The 4 Box Feedback Model: A Better Alternative to the Feedback Sandwich

[00:00:00] So the Feedback Sandwich, are you excited or are you cringing at the thought? My guess is you're probably cringing. Well, I'm going to have an alternative for you today. Hi, I'm Andrea Adams and today on the HR Hub, I'm talking with Russell Stratton. He's a leadership champ at Blue Gem Learning here in Calgary. Russell's a leadership trainer and coach. He's also the author of a book called I Need To Effing Talk To You.

[00:00:29] It's a catchy title. It's a book on Navigating Difficult Workplace Conversations. And today he's going to talk about a feedback model with us that's better than the feedback sandwich. Hi, Russell. How are you? I'm great. Great. Well, thanks very much for the invite. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Okay. All right. So we're going to talk about a 4 Box model of reflective feedback.

[00:00:56] So how is this different than other feedback models? Okay, thank you. Well, probably the most common feedback model that you mentioned in the slide was the feedback sandwich, which I think most of our viewers and listeners will be familiar with, you know. Yes. I tell you something positive, then I give you something for improvement, and then I finish with something positive. And whilst that works well to a degree, I think it's been around so long, people are used to it.

[00:01:26] And also there is the fact that people are waiting for, you know, the second shoe to drop in the middle. Where's the butt? You know? Mm-hmm. Yes. And this first came to my attention when I was teaching the feedback model to some ex-military and first responders. And one of the guys said, oh yeah, this is the shit sandwich. And I hadn't heard that before. And this is back in the, you know, many years ago. And I said, shit sandwich.

[00:01:52] He goes, yeah, well, you put a bread of bread on the top, then you put this large piece of shit in the middle, and then you're going to get a little bit of bread at the bottom. And we all know what's coming. And that got me thinking that, yeah, actually that can be true, and that can have it could be perceived. The second reason why I was not so keen on it is that the person that did most of the talking was the manager, supervisor, the person that's giving the feedback. And it's very pluripassive from the recipient's point of view.

[00:02:20] They're basically sitting there listening to you tell them. So what I found in my, you know, research years back was something called the four box reflective model. And this had, I think, the benefits of the feedback sandwich, looking at both positives and negatives. But it also had the advantage that the person doing most of the talking is the person receiving end. Okay. So if I just walk our viewers through this. Yes, please.

[00:02:47] So the first box would really be to ask somebody how the project been going. What's the positives of the last week? What are you pleased about? Those type of sort of questions that open up somebody to tell you about what they've done well. And then as the, let's say, supervisor in this role, you're listening to them tell you what's been going well, what they've achieved, what they're pleased about. And let's say it's to do with a particular project that they're working on.

[00:03:15] And then that's the first part. So they get a chance to talk and you can then evaluate how accurately they're evaluating their own performance. But they also feel that they've been heard. Yeah. So the first box, because I'm imagining a box right now with four quadrants. And the first box is get them to tell you about what they've done. What they've done well. What's been a success. Yes, however you phrase it. But it's what have you done well. What's been a success.

[00:03:43] What are you pleased about when related to the particular topic that you're going to be doing, giving your feedback on. Okay. So that gets them talking and then you get all the positives about them feeling good about the fact that they're talking about what they've done well. The second box is where you as the supervisor can then top up that feedback with anything else that you've learnt that has been good about what they've been doing during that review period.

[00:04:07] So perhaps, you know, you'd attended a meeting where they talked about the report that you'd produced and how good it was and how it really hit the mark. You wouldn't necessarily know that, but I can tell you that and say, oh yeah, that was great what you did there, Andrea. And also, did you know that, you know, Jim was only commenting on how well that was received by the senior team? Okay. So you can, you, that's your box two. You're allowed to, you know, then you top it up. Then you flip the script.

[00:04:37] Box three is what can you do even better? And I think even better is key because then it applies to anybody who could be a top performer and they're really just topping up their performance or it could be somebody that's less effective in their performance. You're giving them the opportunity to sort of be open about how they're doing and being able to explain. So it could be by asking you, what can you do even better?

[00:05:05] And you say, well, I really liked the presentation that I gave at the management meeting last week, except I got a couple of the figures mixed up and I ended up waffling a little bit for a couple of minutes. And I didn't think it went as well. People seemed confused and there were questions afterwards. If I could do it again, I would have done these things. Okay. So it's a chance for you to be, you know, for people to be honest about their performance there.

