Most feedback arrives far too late to be any use.
Something happens in March. Nobody mentions it. It gets quietly noted down, and delivered in a formal review in September.
By then the person cannot fix it, cannot remember the situation clearly, and cannot do anything with it except feel bad.
That is not feedback. That is a verdict with a six month delay.
If you take one habit from me, take this one. Say it close to the moment.
The presentation was today. Say something today, while the slides are still open and the memory is warm.
Two sentences in the corridor beats two paragraphs in a form every single time.
I know why we save it up. Saying it in the moment feels heavier than it really is.
You do not want to make it a thing. There is never a clean opening. It seems easier to note it and handle it properly later.
But later does not get easier. Later gets bigger.
Small things said quickly stay small. The same thing stored for months turns into a pattern, and now you are not commenting on one meeting, you are describing a flaw in a person.
That is a much harder conversation, and you built it yourself by waiting.
The same is true of the good stuff, and we are even worse at that one.
If someone did something excellent on Tuesday, tell them on Tuesday. Not in an annual summary where it lands as a bullet point.
Praise that arrives late is barely praise at all.
So make it ordinary. Make it small. Make it frequent.
When feedback happens all the time, no single instance of it feels like a judgment. It is simply how your team talks to each other.
And when the formal review finally comes around, nothing in it should surprise anybody.
If it does, that is on the person who saved it up.
Do not be that person.
Say it while it still means something to them.
– Asael Shinder
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