes with you into the giver’s seat. Your experience receiving tells you what it feels like on the other side of the table. Your processing skills help you sift your own observations before sharing them. Uh, even your seeking matters here, because the best givers eventually seek feedback on their feedback.

The arc of these 10 cards mirrors the eagle. Observe patiently, act with accuracy. The early cards prepare the ground before a single word of, of feedback is spoken. Asking permission, uh, because unsolicited feedback can cause defensiveness. Stating your positive intent, with the discernment to know when saying it helps and when it lands as condescension, for example. Um, anchoring to a specific time, place, and behavior, and doing it soon, because delayed feedback can compound into the avalanche, something I’ve gotten wrong myself and do not recommend.

Um, the middle cards refine the delivery. Leading with what you observed rather than the story in your head about what it meant. Connecting actions to consequences, including the ones that didn’t happen this time. Uh, naming your emotion when the relationship can hold it. Checking your tone, because one sigh can outweigh 50 well-chosen words. And then pausing. Three sentences or fewer, one genuine question, and the discipline to actually wait and be in that silence.

The final cards complete the craft. Limiting yourself to the one insight that matters most and saving the rest. Uh, planning your praise with the same care you plan hard conversations. And then the card, um, that ends the entire deck, the check-in. Following up, because the giving of feedback was never the end. And when you ask, “Was my feedback helpful?” you’ve become a seeker again, and the loop that began five suits ago closes and starts over.

That’s the Giving Feedback suit. Ten cards for helping others grow, which you may find is where your own growth goes deepest.

The Giving Feedback permission card states, quote, “Unsolicited feedback can cause defensiveness. In a private setting, ask for permission to share it first. This can create a safer environment.” End quote. And the card invites you to use what’s called the opener, which you can do by saying something like, “I have some observations that might help you do X. Are you open to receiving them? If so, is now a good time?”

So, let’s spend a moment unpacking what this card is asking of us. The first card in the Giving Feedback suit begins not with direct advice on how to give feedback, but with a reminder of what it feels like to receive it. That cultivation of empathy, remembering what it’s like to receive hard feedback, uh, isn’t just a nice thing to do or some kind of sentiment. It’s a, it’s a practical tool, because one of the biggest barriers to giving feedback effectively isn’t necessarily the words you use and the skill with which you use those words. It’s anxiety. And when you can remember what it’s like to receive challenging feedback, you can bring a sense of empathy to yourself. And in my experience, that can reduce your anxiety as you move into the conversation.

There’s a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Why Do So Many Managers Avoid Giving Praise?” And it found that 21% of managers admit they avoid giving negative feedback altogether. They just don’t do it. You can probably guess why. Mostly due to the anxiety they feel around doing so. And here’s what makes that even more striking. 37% in that same article said they avoid giving positive feedback as well. They treat it as optional. And honestly, that’s a travesty, because positive feedback is one of the primary ways human beings learn what’s working, and they can double down on it and feel motivated to keep going.

So, we have a significant portion of managers who aren’t giving feedback at all, and the people around them are feeling it. There’s a study from Textio titled Language Bias in Performance Feedback, and it found that 17% of employees planning to leave their current company cited insufficient feedback as their primary reason for going. Primary reason. Think about that combination. Managers are avoiding feedback due to anxiety. Employees are literally walking out the door in part because they never received it.

Asking for permission, the opener on this card, can be one practical way to begin closing that gap. It signals respect. Uh, it gives the receiver a moment to prepare. It might even give you as a giver some time to prepare. And in relationships where you hold more power, uh, as a manager, a senior colleague, a teacher, it brings a bit more balance to what can feel like an ambush, a confrontation. That shift can benefit both people. It can reduce the stress of the giver, and I think it can reduce the defensiveness of the receiver.

So that’s card 01 of the Giving Feedback suit. The next time you have feedback worth sharing, try first bringing to mind how it can feel to receive negative feedback. Feel that empathy, and then try leading with the opener. You may find that simply asking for permission makes the conversation that follows feel less like a confrontation and more like a collaboration, which is actually what it is.

The Giving Feedback intent card states, “State your positive intent. If the receiver assumes you don’t have their best interests in mind, even great feedback may not land well.” And the card invites you to use what’s called the preface. Something like, “I’m sharing this because I believe in what you’re doing, and I think one thing could make it even better.”