[00:05:31] And then the box four is to top up anything else that you're aware of that they need to know. So that's the part where you're traditionally. Okay. So these are the things that I think you need to improve on. Okay. So, yeah, that was, I was going to interrupt you there and ask you that the third box is them talking. The fourth box is you topping up. Yeah. So you're really just alternating. You ask them what went well. That's box one.

[00:05:58] Once you've got to the end of that, you go about what you add up top up anything else that you think they've done. Well, box three is what could you do even better? Once they've told you what they could do even better, you top up with anything else that they need to know. Maybe they're not aware of or your observations. So each time it's giving the person the opportunity to talk about their performance, honestly.

[00:06:23] And then you are then topping it up rather than you're telling them what they did well, which they may already know. And you're telling them what they did poorly or could improve upon, which they may already know as well. So you're giving them the opportunity to come up because if they own it, it's a lot better than if they're just sitting there passively receiving it from you. And it makes them think. Now I've tried this with leaders or use this with leaders for 25 years.

[00:06:51] And typically a lot of people say, well, you know, what happens if people don't say anything because they're not used to saying anything? So one of the things I would say to people in trying is you need to try this model out and you need to give it time. Because if you're working with a team who has never been asked about their own performance, they've only been told about their own performance. They've been asked about it. It may be a little bit clunky to start off with.

[00:07:19] You may have to have a little, maybe get people to give some questions in advance for them to think about, then to come to the meeting prepared. And then when they talk about it and they realize that nothing, in that way, nothing bad happens to them. That's why a lot of people are receiving feedback. I mean, most going for an appraisal, I know can be quite a stressful situation, not just for the supervisor or manager, but also for the member of the team.

[00:07:46] Because sometimes you've had terrible experiences of stuff being, you know, just sort of people being surprised by content. No one said anything to me and you're bringing up something from six months ago. So I think just giving people a chance to get used to that model. But if you persevere, I can, I would give it a Russell Stratton guarantee that if you persevere with it, maybe you have to go through a couple of iterations. Suddenly completely is a game changer for how you do feedback with your team.

[00:08:15] Okay. To really help this model sink in, I want to do, I want you and I to do a role play. Oh, okay. I'm going to be difficult. No. I don't, I'm not that great at thinking on the fly, but we're going to give it a go. I'm going to be the employee. You are going to be the leader. Yep. Okay. I've got an example. We're good. Okay.

[00:08:44] So we're in, we're in box one. So tell me about this new editing technique you use. What went well? Well, I, I don't mind video editing, but it's the last part, the tedium of uploading it here, uploading it there, tagging all the stuff you have to do. And so I learned how to get AI to help me with all of that. Oh, that's excellent. Well, tell me what, tell me one thing that you learned. What was one new skill that you learned?

[00:09:13] Oh, I learned about creating skills in Claude. That's what I learned and I learned how to do it. So that's exciting. It worked. Yeah. Worked well. And your expectation for next week is it's going to save you. What's your estimate in terms of time? Well, it's probably going to save me about 40 minutes, I would guess. Okay. So that's something that we can check on next week when we have our check in to see if it's giving you the benefits that you expected.

[00:09:39] Well, one thing I noticed is certainly some comments about your latest video. People really recognize the sort of professional, those, they really like the clips, the stuff that you posted on TikTok has got some great traction, some great feedback. So I think it's certainly been working for you. So if I was looking, reviewing this, what could you do even better from that experience? Well, I kind of got tired.

[00:10:08] It's hard to learn a new skill. And so I didn't quite, I didn't finish it. I still have to sit there. And if we're talking about AI automations, I shouldn't have to sit there. I should just do it all. I suppose that's cutting corners. I kind of cut corners. Okay. So what would you need to be able to do the whole thing rather than just sort of stopping part way through?

[00:10:31] I guess some, maybe some support, but also just like, maybe like carving out more time for myself to actually make it work the way I want it to work. So if you looked at your schedule for next week, what could you, you know, carve out in your schedule to give you that little bit extra time? If I'm honest, it won't be next week because I'm going to run it next week for the first time and see how it goes.

[00:10:56] I'm going to experience it and then, and then over time experience where I need to be more efficient and make it actually do the things. Okay. So one of the things that I perhaps look at when we look at your calendar through is that you have several, um, catch up meetings throughout the week that you've got booked in. Um, I'm not sure whether you need all of those. So perhaps you want to give a bit of critical evaluation.

