I have recently used this exercise as part of an in-house Mentoring Skills session for those staff who, in particular, mentor new employees. It is very straightforward to run and really challenges people on being specific about what someone has done (good or bad). I found I did need to emphasise the point about the participants putting their own context on the feedback statements – telling them to think about situations in their departments really helped. When reading out the suggested alternatives statements, I asked the participants to say it to me as if I was the person getting that feedback in real life. It’s more of a stretch for the members of the group in that way – and they have to work on their eye contact and sincerity too!

I use this exercise both in management development courses and as a part of personal effectiveness courses. I find it very helpful to give some forms of words that help them think about structuring better feedback as well as some less good, but more common (and less effective) examples of feedback that they can improve. Asking them to do that in groups enables them to feedback with more confidence and provides us with a variety of responses, I tend to give them the first couple to do one at time and feedback after each one in order that they hear a variety of responses that improve the quality of their later suggestions. I follow this up with asking them to script a piece of feedback they want to give to a member of their team, with an opportunity to try it out and ask for feedback.