Let’s spend a moment with what this card is really asking of us. Feedback givers often assume the receiver already believes they have their best interest in mind. But as we cover throughout the Receiving Feedback suit, receiving can be hard in part because of the many dimensions of fear that can arise. That includes the fear that maybe the giver doesn’t have your best interest in mind at all. And when there’s a significant power difference in the relationship, that fear can escalate into something bigger. Could be the belief that this feedback might mean you’re on the path to getting fired, for example.

So, there are occasions when a simple preface stating your positive intent out loud can be incredibly helpful. For a teacher or a coach, making sure your student or player knows you believe in them and what they’re doing can be one of the most important things you vocalize before delivering challenging feedback.

But, and this is where I think the card gets more interesting, context is everything. If you said this preface every single time, it would lose its value. Honestly, it would just be weird. And used verbatim among peers, it could even come across as condescending. So, while stating your positive intent is a solid general rule to hold in place, part of growing into a great giver of feedback is developing discernment. Knowing what form that intent should take, uh, whether it should be spoken at all, when, and how to frame it for the particular relationship in front of you.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. So, if I had a student who I knew was struggling with confidence, uh, but who was excelling on a project, I might preface my feedback exactly as this card suggests, like, word for word. But if I’ve been working with a student for three years, and through countless hours of collaboration I’ve already expressed that belief in various ways, I might skip the preface entirely and simply let them know I have some feedback and ask them if it’s a good time to receive it. Same principle, different forms. The discernment is the skill.

So that’s card 02 of the Giving Feedback suit. Before your next feedback conversation, take a moment to consider what the receiver might be assuming about your intent. You may find that a single sentence offered at the right moment changes how everything after it lands.

The Giving Feedback context card states, “Situate feedback in a specific time, place, and behavior so the receiver can locate themselves in it. The longer you wait, the harder that becomes.” And the card invites you to use the anchor, which you can do by starting with the when and where to paint the picture. During the final part of rehearsal yesterday, it seemed to me that you were…

Let’s get into why those details carry so much weight. So, the time, the place, the behavior matter for what I describe as three reasons. First, the details show thoughtfulness. They convey to the receiver that you took this seriously enough to remember it precisely, and that seriousness sets the tone for everything that follows. Second, the details allow the receiver usually the chance to actually visualize what happened. They can place themselves back in that rehearsal, that meeting, that moment. And with enough specifics, they now have real material to think it through on their own. And then third, anchoring to specifics can help keep you honest. Vague feedback can drift around, and you can lose your own thread. And certainly you will have the receiver having a hard time keeping up as well. This is where even well-intended feedback can begin to slide into speculation, into character commentary, uh, into things you never actually observed. The anchor holds you to what happened.

Now, about the second half of this card, the longer you wait, the harder it becomes. Many studies show that feedback givers avoid giving feedback because of the anxiety they feel around doing so. And so I think it’s fair to say that same anxiety drives delay as well. And delay can kind of compound as time passes. The giving gets harder and harder, to the point where the giver may forget the feedback entirely or decide to drop it because it feels too removed from the present-day work. Or something else happens, and maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of this. The giver holds the feedback, keeps holding it, and when they finally do share it, 10 other pieces they’ve been holding come out with it. What might have been a small, useful conversation becomes what can feel like a blindside, an avalanche.

I’ll share where I got this wrong myself. Many years ago, I delayed giving feedback to a direct report for far too long. And yes, it was due to anxiety. And by the time I gave it, they had completed a few genuinely great projects. So, my critical feedback was much harder for them to receive. And I had to do all this extra work of explaining how, despite those recent wins, this improvement still mattered and why. I don’t think it went well. It certainly didn’t feel good to me. And I don’t believe it landed well for them either. The feedback itself was valid, but it was as though the timing had drained it of most of its usefulness, and it just kind of created a weird situation where they wondered why I delayed, and I did as well.

That’s card 03 of the Giving Feedback suit. If you’re holding feedback right now, and many of us are, consider that things may get harder as more time passes. Yes, there are perfectly acceptable times to delay, but make sure you’re delaying for the right reasons.

The Giving Feedback behavior card states, “Distinguish between what you observed, the behavior, and what you think it meant. Leading with your observation can make it easier for the receiver to engage.” And the card invites you to practice the shift. Instead of, “You were disengaged,” try, “I noticed you were on your phone during a key part of the discussion. Is everything okay?”

