Great Startups Run on Feedback
How to Give It, Why It Matters, and What Happens If You Don’t
As a former HR professional, it’s no surprise that I think feedback is important for successful teams. Many of us have read or heard of Radical Candor and learned the general importance of feedback.
That said, I always felt like being good at feedback was a nice-to-have people skills for larger companies— something that you learned when you had the time and the space to do so. (After all, these days only big companies can afford Radical Candor training.) However, working as a startup founder and executive showed me the importance of feedback at small and early stage companies too.
Why feedback matters more for startups
When you’ve got teams of just five or six people — or even fewer — if they’re operating ineffectively, it’s hard to make progress. In larger organizations, some variability in performance can be smoothed out by large numbers, but on small teams, one underperformer can tank the entire team’s progress.
Even beyond individual performance, sharing feedback on goals and team direction is equally important. Without input from others, it’s difficult for leaders to vet the tactics and strategy or to know when they need to shift and pivot.
Given what’s at stake, developing the ability to share feedback effectively is not just nice to have, it’s a critical operating tool for early and mid-stage startups.
What startups get wrong
That said, startups have a lot going on, and doing feedback well can be hard. With competing priorities and mixed levels of experience, I’ve seen startups fall into a few common patterns of feedback failure mode.
Not giving feedback frequently enough (or at all)
This trap is the most common at startups. Busy leaders means they rarely have time to pause and check in on how things are going with their teams. 1:1s become work syncs focused on discussing tasks and the next big deadline. Feedback gets constantly pushed out to the next meeting or the next quarter. And it happens in both directions — teams often have thoughts about goals and company direction, but it never feels like quite the right time to say something.
And sometimes, it’s not just about the time required. It’s also that feedback can feel hard (that’s why we’re talking about it!), and that means it feels easier to avoid than to face head on.
At one company where I worked, the CEO was very involved on all teams, particularly product. However, they shied away from giving feedback in meetings. Instead, the CEO would often backchannel after meetings — sharing authentic thoughts with a select group of teammates. As a result, the actual team was undermined: they weren’t able to get the feedback they needed to move forward, and instead the “select group” was then deputized to take action. The team was set up to fail, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy where their performance started to suffer. Things still got done, but it was a waste of talent and time.
Only giving positive, encouraging feedback
This trap can be just as bad as not giving any feedback. It often stems from a good place: leaders want to be encouraging and supportive to their teams. Plus, it often leads to a sense of harmony on the team — everyone likes each other! But, without constructive feedback, it’s hard for the team to grow professionally and hard to make progress. There’s no team out there that does the right thing every time, and critical feedback is required to get you from off track to back on.
At one company, I watched a CEO spend most of their time hyping up the team — throwing happy hours and fun events to keep people engaged. 1:1s were filled with flattery and sometimes uncomfortably many compliments. In team meetings, I never saw the CEO give direct feedback on the work product or how it could be improved. As a result, teammates and entire teams were often going in the wrong direction but didn’t know it. They liked their CEO and felt positive about their work environment, but the company wasn’t hitting their goals (and teammates weren’t growing in their careers). Plus, the CEO was frustrated that the team “wasn’t getting it.”
Giving vague, untargeted feedback
Leaders, particularly extremely intelligent ones, can sometimes get frustrated when trying to give feedback. They feel like they’re giving the team clear feedback, but the team isn’t able to execute on it — it feels like they’re shouting into the void.
Sometimes, there is a genuine skill gap on the team, but oftentimes, the feedback being given isn’t effective. It’s vague and not targeted at what needs to change or is disconnected from company goals. For example, if a leader says “this isn’t right” but doesn’t explain why, then the team isn’t going to be able to make the right changes. They’ll just come back with a different, “not right” version. Another common example is asking someone to step and be more of a “leader” without clarifying what that means.
I saw this play out on one team where the CEO would give feedback on a team’s work by saying it didn’t fit company goals. The problem was that the CEO had never defined company goals — they weren’t written down anywhere. As a result, the team kept guessing at what they needed to change, which led to more issues. The CEO then got more and more involved in the work because “they had to.” The team felt disempowered, valuable time was wasted, and the CEO was overworked. If the CEO had been able to articulate specific feedback, the trouble might all have been avoided.
How to do feedback well
Given these failure modes, it might sound daunting to try to do feedback well. However, like all of Startup Soup’s posts, we focus on the what’s good enough to make sure you’ve got the tools to do feedback without overburdening yourself or the team. We aren’t recommending a feedback process run by HR or People Ops. Instead, we’ve got the basic ingredients for giving feedback well that you can apply in 1:1s or team meetings.
