Kao: Constructive feedback must focus strictly on motivating future behavior change
Wes Kao · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact · Apr 6, 2025 · at 1:06:02
Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven and executive communication coach, discusses her 'strategy, not self-expression' framework for delivering critical feedback with Lenny Rachitsky.
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“A better way of getting feedback is thinking about motivating the person's behavior change. The goal is behavior change. So if that's the goal, trim everything else that you were about to say, but does not actually contribute to that goal and only keep the part that will make the person want to change, help them understand the benefit to, you know, them as well as to the people around them. And so Usually for me, that's trimming 90% of the initial stuff that I want to say and really keeping only that 10%.”
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