Situation, Behavior, Impact, *Ask*

Back in April I wrote a series on the importance of feedback. If you weren’t a subscriber yet or want a refresher, you can access the ​full series here​.

In the final part of the series, I referred to a framework for providing behavioral feedback – the SBI framework (Situation – Behavior – Impact). I like it because it takes the emotion out of giving feedback, it allows you to get specific and evidence-based, and focuses on the impact, rather than the person. Let me give you a non-work example for which I would have been better served to use the SBI framework.

Last week I allowed my son to host a small post-Prom party at our house. If you know me, you know that a social event that starts at 11:30pm goes against every fiber of my being. But I also wanted them to have somewhere safe to go, so I allowed it.

All things considered, it went very smoothly. There were no “crashers” or last-minute add-ons. The noise was kept to a reasonable level and I even slept more than I expected. So when morning came and most of the teens had slept over, I went out to get bagels for them.

Around 3pm, I was pretty annoyed because despite some noticeable cleaning efforts, furniture was still out of place, there was leftover food that had not yet been put into the refrigerator, the sink was full of dishes, and the kitchen recycling bin was overflowing.

So – I did what an overtired mom does sometimes, and sent a passive aggressive text to my kid, and he got defensive. Oops.

A better approach might have been to use the SBI framework.

• S – I allowed you to have a party, let you do your own thing, and fed all of your friends breakfast. I then asked you to have the house clean by the time I got home from my appointment. Specifically, I asked for it to “look like there was not a party here last night.”
• B – While your clean-up efforts were noticeable, they fell short of not looking like there was a party here last night. There is still furniture out of place, the kitchen is a mess, and the recycling needs to be taken out.
• I – This meant that I had to do some cleaning before I could do what I need to do in the kitchen, and it made me feel like you weren’t grateful for the opportunity to host the party.

Now – we are talking about a teenager, so this approach would not necessarily avoid defensiveness, but at least it focuses on the specific behavior and the impact it had on me.

Last month I was trained as a ​6 Levers​ consultant, which is a pretty cool strategic leadership framework/organizational operating system. During one of the training sessions on the Leadership lever we talked about feedback. We discussed a similar protocol to SBI, but it had an additional element at the end – A for Ask. What I liked about this addition is that it intentionally brings in the aspect of feedback being a ​two-player game​. The idea here is that you close the delivery with an Ask of the other person, inviting a conversation. It could be to share their perspective on what happened, it could be to ask how you can help them work on the thing you are pointing out – really anything to invite conversation.

So in this case, I would have ended with:

• A – Do you see it differently? Is there anything you want to share from your point of view?

Again, as an equally sleep-deprived teenager I still might have gotten a grunt or a “whatever”, but at least it would have given the opportunity for a discussion – which my passive aggressive text did not!

So I’ve modified the framework I use to be SBI-A*. What framework works for you?

---

Do you want to spend some time thinking about how to get better at giving feedback and practice using the SBI-A* model? ​Sign up for the Summer Workshop Series ​where session 3 will be exploring this together!