Feedback vs Feedforward: Why Your Team Defends the Past
| Feedforward is Marshall Goldsmith’s idea, published in Leader to Leader in 2002. Instead of reviewing what someone did wrong, you ask what would make the next attempt ten percent better. Feedback puts the past on trial, and people defend the past because they live there.Chris Dyer, named the #1 Leadership Speaker to Follow in 2026 by MSN.com, applies feedforward inside the weekly one-on-one rather than in executive coaching sessions, which is a harder setting than the one Goldsmith designed it for. This guide covers why feedback fails a third of the time, five moves that make feedforward work between a manager and a direct report, and when you still owe someone real feedback. |
Table of Contents
- Where feedforward came from
- Why feedback fails more often than anyone admits
- What feedforward actually is
- Five moves that make feedforward work in a one-on-one
- Feedback compared with feedforward
- Where I got this wrong
- When you still owe someone feedback
- Frequently asked questions
Where Feedforward Came From
Marshall Goldsmith coined feedforward and laid it out in “Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback,” published in Leader to Leader in the summer of 2002 by Jossey-Bass and the Drucker Foundation. Goldsmith is an executive coach, and he built feedforward as a workshop exercise. He has since run it with more than thirty thousand leaders.
The exercise is simple. Pick one behavior you want to change. Describe it to another participant. That person gives you two suggestions for the future. You are allowed exactly one response, which is thank you. Then you switch roles and do it again with someone new, six or seven times in fifteen minutes.
His core argument fits in one sentence. Feedback focuses on the past, which cannot be changed, and the future is the only part anyone can do anything about.
Chris Dyer’s contribution is not the concept. It is the setting. Goldsmith’s exercise works partly because the two people are strangers with no power difference and nothing riding on the exchange. A weekly one-on-one has none of those conditions, and that is where most managers need this the most.
Why Feedback Fails More Often Than Anyone Admits
Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin in 1996 that should be better known than it is. They pulled 607 effect sizes across 23,663 observations to answer a question nobody had properly asked: does feedback actually improve performance?
On average, yes. The mean effect was moderate and positive.
In more than a third of cases, feedback made performance worse.
The mechanism they identified is the part that matters for managers. Feedback effectiveness drops as the receiver’s attention moves away from the task and toward the self. When feedback lands as information about a task, people use it. When it lands as information about who they are, they defend.
That is why the delivery advice most managers were trained on does so little. Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone of the Harvard Negotiation Project spent decades on this and reached the same place from the other direction in their 2014 book Thanks for the Feedback. The problem is usually not the sending. It is the receiving, because the receiver gets triggered by the content, by who is delivering it, or by what it implies about their identity.
You can soften your tone perfectly and still be asking someone to stand trial for something they cannot change.
What Feedforward Actually Is
A feedforward conversation replaces the review with a question. Next time this comes up, what would make it ten percent better?
Two things change when you ask it that way. The event under discussion has not happened, so nobody has to defend a version of it. And because nothing is being assessed, attention stays on the task instead of drifting toward the person’s own standing.
Chris Dyer teaches the ten percent number deliberately. Asking for a better outcome invites a person to explain why the last one was not their fault. Asking for ten percent invites a small mechanical adjustment, and small mechanical adjustments are the only kind anyone actually makes.
Five Moves That Make Feedforward Work in a One-on-One
Goldsmith’s exercise runs between strangers. A one-on-one runs between a person and the person who decides their raise. These five moves are what closes that gap.
1. Move from the incident to the pattern
Managers reach for feedforward and then anchor it to a specific event, which reopens the trial anyway. “On Tuesday’s call, next time what would make it better?” is still about Tuesday’s call.
Name the recurring situation instead. Client escalation calls. The first ten minutes of a design review. Once the subject is a category rather than an incident, the person can think about it without also managing their record.
2. Let them pick the target
In Goldsmith’s exercise the participant chooses their own behavior to work on. That detail carries most of the weight and it is the first thing managers drop.
Ask what they want to be better at, and work on that, even when it is not the thing you would have picked. If the thing you would have picked is serious enough that you cannot wait, it is not a feedforward topic. It is a feedback topic, and the last section of this article covers that.
3. Give two ideas and stop
Goldsmith’s framing is worth borrowing almost word for word. Two ideas, offered in the spirit they are given, and if only one is useful the person is still one ahead.
Two also caps your own authority. A manager who offers eight suggestions has issued instructions. A manager who offers two has offered options, and the person still gets to choose, which is what keeps the conversation from becoming an evaluation with better manners.
4. Hold the line on thank you
The only permitted reply to feedforward is thank you. No explanation of why the current approach exists, no context, no history.
Managers find this rule uncomfortable and employees find it liberating. One of Goldsmith’s participants described the reason well: not having to compose a clever reply frees up all your energy for listening. Chris Dyer says the rule out loud at the start so the silence afterward reads as the format rather than as disapproval.
5. Run it in both directions in the same meeting
This is the move that makes feedforward survive the power difference, and it is the one Goldsmith’s stranger-to-stranger design does not need.
Ask for feedforward on yourself in the same conversation. What would make my project updates ten percent more useful to you? Then say thank you and nothing else, in front of them. A manager who takes suggestions without explaining themselves has demonstrated that the format is safe far more convincingly than any preamble could.