Let’s slow down on the difference between those two sentences, because it’s bigger than it looks. So, you were disengaged feels like a statement of fact when you say it, but look closer and you’ll see that it’s more of an interpretation. It’s a conclusion you drew from something you saw. What you actually observed was a person on their phone during a key part of the discussion. That’s it. That’s what you observed. The disengagement part is your mind’s story about what the phone meant. And that story might be right. Might also be completely wrong. Maybe they were handling a family situation, or taking notes, or looking up the exact figure the room needed. Who knows?

But leading with direct observation serves a few important purposes. For one, it keeps you focused. When you bring to mind exact observations, what happened, when, what you saw, you’re far less likely to stray into commentary about someone’s character or commitment. The observation acts like those bumper pads at a bowling alley. It can also help keep your emotions more regulated. And this one matters more than most givers realize. You may, for various reasons, be genuinely upset about what you think the observed behavior meant. Maybe the story in your head is disrespect, or apathy, or someone checked out on the team. But often there are holes in that reasoning, assumptions you can’t verify from the outside. Sticking to the observation keeps you from delivering feedback that is partly fueled by a story of your own making.

And here’s the meaningful part. Those holes can actually get filled, because now you’re pairing your perspective with the receiver’s. The conversation may well move into what the behavior meant. A far better bridge to that conversation, though, is beginning with what you saw and then asking a thoughtful question. Thoughtful, I should stress, rather than interrogating. Something like, “Is everything okay?” opens a door. Whereas a comment like, “What was so important on your phone?” can slam one shut.

And there’s a generosity built into the shift, too. When you lead with the observation and a question, you’re signaling to the receiver, I noticed something, and I haven’t decided what it means yet. I’d like your help understanding it. That’s basically what’s happening. And that’s usually a far better starting place than anything that can immediately put the receiver on the defensive. That posture makes it far easier for them to engage honestly, because they’re being invited into the meaning making rather than defending against what they may feel as a verdict that’s already been reached.

That’s card 04 of the Giving Feedback suit. Before your next feedback conversation, try separating your notes into two columns. What I think I saw, and what I think it meant. Share the first column. Hold the second column loosely. You may find the receiver fills it in more accurately than you could have.

The Giving Feedback impact card states, “Clearly connect the dots between the receiver’s action and the consequence you observed it having, or the consequence it could have had.” And the card invites you to use the equation. When you observed action, from my perspective, it led to observed result, and I felt emotion because value concern.

Let’s look at what usually gets skipped. So, a common practice in feedback goes like this. Share your observation, then move directly to the action you believe the person should take. You X, start doing Y. It’s efficient, and in my experience, it often bypasses some important parts of human communication.

The first thing it skips is the consequence. Sometimes the receiver truly can’t see the line between their action and its result. That line is obvious to you because of where you sit, and sometimes can be invisible to them because of where they sit. Drawing it explicitly is a gift. And here’s a piece I find givers skip even more often. The consequence that could have happened but didn’t this time. Maybe the missed double check that didn’t reach the client because someone caught it downstream. That’s a lucky outcome, but there was a real risk there. If you only give feedback when the bad consequence fully lands, you can inadvertently be teaching people that near misses are fine. Describing what could have happened lets the lesson arrive without requiring the worst of what could have happened.

The second thing it skips is the emotion. And I want to spend a moment here, because this one runs deep. Too often we don’t speak with our emotions, especially at work, where a kind of unwritten code says feelings stay outside the meeting room. And yet our emotions are there anyway. They’re running through our bodies, informing our thoughts, even impacting our heart rates, something we covered back in the Receiving suit from the other side of the table. Pretending they’re absent doesn’t remove them from the conversation. It just removes our honesty about them. And again, I don’t think we need to be sharing what our emotional states are all the time, but there are times, depending on the context and the relationship you have with the receiver, where it can be one of the most powerful things you do for their growth.

So, there are times when naming the emotion can humanize the conversation in a way that the mechanical feedback frameworks out there often avoid. I felt worried, or I felt caught off guard, tells the receiver a human being was affected here. And notice the equation doesn’t stop at the emotion. It asks for the because, the value or concern underneath. I felt worried because our client relationships depend on that level of care. Now the receiver understands what’s actually at stake for you, and the feedback lands as something shared rather than something imposed.

That’s card 05 of the Giving Feedback suit. In a future challenging feedback conversation, try connecting all four dots. Action, result, emotion, value. It will likely feel somewhat exposing the first time, especially the emotion part, but it might also help the receiver do less bracing and more listening.

