You can watch this Meme Lesson on Feedback on YouTube.

Most feedback fails at the level of grammar.

It is delivered as a verdict.

You were unprofessional in that meeting. You are not strategic enough. You need to be more commercial in your thinking.

These are not observations.

They are judgments with the evidence removed.

The employee cannot do anything with them — not because they lack the capacity, but because the feedback has not told them what actually happened, what effect it had, or what success would look like.

They are left with only the judgment, which they must now either accept wholesale or reject wholesale. Neither option teaches them anything.

Useful feedback has three parts, in this order.

The observation. The specific behaviour you actually saw.

Not your interpretation of it.

The behaviour itself, described as a camera would describe it. You interrupted three people in that meeting.

You missed the deadline on Tuesday. You sent the document without the financials.

The impact. What happened because of that behaviour? 

Not what you felt about it. 

What effect did it have on the world? 

Two of them stopped contributing afterwards.

The client escalated.

The executive team made a decision based on incomplete information.

And then — nothing.

No verdict. No label. No character assessment.

The employee now has two pieces of information they can actually use: what they did, and what it caused.

They can decide for themselves what to do about it.

That is the moment feedback becomes teaching rather than judgment.

The temptation to add the verdict is strong. It feels like the feedback is not complete without it.

It is complete.

The verdict is what you were going to say.

The observation and the impact are what they actually needed.

If you must add something after the impact, make it a question rather than a verdict. 

What do you think was happening there?

It is a better closing line than you need to be more collaborative. 

The first opens a conversation. 

The second closes one.