[00:11:22] Do I need all, all four of those catch up meetings with, with other team members? Could I move that down to two or three? Cause if you did, that could release up at least 90 minutes of your time. I'm, I'm stepping out of the role play. Well, you just gave me some, you just gave me some, um, subtle feed about feedback about being a chatty Cathy too many coffee breaks.

[00:11:52] That was pretty great. Um, I like my coffees. Okay. That was interesting. There were some things in there that you did that I wasn't expecting. Like, um, you asked me about, I think development and support you need. They're not captured super well in the four box model. So the question about the support you need that goes into box two.

[00:12:17] And again, I say it can, it can, it can do if that's the point to when it's, it's came up, cause you'd identified something that you wanted to do. So it seemed pertinent to ask you at that point. Okay. One of the things I say with, with, with any, any sort of model is it's a guide. It's a framework to use. I need in my head that I need to take you through four stages as, as we described. And I think we illustrated to our, to our viewers.

[00:12:42] Um, if as a point to say, well, in a traditional model, I would normally ask that question at the end, but it seemed more pertinent to ask it a bit earlier. I'm the viewer, ask it when it seems most pertinent that it would be useful to the recipient, which is you, um, rather than being hide bound into then say, well, what support do you need? And you start talking about something else. And I'm going, no, no, no, what you said earlier on about this. So I think, you know, strike when the iron's hot, I think is the phrase that gets used.

[00:13:11] But, um, so yeah, that would be when, when I, why, why I put that in rather than leaving it right to the end. It's like, this is a development piece. It would be okay. Well, why not ask it now? Because you can still be doing something even better in something that's good. So. Right. Okay. Okay. That was actually, that was quite useful. Um, I imagine that sometimes the four box model kind of falls flat. When does it typically fall most flat and how do we fix it? Okay.

[00:13:41] Well, the most, I alluded to this earlier on. I mean, the most, the most often, I mean, people on the receiving end are just not used to it. You know, if you think about there, when I was asking that the questions, we were probably what 60, 40, 70, 30 of you talking and me talking, and people just often are not used to that depending on the industry. Um, I, where people just not expecting to be asked.

[00:14:07] So that's one of the first things for them, for the recipient that they're just, um, they're just not used to it. So it takes, that's why I say it takes a couple of iterations. If this was the first time we had that conversation and then we had the conversation using the same process next week, it would be that much easier. We did it two weeks time. You would be knowing, okay, I know what, how this is going to work. I'm prepared. Um, and it makes it, uh, more, more straightforward. So one is just for the recipient time and practice.

[00:14:33] So giving somebody some questions up front to say, this is what I'd like you to think about before we have our conversation helps in that, in that way. So they can think about it. Otherwise they're trying to think off the top of their head. Um, from the, from the leader's point of view, the piece that can come up is that they basically, uh, are either trying to push it too quickly because what they really want to do is to get made. Okay.

[00:15:03] And I always go, look, if, if really we have to, this has been a complete, um, how do I put this in a polite way? Um, a snafu or something. Yeah. And your boss has been onto you. Like you need to get this sorted now, then you're probably not going to have, let's do the four box reflective model. How are things for you? You might have to get straight into that. Um, what the issue was, cause that's, what's been sitting on your, um, your phone's been ringing off the hook or something since it, since it occurred.

[00:15:30] So I think that's a bit for managers who either trying to move through it too quickly and not letting somebody, you know, go through their thought process, or if it's something that actually needs to be addressed of a problem, address the problem. Don't try and fold that up into a feedback model. You know, use something like, um, the beef model, uh, that we talk about in our book, uh, that Ken and I coauthored on, I need to effing talk to you, which I think we may be talking

[00:15:58] about on a, on a future interview, but, uh, then that would be more appropriate at that time. Do you have any coaching questions you typically ask? And because people are mostly nervous about the feedback part, like the negative feedback part, do you have any good tips about coaching questions you ask at that stage? Well, one of the things I often like to start is, is somebody's good to me. He says, talk, you know, talk me through what happened.