The Giving Feedback tone card states, “Tone can carry more weight than words. If your tone can be perceived as frustrated or condescending, it could obscure insights in your feedback.” And the card invites you to run the check. Before the conversation, check in with yourself. If you’re feeling exhausted or bothered, those may come across in your tone.

Let’s make this practical with four scenes. Scene one, email. You write feedback in a hurry between meetings. To you, it’s efficient. To the receiver, the short sentences and missing warmth read as cold, maybe angry. And email offers no voice, no face, nothing to soften that interpretation. They reread it four times. Each pass, to them, feels darker than the last. The words may have said something like small revision needed, but the tone they constructed could have signaled you’re in trouble. Text-based feedback may deserve the most tone attention of all, because the receiver can fill those many spaces with their own ideas.

Scene two, in person, face to face. You’ve had a draining day, and before you even deliver the feedback, you sigh. You didn’t even notice that you sighed. They might absolutely notice the sigh. Whatever thoughtful sentence follows is now uh pre-labeled, maybe as a burden. It’s proof to them that this conversation was something you had to get through, whether that’s the truth or not. One exhale just outweighed 50 well-chosen words.

Scene three, the phone. No face, no body language. Your voice carries the entire conversation. You’re distracted, half looking at your screen, and your flat delivery turns what you meant as calm, constructive feedback into something that maybe sounds bored or dismissive. The receiver hangs up, unsure what just happened, replays your flatness far longer than your content.

Scene four. Let’s go with a video call for this one. And let’s say your words are supportive, but you’re tired. Maybe your eyes keep drifting to the second monitor. The mismatch between warm words and a checked-out face or lack of eye contact can create its own kind of message. And when face and words disagree, people tend to believe the face.

Notice what all four scenes share. The giver’s internal state leaked into the delivery, and the delivery then obscured the insight. This is why so many cards across this deck keep offering tools for developing our emotional intelligence. Understanding our emotional states matters in general, and it matters enormously at the moment of giving feedback, which can already be fraught with anxiety, power dynamics, and everything else we’ve explored across these suits.

The check is a small practice with reach. Before the conversation, scan yourself. Exhausted, bothered by something unrelated, still carrying the last meeting. Those states may come through in your tone whether you intend them to or not. Sometimes the answer is a few breaths. Sometimes it’s rescheduling by an hour. Both are acts of respect for feedback you presumably worked hard to prepare.

That’s card 06 of the Giving Feedback suit. Before your next feedback conversation, in any medium, run the check. Your insights deserve a delivery that lets them be heard.

The Giving Feedback pause card states, “After giving feedback, invite the receiver’s perspective and create space for a response. Filling the silence can dilute the message and disrupt their ability to process.” And the card invites you to take the challenge. Deliver your core feedback message in three sentences or fewer. Ask, “What are your thoughts?” Then wait for their response.

Let’s start with a feeling you probably know. So, you’re late for a meeting, or you need to get somewhere, and a person has you cornered, talking and talking and talking. Every gap where you might escape gets filled before you can use it. You’re nodding, maybe glancing at the clock, calculating exit strategies as their mouth just keeps moving. And here’s the thing worth noticing about that person. Often the talking comes from anxiety. Silence may feel dangerous to them, so they keep producing words to hold it at bay.

That same mechanism shows up in feedback conversations, maybe more than anywhere else. A giver delivers their core message. Clear, useful, done. Then the silence arrives. The receiver is sitting with it, processing, maybe feeling something, and the giver’s anxiety interprets that silence as a problem to fix. So, they keep going. They rephrase the feedback. They soften it. They add a second example, then a third. Then, uh, but overall, you’re doing great. And then it all feels like a weird feedback sandwich. And then maybe they transition to a story about themselves. By the end, the message the receiver needed to hear is buried under a pile of nervous words, and neither person can quite locate it anymore. The card’s language is exact here. Filling the silence dilutes the message and disrupts their ability to process. The receiver needed that silence. It was likely doing some work.

Now, for the opposite pattern, which I’d say is just as common. Some of us step into the feedback conversation wanting it over as fast as possible. It’s like we’ve cannonballed into a freezing cold swimming pool, and we’re scrambling to find the ladder out. So, rather than mindfully communicating, pausing, offering space, letting the conversation unfold naturally, we’re antsy, itching for the exit. We might deliver the feedback and immediately pivot to a work task, weekend plans, anything with sort of warmer water. The receiver barely had time to hear the feedback, let alone respond to it. And the pivot teaches them something, too. This topic makes the giver uncomfortable. So maybe don’t bring it back up.