Align Expectations: Clarify the roles and set the goals
To give effective feedback, both parties have to be on the same page for what they’re trying to do. Imagine you try to tell someone that they’re walking the wrong direction, but it turns out they’re going somewhere different from you. Your feedback is useless! Aligning expectations can look like making sure you’ve got clear goals on the team or clear goals for the individual. It may happen once, and then feedback occurs over a quarter. Or it may be something you need to revisit in a conversation. To make sure you’re aligned, try writing out the goals and gut checking them with the team or the teammate. A simple guide is to answer the following questions: What do you expect of the team or the individual? Who is doing what? What are you working towards?
Design an alliance: Take the time to build trust.
In coaching, a common idea is that you need to design your working relationship with someone before diving in. A simple way you’ll see people do this is by saying “Are you open to receiving feedback on this?” That’s a small conversational hack to ensure you’ve got some trust established. Ideally, though, you establish an ongoing relationship with someone by understanding their goals and what they’re working towards. Feedback works best when you both benefit. For example, understanding that someone wants to be a manager can make giving them feedback on their communication style much easier.
For a team meeting or border feedback, using specific meeting types like a team retro can help align folks’ goals and understanding of the purpose of the feedback. For teams, it’s particularly helpful to understand what stage they’re in when giving feedback — are they ideating, refining, finalizing? Knowing that can help you land the message you need to land more easily without destroying trust.
Be specific about what you’d like to see.
In my experience, this is the hardest part about feedback. Too often, we start by sharing what’s wrong: the gap or the failure. We then ask the person to go make changes, but they’re often not well equipped to make those changes. We have to calibrate our feedback to the level of skill and experience the person we’re working with has. Highly skilled and experienced teammates might need just a nudge, but most teammates are going to need more detail on what to change.
Try starting with what you’d like to see and how it ties into the goals/expectations above as well as the individual’s goals and motivations. You don’t have to make a laundry list of improvements, but giving some examples can really help a teammate know how to do better.
And if you find yourself unsure of what better looks like, that’s a nudge to find an advisor or look at the other tips about managing someone whose job you don’t understand well.
This advice also applies when giving feedback to a team. I’ve seen a lot of tension emerge when leaders aren’t specific and open about what they want the team to be doing. They wait for the team to figure it out, thinking that that'll empower the team. And there are times to empower, but teams often need clear direction in order to feel empowered.
Reflect on and explain the gap.
Once you’ve clarified what good looks like, you can then discuss one or two examples of where you saw the teammate missing that standard. If possible, ask the teammate to reflect first — how did they think they showed up in that situation?
It’s best not to litigate too much here — that’s why we lead with the proactive ask instead of the gap. It’s also a good moment to note external factors that weren’t under the teammate’s control. This applies to teams too — sometimes teams are dealing with unfortunate issues outside of their control, and we want to ask them to do more. It’s best to acknowledge the situation up front, so you all understand there are difficulties.
Identify next steps together.
The crux of feedback is what you do with it. If after giving feedback, you walk away or sign off a call and never discuss it again, it’s not going to be effective. I wish that’s how it worked. Things would be so easy! Instead, when you give the feedback, discuss opportunities for when the teammate can apply the feedback. Plus, make a plan for when to check back in together. The teammate should have a clear next action — even if it’s just to reflect on this conversation — and a time to follow up.
Similarly with a team retro or other session, identify the next steps and who is the DRI for each.
Make feedback a habit
Like most things, the key to getting the value is to make it a habit. Set aside time during 1:1s or make a recurring team meeting (like a monthly retro) to create space for feedback and learnings. Make sure to include critical and positive feedback to help build confidence while driving progress. Ask for feedback on new processes and team goals.
And then, not to be too meta, but get feedback on your feedback. Ask the teammates or the team — is this useful? Is it helping? Take notes and monitor for yourself: are you seeing progress? Take the time to evaluate how it’s working and make changes as needed.
Please share your tips and tricks for feedback in the comments. We’d love to learn from you!
P.S.
It’s 80 degrees where I live, so it’s no longer soup season. That said, salads are here! Our entire Startup Soup team (aka me and Jean) have been loving this farro fattoush salad from Caro Chambers. I roasted the chicken this time, and I really enjoyed the extra flavor!