How to provide feedback in a way that makes a meaningful difference

I'm finding myself - as 2026 cranks up its pace - spending an inordinate amount of time talking about the responsibility of management this year. It seems that as workplace demographics evolve and more and more people take their first steps into management, that theres an apparent need for people to learn what the responsibility of management is.

This isn't unsurprising. Very few managers get trained in management prior to starting up doing it and fewer still get picked for the role because of their management capability. Picked instead for being good at the role they were doing. The role they are now required to manage but without being informed of what management is and what it actually involves.

Enter the world of feedback; a topic I actually really enjoy talking about and training people to do.

Yes, at the core of management responsibility sits feedback. The ability to communicate effectively with people under your charge so that they learn what they need to stop doing or do differently. And the ability to tell people what they are doing right so that they do more of it and continue doing the great job we've seen and observed them do.

Yes, feedback - be it through casual conversation, personal development plans or appraisals - is a fundamental responsibility of management.

And its a skill to be mastered too. Why? Because traditionally we are terrible at giving feedback to people.

We avoid it like the plague. To scared to hurt people's feeling or ill-equipped to deliver the message skillfully causing us to use far too many words, sandwich bad messages amonst good and leaving people none-the-wider or what we were asking of them in the first place.

As the famous author, Peter Honey, proclaimed. Employees have three fundamentals rights they should expect in their roles.

1. To be clear in their understanding of what is expected of them

2. To be clear in how they are doing in the role they are performing

3. To be clear in how they can improved in the what they are doing

This is where my feedback model comes in handy. With no confirmed source or creator, the PEEC model (sometimes known as the EEC model) gives managers everything they need to compose and deliver feedback that lands.

From the initial framing of the conversation that gets people's attention and allows them to prepare themselves for feedback to the clear components needs to deliver something that matters.

Feedback isnt something we should fear. Its a skill we can master and when mastered for that fact, is a gift we can bestow on people that will help them go from strength to strength and one they will learn to value in time too.