Feedback Compared With Feedforward
| Feedback | Feedforward | |
| What it examines | A specific past event that both people remember differently | A specific future situation that has not happened yet |
| What the receiver does | Assembles a defense, because the event is part of their record | Collects options, because nothing is at stake yet |
| Who can give it | Someone who witnessed the event | Anyone who understands the task, including a peer who was not there |
| Typical response | Explanation, context, and the reasons it happened that way | Thank you |
| What it produces | Agreement or disagreement about the past | Two or three things to try next time |
| Where it belongs | Performance conversations, documented patterns, anything with consequences attached | Weekly one-on-ones, project debriefs, skill building |
| Main failure mode | Attention shifts from the task to the self and performance drops | Real problems get restated as gentle suggestions and never named |
Where I Got This Wrong
I need to own something, and I am on the receiving end of this one.
During the recession I was part of an Adaptive Business Leaders roundtable that met monthly. Each CEO took a turn presenting their business to the group, and the gloves came off. When my turn came I walked everyone through PeopleG2, our recession problems, our survival strategy. I thought I was ready for hard questions.
Then James Meyers looked at me across the table and said, “Maybe you’re not the right person to be CEO.”
I sat there. He said it again. “You might not be the best person to be the CEO of your own company.”
His delivery was fine. His care was real. He was not showing off and he was not wrong.
It took me three months to hear it.
James said it in February. I did not actually receive it until May. In between I heard that sentence in the shower, driving to work, lying awake at 2 a.m. Every single time it arrived as a gut punch, because it was not information about my company. It was information about me, and my whole identity was wrapped around being a successful founder.
What finally shifted was the framing, and I got there without any help. He did not mean I should hand over the keys. He meant the person I was right then was not equipped for what was coming, and I needed to evolve into someone who was.
That is a feedforward question. What would make me a better CEO for the next eighteen months? Had anyone put it to me in those words in February, I might have spent three months building instead of three months defending.
I do not say this to criticize James. His courage that day changed my company. I say it because I was the smartest guy in the room about my own business and I still burned a quarter of a year proving to myself that my past was defensible. Your team will do the same thing, and they will not have a roundtable to work it out in.
When You Still Owe Someone Feedback
Feedforward has a failure mode and it is worth naming plainly, because the enthusiastic version of this article would skip it.
Anything with consequences attached requires feedback. If a pattern is going to affect someone’s rating, their compensation, or whether they keep the job, they are entitled to hear about it directly and early enough to change it. Wrapping that in a future-focused suggestion is not kindness. It is a manager protecting themselves from an uncomfortable conversation while the employee walks toward a surprise.
Chris Dyer uses a simple split. If the person would be blindsided by a written version of this six months from now, it is feedback and it happens today. If it is a skill they are building with no verdict pending, it is feedforward.
Documented patterns sit on the feedback side, and so does any behavior affecting a colleague’s safety or dignity. Everything else in a weekly one-on-one is fair game for the ten percent question.
Book Chris Dyer for Your Next Event
Chris Dyer speaks to leadership teams and conferences about the conversations that decide whether people grow or dig in. Named the #1 Leadership Speaker to Follow in 2026 by MSN.com, the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture by Inc. Magazine, and ranked #15 on the Global Gurus Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals for 2026, Chris Dyer has delivered more than 300 keynotes across 20 countries for organizations including NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Southwest Airlines, General Motors, and MetLife, with a 4.9 out of 5 average audience rating.
To check availability, visit chrisdyer.com/speaking.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between feedback and feedforward?
Feedback examines a past event, which the receiver often defends because it is part of their record. Feedforward asks what would make the next attempt better, which gives the receiver nothing to defend. Marshall Goldsmith introduced the term in Leader to Leader in 2002, arguing that feedback focuses on the one thing nobody can change.
Is feedforward better than feedback?
For skill building in a weekly one-on-one, usually yes. For anything with consequences attached, no. Chris Dyer uses one test: if the person would be blindsided by a written version of this six months from now, they are owed direct feedback today, and dressing it up as a future-focused suggestion protects the manager rather than the employee.
Does feedback actually hurt performance?
Sometimes. Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi analyzed 607 effect sizes across 23,663 observations in Psychological Bulletin in 1996 and found that while feedback improved performance on average, more than a third of feedback interventions made performance worse. Effectiveness dropped as the receiver’s attention moved away from the task and toward themselves.
How do you give feedforward in a one-on-one?
Chris Dyer recommends five moves: name the recurring pattern rather than a specific incident, let the person choose what they want to work on, offer two ideas and stop, hold the rule that the only reply is thank you, and ask for feedforward on yourself in the same meeting. That last one matters most, because Goldsmith designed the exercise for strangers with equal standing and a manager has neither.
What do you say instead of giving feedback?
Ask what would make the next one ten percent better. The specific number does the work. Asking for a better outcome invites someone to explain why the last one was not their fault, and asking for ten percent invites a small mechanical adjustment they can actually make.
Sources
Marshall Goldsmith, “Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback,” Leader to Leader, Summer 2002 (Jossey-Bass and the Drucker Foundation). marshallgoldsmith.com/post/try-feedforward-instead-of-feedback
Avraham N. Kluger and Angelo DeNisi, “The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 2 (1996): 254 to 284. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254
Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Viking, 2014).
Go Deeper
The James Meyers story and the framework for handling hard truths appear in Moments That Matter: See, Shape, and Scale What Counts, the fourth book from Chris Dyer, which Marshall Goldsmith endorsed. The companion workbook is free with no email required at chrisdyer.com/moments.
To bring Chris Dyer to your conference or leadership offsite, visit chrisdyer.com/speaking.
