When someone asks me for feedback, I do the following 4 things:
I get to a place where I genuinely care about the person. This is my starting point. I don’t want to share my feedback from a place of frustration with a person. If I find that I am frustrated with them, I put that aside and make my full focus to deeply care about them and their vision.
I ask them to share their vision/goals with me. Without knowing a person’s vision - I don’t have a context with which to deliver my feedback. Without this context, too often I will just share with them my subjective opinions (which might be somewhat helpful). However, if I clearly know their vision, then I can contextualize my feedback. I can say “with regard to your vision - here is what I see is working and here is what I see is not working.” Now I have full license to say what I see because it is all about the person accomplishing their goals.
I detach from needing to be right about my feedback. I understand my feedback is simply my experience of them and their world. I let them know this going in. I explicitly say “I have no need that my thoughts and ideas be right." This allows me to focus on delivering powerful feedback freely, without worrying if I am right or wrong. I just share from my heart the things I think might be getting in the way of them accomplishing their vision.
I let the person decide what they will do with the feedback. In no way do I feel entitled for the person to do anything with my feedback. They could simply keep going on as if we never talked and that would be okay. I’m simply there to share things in a loving way that might be holding them back. Maybe the feedback lands. Maybe it doesn’t. I am here to offer it up to them so they can implement whatever is resourceful for them. I share as much as they’d like me to, then I move on and let them do with it what they want.
These 4 things have had a huge impact on how I deliver feedback as well as how well it is received. I find setting it up this way provides the best chance for success.