SBI: Say What Happened, Not Who They Are
Use Situation-Behavior-Impact to make corrective feedback specific, fair, and usable.
The teach SBI is a fairness device. It slows you down enough to separate the facts from the story you built around the facts. Start with Situation: the exact meeting, message, handoff, customer call, date, or moment. This prevents the receiver from having to search their entire history for what you mean. Then name Behavior: the observable action. Use verbs a camera could capture: interrupted, sent, missed, changed, asked, copied, arrived, summarized. Avoid motives and traits like careless, defensive, lazy, sloppy, negative, or political. Then state Impact: what changed because of that behavior. Impact can be practical, relational, strategic, or…
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