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Giving and Receiving Feedback

High-quality, honest feedback helps people and projects grow. We tell each other plainly what is working and what could improve, with the purpose of helping the recipient rather than relieving the giver's frustration or establishing who is right.

This includes giving Kevin feedback, particularly when you disagree with a decision or see something he cannot see from his position.

Why This Matters

If you spot a flaw or see improvement opportunities but stay silent, you undermine our mission. No one, myself included, is clairvoyant. If you don't voice concerns or wishes, don't expect them to be addressed.

Honest feedback is the highest form of respect. If we care about each other—and I hope we do—feedback is a gift that helps us grow.

Make difficult feedback possible. Power differences and uncertainty about someone's reaction are real. Leaders and recipients are responsible for making candor safe by listening without retaliation and thanking people for raising difficult points.

Our default: the AAAA method

Use AAAA for both positive and developmental feedback:

  • Aim to assist. Give feedback with positive intent. Be able to explain how a change would help the recipient, the work, or the group—not merely how it would make life easier for you.
  • Actionable. Focus on behaviour the recipient can change. Describe a specific observation and its impact, then make the request or possible next step concrete.
  • Appreciate. Giving candid feedback takes effort and courage; receiving it can be uncomfortable. Treat both as contributions. Acknowledge what is already working as specifically as what should change.
  • Accept or discard. Feedback is information, not an instruction. The recipient listens and considers it, but retains agency to accept it, adapt it, seek more evidence, or discard it. Where a role carries decision authority, separate feedback from an explicit decision or expectation.

AAAA is not a license to soften feedback until its meaning disappears. Aim to assist and say the important thing clearly.

A concrete feedback sentence

Use the Situation–Work–Impact–Next step pattern when you need help making feedback specific:

  • Situation: “In yesterday's project review …”
  • Work or behaviour: “… the alternative explanation was dismissed before we examined its evidence …”
  • Impact: “… so we may have converged too quickly, and two people stopped contributing.”
  • Next step: “In the next review, could you write down the competing explanations before arguing for one?”

Facts and interpretations are different. State what you observed, mark your interpretation as an interpretation, and invite correction: “I read that as …; is that accurate?”

You do not need to arrive with a complete solution. Naming a consequential problem clearly can itself be useful; if you suggest a next step, make it feasible and leave room for the recipient's judgment.

Giving feedback well

  • Give it soon enough that the recipient can still act, but choose a setting in which they can absorb it.
  • Prefer private developmental feedback. Give public praise only when the recipient is comfortable with it.
  • Discuss specific work and behaviour, not personality, motives, or worth.
  • Ask whether now is a workable moment for substantial feedback.
  • Give feedback directly to the person who can act on it. Do not build a coalition around them.
  • If the issue concerns safety, harassment, research integrity, or another matter that should not be handled one-to-one, use the appropriate escalation channel.

Receiving feedback well

  • Listen for the useful information before explaining or defending.
  • Ask for the specific observation, impact, or desired change if it is unclear.
  • Thank the giver for making the issue discussable; appreciation does not mean automatic agreement.
  • Say what you understood and what you will do next: act, reflect, seek another perspective, or explain why you will not use it.
  • If your first reaction is strong, ask for time and return to the conversation. Do not punish candor through anger, ridicule, exclusion, or later retaliation.

“Accept or discard” does not mean ignoring role expectations, agreed decisions, safety rules, or research standards. If feedback reveals a disagreement about those, make the underlying expectation or decision explicit.

Giving Kevin Feedback

No one teaches you how to run a lab—it's largely guesswork. I value your feedback, but I recognize the power dynamic may make direct feedback uncomfortable.

For anonymous feedback: Use https://www.admonymous.co/kjappelbaum (avoid identifying details if you want to remain anonymous)

For direct feedback: I welcome it. I will listen, clarify what I heard, and tell you what I will do with it. If my response makes feedback harder, that is itself important feedback.

Where feedback happens

Feedback is woven into several parts of how we work:

  • Pods provide regular peer feedback on work in progress
  • Group Day uses the Pixar Braintrust model for honest, constructive project feedback
  • Conflict resolution covers how to handle disagreements