Both patterns, the filler and, let’s call it, the fleer, have the same cost, which is that the receiver never gets to be a participant. The challenge addresses both with one structure. Distill your core message to three sentences or fewer, which forces the clarity we covered on the limit and anchor cards. Ask, “What are your thoughts?” which is a genuine invitation. And then wait. Actually wait. The silence may stretch 5 seconds, 10, longer. Let it. Something is happening in there.

That’s card 07 of the Giving Feedback suit. In your next feedback conversation, notice which pull you feel. The urge to keep talking, or the urge to escape. Then try the challenge anyway. What the receiver says after a real pause is often the most valuable part of the entire conversation, because it can determine where the conversation should go next.

The Giving Feedback limit card states, “Sharing a long list of improvements may result in the receiver’s morale dropping, none sticking, or both. Choose focused precision over volume.” And the card invites you to practice the edit. Review your list, then think which insight would have the most impact on their growth. Share that. Save the rest.

Let’s connect this work to what you may have already done from the other side. So, if you’ve spent time with the Processing suit, you may remember the receiver’s job when feedback arrives as a kitchen sink. Sift for gold. Find the biggest rock. This card is sort of the same principle, but just flipped around. As the giver, you can do that sifting before the feedback ever leaves your mouth. You almost certainly have a list. Most attentive givers do. The edit asks you to review it and find the one insight that would most impact a person’s growth right now. Share that one. Save the rest for later conversations where they’ll each get the attention they deserve. When you hand someone the pre-sifted rock rather than the full sink of stuff, you’ve done some of the heavy processing work for them, and you’ve dramatically raised the odds the feedback actually sticks.

Now, how much to share also depends on the relationship. And I want to walk through a few situations, because the texture changes. Say it’s your second day managing an employee. You may already see four things worth improving. In most cases, I hold nearly all of it. They don’t yet know whether you see their strengths, and critical feedback from someone who hasn’t demonstrated that they see the whole person has a good chance to land more as judgment rather than investment. If possible, and again, there are many variables at play here, spend time building the relationship a bit first. Make sure they know you know what they’re good at.

Or take a coach with a young athlete after a rough game. Let’s say the coach saw seven mistakes. Footwork, positioning, decision-making, all of it. But a kid walking off a loss is often carrying all the morale damage they can hold. The masterful coaching move is usually one thing. This week, let’s work on your first step. The other six live in the coach’s notebook, each waiting for its right time.

And it flows upward, too. Imagine a student who has real feedback for their professor. The lectures move too fast. The slides are dense. Office hours feel rushed. All possibly valid, but given the power difference, unloading the full list in one go could come across in ways the student never intended. Choosing the single most important piece, maybe the pacing, delivered with care and an anchor from a specific class, respects both the relationship and the reality that the professor is far more likely to act on one clear point.

In each of these, the discipline is identical. The limit is an act of respect for their morale, for their capacity to change, and for the feedback itself.

That’s card 08 of the Giving Feedback suit. Before your next feedback conversation, write out your full list, then circle one. The rest isn’t wasted. You’re just taking it away in a doggy bag and can likely use it later.

The Giving Feedback positive card states, “Positive feedback can improve morale, show people you recognize their full range of abilities, and help them uncover strengths they didn’t know they had.” And the card invites you to practice the ratio. Aim to give more positive feedback than negative feedback. Make it just as specific and thoughtful as any challenging feedback you give.

Let’s go deep on this, because it’s easy to nod along to and rare to see it done well. So, here’s a pattern I’ve noticed in myself and in many leaders I’ve worked with. When we have challenging feedback to give, we prepare. We think about the anchor, the wording, the timing, the tone, many of the cards in this very suit. And when we have positive feedback to give, we sort of improvise. Great job on that. Uh, really nice work. We tend to offer comments kind of tossed off in a hallway. They’re meant sincerely, but, you know, those comments can be forgotten by lunch.

