SBI Feedback

You finally tell a team member that they keep interrupting people in meetings. They ask when. You cannot name a meeting, so you say it happens all the time, and they say it does not. Ten minutes later the two of you are arguing about whether "all the time" is fair, and nobody has mentioned what the interruptions cost.

Figure 1. SBI Feedback

What it is

SBI is a three-part structure for feedback from the Center for Creative Leadership. You describe the Situation, the Behavior and the Impact, in that order, and the whole thing usually takes two or three sentences. CCL's extended version adds a fourth step, where you ask what the person intended.

The structure keeps the conversation on something the person did, which gives them something specific to change and leaves their character out of it. It works the same way for praise, because a specific situation, behavior and impact tells someone exactly what to repeat.

How it works

Situation

When and where did it happen?

Name one occasion, such as "in yesterday's client review". If you cannot name one, check your notes or the work itself for a specific example, and give the feedback promptly once you have it. Leave out "always" and "lately", because those words invite the other person to argue about how often it happens, and the conversation drifts away from what they did.

Behavior

What did they actually do?

Describe it the way a camera would have recorded it, such as "you answered the client's question before she finished asking it". If a camera could not have recorded it, it is a judgment. Words like "dismissive", "unprepared" and "not a team player" all fail that test, so replace each one with a verb that says what the person did. The same test applies to praise, where "great attitude" tells them far less than what they actually did.

Impact

What happened as a result?

Name the effect on you, the team, the client or the work, such as "she stopped offering input for the rest of the call". Stick to what you saw and how it left you feeling, and leave out your theory about why they did it. Then ask what they intended and listen properly, because their account may change how you read the moment. If it does, say so, and agree what happens next.

When to reach for it

Someone did something in a meeting that you need to raise, and you are tempted to start with "you always"
A team member did good work and you want them to know exactly what to repeat
A feedback conversation you are dreading, where you want the message written down before you start

“You just modeled how to hold someone accountable without emotion.”

A worked example

Westbrook Cabinetry, a fictional cabinet maker, runs a day shift and a night shift. Its production supervisor needed to talk to the night shift lead about the morning handover. The supervisor's first draft was "Your handovers are sloppy and the day shift is fed up." It named no particular handover, and "sloppy" failed the camera test.

Before the conversation, the supervisor rebuilt it around one morning. The situation was Tuesday's handover. The behavior was what the lead had covered and what they had left out. The impact was what the day crew and the customer had lost. What the supervisor said was this: "At Tuesday morning's handover, you walked the day crew through the jobs that ran clean and did not mention that the edge bander on line two had jammed overnight. The day crew spent the first hour of the shift finding the fault, and the first customer order went out ninety minutes late."

The supervisor then asked what the lead had intended. The lead said they had logged the fault with maintenance, assumed that was enough, and wanted to keep the handover short. The log had not reached the day crew, so the two of them agreed that every open machine fault would go on the handover sheet. The supervisor said they would read Friday's sheet with the lead.

Try it this week

Pick one piece of feedback you need to give this week, corrective or positive. By the end you will have delivered it and agreed a date to check what changed.

Write the situation as one specific time and place, with no "always" or "lately".
Write the behavior as a camera would have recorded it, swapping any adjective about the person for a verb about what they did.
Write the impact you saw on you, the team, the client or the work, without guessing at their reasons.
Read the three parts aloud once, then deliver them in order.
Ask what they intended, and hear their account before you decide what it means.
Agree what they will repeat or change, and put a date in your calendar to look at the next piece of work together.

Try it with AI

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or any AI assistant and fill in the part in square brackets. It will walk you through the model one step at a time, using your own situation.

Prompt

I need to give someone feedback: [describe what happened, when it happened, and whether it's praise or a correction].

If you can open links, read https://www.colincox.com/library/sbi-feedback first. It explains SBI from the Center for Creative Leadership, which means describing the Situation, the Behavior and the Impact, and then asking what the person intended.

Help me build it one part at a time, asking me one question at a time and waiting for my answers. For the situation, make me name one specific occasion. For the behavior, push back on any adjective about the person and ask what a camera would have recorded. For the impact, ask what I actually saw happen and how it left me feeling, and stop me if I start guessing at their reasons.

Then put the three parts together as two or three sentences I could say out loud, followed by a question about what they intended. Finish by asking when I'll give the feedback and when I'll look at the next piece of work with them.

Leave out names and anything confidential before you paste in your situation.

From Colin's work

For the second week in a row, one of the leaders had committed to do something and hadn't done it. I was in the room as an observer, and nobody said anything. They just let it slide. But I knew from talking to them that the pattern frustrated them.

So I interjected. I said, "Hey, I've noticed this is the second week in a row where you said you were going to do that and you didn't do it. It looks like a pattern. Could you help us understand what's going on?"

He said, "Oh, guys, sorry. I'll get it done right after the meeting and sorry, that won't happen again." That's all it took, and we moved on.

Afterwards two of the other leaders called me. They said, "Colin, thank you so much. You just modeled how to hold someone accountable without emotion."

Related tools

Source: Center for Creative Leadership, Use Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) to Understand Intent

Want help putting this to work with your team? Book a free thirty minutes with Colin.