research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.
The first problem with feedback is that humans are unreliable raters of other humans.
If we then decide to ask seven more color-blind people to rate the redness of our rose, their errors will be equally systematic, and averaging their ratings won’t get us any closer to determining the actual redness of the rose.
Learning is less a function of adding something that isn’t there than it is of recognizing, reinforcing, and refining what already is.
Focusing people on their shortcomings doesn’t enable learning; it impairs it.
Since excellence is idiosyncratic and cannot be learned by studying failure, we can never help another person succeed by holding her performance up against a prefabricated model of excellence,
take note of when a prospect leans into a sales pitch, a project runs smoothly,
Instead, describe what you experienced when her moment of excellence caught your attention. There’s nothing more believable and more authoritative than sharing what you saw from her and how it made you feel.
you aren’t judging or rating or fixing her; you’re simply reflecting to her the unique “dent” she just made in the world,