The unspoken assumption seems to be that positive feedback works automatically. That, um, good vibes sort of deliver themselves. In my experience, they mostly don’t. Back on the strengths card in the Seeking suit, I shared how I went through years of writing classes without knowing my own strengths, because every paper came back covered in red pen. The professors saw what I did well, but nobody said it out loud in any detail. Nobody told me. That’s what an improvised, thin culture of positive feedback produces. People who are genuinely skilled and have no clear picture of it.

So what does great positive feedback actually look like? It’s built from the same materials as great critical feedback. An anchor, the specific time and place. The behavior, what exactly they did. The impact, what it led to, and who felt it. So compare awesome work on this project with something like this. Uh, in Tuesday’s review, when the client started pushing back on the timeline, you stayed calm, restated their concern better than they said it themselves, and walked through the dependencies. The whole room settled. That’s a skill, and I want you to know I see it. The first is a pleasant sound. The second version might change how the person understands themselves, which is huge. It may be the first time anyone has named that ability out loud, which means you may have just helped them uncover a strength they didn’t know they had. And when you give positive, thoughtful feedback like that, it can dramatically improve the chances that any future negative feedback you give lands far better.

Which brings me to the planning part. I’d encourage you to plan positive feedback ahead of time, the same way you’d plan a challenging conversation. Before a one-on-one, before practice ends, before the semester wraps, ask yourself, what has this person done recently that deserves specific recognition? What did it lead to? Then deliver it with the same care you’d give anything hard. Setting that intention changes what you notice, too. Givers who plan to deliver specific praise start watching for praiseworthy specifics.

And on the ratio, more positive than negative, I’d add one hedge. The ratio only works if every piece is real. Uh, inflated or invented praise erodes trust fast. People can usually smell it. The goal is more true, specific, positive feedback. Most of us have an enormous supply of it. We’ve simply never put it into words.

That’s card 09 of the Giving Feedback suit. This week, plan one piece of positive feedback the way you’d plan a hard conversation. Anchor, behavior, impact. Deliver it with full attention. Then watch what it does to the person, and maybe to you.

The Giving Feedback check-in card states, “Don’t stop at the giving. Thoughtfully following up can deepen the relationship and give your feedback a better chance of sticking.” And the card invites you to use the closer. I’m curious, was the feedback I gave last week helpful? If they’ve adopted it, how has practicing X been going?

This is the final card in the deck. So, let’s talk about why it ends here, with a follow-up. So, there’s a version of giving feedback where the conversation ends and the giver considers the job done. Feedback delivered, box checked, everyone moves on. And I understand the pull of that version. The, the conversation may have been hard, and finishing it feels like a relief. But when it comes to challenging feedback, something important can get lost there, because for the receiver, the conversation ending is usually where the actual work begins. The processing, the deciding, the atomizing, the practicing, maybe the getting worse before getting better. Everything the middle suits of this deck are about happens after you’ve left the room.

When you never circle back, the receiver does all of that alone, and they will likely notice that they’re doing it alone. Follow-up questions like, “Was that helpful? How has practicing it been going?” communicate that you were and still are interested in their growth. In my experience, that’s often the moment trust actually forms. Feedback plus silence can, whether it’s true or not, be perceived as you judging them. Feedback plus a check-in, if done right, such that it doesn’t feel like micromanaging, is far more likely to be perceived as you caring about them.

The check-in also gives your feedback a far better chance of sticking, for reasons this whole deck has been building toward. Maybe they tried the change and over-corrected. Now you’re the dartboard they can calibrate against. Or maybe they got worse before getting better and were close to abandoning it. Maybe they misunderstood a piece of it entirely, and two minutes of clarity from you saves months of practicing the wrong thing. None of that support is possible if the giving was the end.

And notice the closer’s first question takes some courage. Was the feedback I gave helpful? You are seeking feedback on your feedback. There’s humility there. Which means this last card of the last suit in a way hands you back to the first card of the first suit. The giver becomes the seeker, and the loop closes. That’s the real shape of everything in this deck. Feedback was never meant to be a one-way transaction, one person launching observations over to another. At its best, it’s a loop between people who are invested in each other’s growth. Seeking, receiving, processing, using, giving, and then checking in, which starts the loop again.

That’s card 10 of the Giving Feedback suit, and the final card of The Feedback Deck. If you’ve been working through these cards, you now have 50 practices that reinforce one another. But if I could leave you with one thing, it’s this. None of them are really about technique. They’re about becoming the kind of person others can grow around, and who keeps growing themselves. The check-in is often where all of that becomes visible. Don’t stop at the giving.