Upward Feedback Planner

Check why you want to say it, pick a safe moment, build the message around one event and one request, and plan for the first reaction, so the conversation changes how you work together.

Employee voice and silence is strong research (Detert & Burris, 2007; review: Morrison, 2023). SBI is a practitioner format from the Center for Creative Leadership (Weitzel, 2000), not tested as a package; feedback in general has effects that vary in size and direction (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). The two-to-four-week follow-up is a rule of thumb.

Use it when:

• Something your manager does makes your work harder, and it has happened more than once.
• Your manager does something well that you want more of.
• Your manager asks for feedback and you want to give a useful answer instead of "it's all fine".

Skip it when:

• The pattern is hostile, humiliating or unfair, not just inconvenient: use 9.6 Difficult Manager Playbook.
• The issue is with a peer or someone you lead: use 4.6 Conflict & Feedback Guide.

Giving your manager feedback is less a wording problem than a risk calculation. Research on employee voice, a strong field, shows that whether people speak up depends partly on what their leader's behavior signals about the safety of doing so; Detert and Burris (2007) put it as whether the door is really open. So this planner spends as much effort on purpose, moment and likely reactions as on words.

The words follow SBI, the Center for Creative Leadership's format: the situation, the observable behavior and its impact (Weitzel, 2000). That is practitioner craft. The format is untested as a package, and feedback in general can help or backfire, which is why the structure keeps the message on events, not character.

Step 1 screens out venting. Step 2 manages risk: private, calm, announced. Step 3 adds a request, since your manager cannot act on an impact alone. Step 4 treats defensiveness as a normal first response. Step 5 asks whether you acknowledged any change, which keeps the door open next time.

Write what you want to change or keep, and what you want to happen afterwards. If the honest answer is that you mostly want to vent, talk to someone else first.

Strong answer: "I want new work to reach me before Friday afternoon, so I can plan the week and keep client deadlines. Afterwards: a shared way to flag what is coming." Not: "I want them to see how unreasonable this is."

What I want to change or reinforce:

Why it matters (for my work, the team or them):

What I want to happen after the conversation:

Illustrative example: the roles and the company are made up.

A project engineer at a construction company in Norway keeps getting new urgent tasks from the site manager late on Friday afternoons, which means weekend work or slipped deadlines on other jobs.

Step 1: purpose: get new work before Friday afternoon, not prove a point.

Step 2: the next one-to-one, with "how work comes to me" on the agenda.

Step 3: "The last three Fridays, around 4 pm, new tasks came in marked urgent for Monday. I worked two weekends, and the drawing review for the school project slipped. When you know something is coming, could you give me a heads-up by Thursday? If it is truly last-minute, could we agree together what drops?"

Step 4: the offer: "I will send my plan for the next week every Thursday, so you can see what is in flight."

Step 5: the site manager had not realized; the late requests came from the project director. They agreed the Thursday plan is where upcoming work gets flagged, and the site manager started pushing back on the director's timing. Three weeks later the engineer thanked the manager for the change.