[00:16:25] So just getting them to talk about what occurred, because it's not really a necessarily a, a, a, question you might be asking at that stage, but you want them to, um, just go through in their own mind recollection so that you can get that big picture and then you can start to go and, um, funnel down into, into specifics. All right. So one of the things often would be to get people to think of how to resolve it might be, um,

[00:16:55] if you had no time constraints, what could you do? If you had a, have you ever had a similar situation? What did you do then? Or like a conflict situation to say, somebody said, well, I'm dealing with conflicts. I don't really like that. So have you, have you ever dealt with conflict before? Take it out of the context of what they're doing, uh, maybe in your personal life, maybe in some other previous job. How did you deal with that? Because unless somebody is pretty much lived under a rock, they would have had some type

[00:17:24] of issues that they've dealt with before in a different context. And so I think it's helping people to take it from that context into the context that they're thinking about now. So they might say, oh yeah, you know, this is how I deal with. This is how I deal with my kids when they don't do what they're asking them to do. And I do this, this and this. And you go, oh, okay. So what, what lessons could you learn from that? If you're dealing with a coworker and they go, well, perhaps not lose my temper. Okay. That would be a good, that might be a good one. Yeah.

[00:17:54] Cause you don't do that with your kids cause it's, you know, it's, it's self-defeating. So we, perhaps that would be something else that you could, you could use. So I think the, um, asking for the areas for improvement always starts with a question I ask you, which is what could you do even better? Mm hmm. Even better. Yeah. And the even better is key because then it can see, I could, you know, and I have to say, uh, uh, you know, rather than, you know, how do you, how do you make sure you don't screw up again? Mm hmm. Yeah.

[00:18:21] Cause even better had, has that slightly more positive tone to it. And then try and dig down into that. When somebody's one of the, they're talking to you about, then maybe start to, we'll talk me through how from start to finish. You know, there was the argument talk about the conflict cause there's to do a lot of conflict stuff with people. Yeah. So you've had this argument with a co-worker, got into a shouting match. Tell me, let's talk me through from when you first went in the room with them. Let's just go right through from the beginning to end. And then to not just take the 60 second clip that's on YouTube.

[00:18:51] Now of you screaming at your co-worker, let's have the bit that what was the lead up. Yeah. And I using analogy, like using a sporting analogy, anyone's watched hockey games or watch, watch football games and you watch an incident where there's, you know, there's a foul or it's a retaliation. If you only see that you need to watch what happened before. So when I was working in minor hockey, they used to say, um, you know, I wanted to see the video for the 60 seconds before that incident.

[00:19:19] I want to see what led up to it, not just the incident itself, because then you go, ah, so this is the bit where you've seen this happening. And then you see the guy swing his stick. And then, you know, that's why the penalty was called. What you didn't see beforehand is somebody else hacking at him all the way across the ice. And then he turns around and throws his stick at them. And that's what gets called. So you needed to see the whole passage of play. Same sort of thing with people here. Well, let's talk me through the whole thing. What happened?

[00:19:45] You know, the, the example I was doing too early on about the presentation, okay, there was a presentation he did and there was that bit that sort of didn't go very well. Let's talk through how you structured the presentation. Walk me through it till you got to that point. Let's not just necessarily just figure fixate on that one bit that didn't go well, because there could be some clues in there as to why that didn't go as the person hoped. So if someone wants to learn about this model or about your work or get a, get a copy of

[00:20:14] your book, which has the most awesome name ever, um, where should they go? Um, easiest place is to the website. So, uh, www.bluegenlearning.com. Um, there you can order a copy of the book. You can also have a look at the blog that I have. And if you search for, uh, feedback models or, um, difficult conversations, there are a

[00:20:41] whole series of, uh, posts in there. Uh, some including video that people can watch or read, um, and they're available to you. Alternatively, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to connect with new contacts on LinkedIn, particularly if they say, I saw you on, um, Andrea's show. Please can I connect? Right. Right. Well, thanks, Russell. I really enjoyed that.

[00:21:08] I especially appreciated the demonstration that was useful because, uh, it was, it was less robotic actually than I was expecting. So part of what my takeaway is something that you actually didn't mention in the model is that it actually can reframe the thinking and perspective of the manager because it, I think it will help to also reflect on the positive, not just dwell on the negative, which sometimes I see frustrated clients doing.

[00:21:37] Uh, but that was great and so useful. Uh, I've done other episodes, uh, related to conflict resolution. One of those is right here. Thanks for watching out there and see you next time.