Leverage SBI for Challenging Conversations

One of the leadership and drive questions that throws people off is recounting a story of when they had to give difficult feedback.

If you struggle with this prompt, consider leveraging the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) Framework:

• Situation

• Behavior

• Impact

Think about it, last time you effectively gave great (but difficult to hear feedback), you did the following:

• Explained the Situation While the problem is front and center for you, it might not be for your listener, so you need to get them on the same page before delivering your message

• Describe the Behavior Help the see how their behavior is being perceived by others. Being exact, so they can relate. No one likes vague examples that leave the searching to understand the problem.

• Define the Impact Help them understand the impact their behavior is having on the team/product/partners, etc.
  

This is a great framework for addressing the following questions:

• Tell me the time you had to deliver difficult feedback.

• Tell me about a time you received difficult-to-hear feedback.

• Tell me a time you had a disagreement with your engineering partner.

You can use this framework in many ways to give a strong response to a difficult question. You might have ignored it in your last work training, but it is very helpful to leverage in real life and in interviews.

See your stories through this lens and you will find the storytelling comes much faster.