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The SBI Feedback Model: Situation, Behavior, Impact, With Examples

What is the SBI feedback model?

The SBI feedback model (Situation, Behavior, Impact) is a three-part way to give feedback on a specific moment without judging the person. This page explains each part with worked positive and corrective examples, the SBI-I variant that adds Intent, what SBIR or SBI plus a request means, common mistakes, how SBI compares with the feedback sandwich, and how feedforward differs. Written to be useful whether or not you ever open IX Coach.

SBI stands for Situation, Behavior, Impact. It is a three-part way to give feedback: you name the specific situation, describe the behavior you observed in it, and say what effect that behavior had. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) publishes and teaches it as a feedback tool, and says its research found the approach reduces anxiety about giving feedback and reduces defensiveness in the person receiving it. The structure keeps the conversation on observable facts instead of judgments about a person.

This page covers what each part means, a worked example of corrective and positive feedback, the SBI-I variant that adds Intent, what people usually mean when they search for SBIR or SBI plus a request, common mistakes, how SBI differs from the feedback sandwich, how it relates to Marshall Goldsmith's feedforward, and a few ways to practice. It is written to be useful whether or not you ever use IX Coach.

What each part of SBI means

Situation is the specific moment you are talking about: when and where it happened. CCL's own example opens with a time and a place, something like this morning at the 11 am team meeting, and contrasts that with vague timing. The point is that both people can recall the same moment, which is harder to do with always or lately.

Behavior is what a person could have seen or heard. CCL's example is the difference between saying you interrupted me while I was telling the team about the monthly budget and saying you were rude. The first describes an action. The second is a label, and a label is an interpretation the other person can reasonably argue with.

Impact is the effect the behavior had, usually on you, on other people, or on the work. CCL's examples are phrased as the speaker's own reaction, such as feeling frustrated because an interruption broke their train of thought. Because it is your reaction, it is something you can speak to directly without claiming to know what the other person meant.

A worked example: corrective feedback

Here is one way a manager might say it. In yesterday's client call, about ten minutes in, you spoke over Priya twice while she was answering the pricing question. The client ended the call without an answer, and I noticed Priya stopped adding anything after that.

The situation is the client call and the ten-minute mark. The behavior is speaking over Priya twice, which a recording would show. The impact has two parts: the client's unanswered question and a change in a colleague's participation. Notice what is missing: no word like dismissive, no claim about why it happened, and no always.

Compare it with a version that skips the structure: you're always cutting people off and it makes the team look bad. Nothing in that sentence can be checked, the word always invites a search for counterexamples, and it describes a trait instead of a moment. SBI does not guarantee a calm reply, but it removes several of the easiest things to argue with.

A worked example: positive feedback

CCL says SBI can be used for positive feedback too, and gives an example of describing the effect with words like happy or proud. A positive version might sound like this. In Thursday's planning meeting, you asked the vendor to walk through the timeline before anyone agreed to the date. That caught the overlap with the holiday week, and it saved us from promising something we could not deliver.

Specific praise tells a person what to repeat. Good job gives them a feeling but not much information about which part to do again.

SBI-I: adding Intent

CCL's extension of the tool is called SBI-I, sometimes written SBII. After situation, behavior and impact, the fourth step is to ask about the other person's intent and then actively listen. CCL says this turns one-way feedback into a two-way conversation. Its example questions are what were you hoping to accomplish with that, and what was going on for you.

The reason the intent question comes last is that you can only ask it honestly once you have described the behavior without assuming a motive. The gap between what someone meant and what landed is often where the useful part of the conversation is. In the Priya example, the person who spoke over her might have been trying to rescue a deal, which changes what a good next time looks like.

SBIR, SBI plus a request, and what people mean by the extra letter

People search for SBIR or SBI plus an ask because feedback that stops at impact can leave the other person knowing something went wrong without knowing what you would like instead. The version most often described adds a fourth step in which you state a specific request for next time.

A point of accuracy: the CCL page this article draws on describes SBI and SBI-I, and does not describe a request step. One third-party coaching article presents SBI plus an ask, written SBI+A, as its own author's extension and does not credit CCL for the added step. So SBIR is better understood as a common adaptation than as part of the CCL tool, and different writers use the letter differently.

If you add a request, keep it behavioral and small. In future client calls, would you hold your point until the other person has finished? is something a person can do. Please be more respectful gives them nothing to do. It also helps to say the request as a question, since the other person may have information you do not.

Common mistakes

The most common slip is a judgment dressed as a behavior. You were being passive-aggressive sounds like a description but is still a label. A useful test is whether a video recording would show it. Interrupting twice would appear. Dismissiveness would not.

A second is a vague situation, such as recently or in meetings. Without a shared moment the other person can retreat into exceptions. A third is an impact that is inflated or invented to make the point land harder. People tend to notice, and it weakens the rest of what you said. Stay with the effect that actually happened.

A fourth is delivery. SBI is a structure for the words, not a guarantee about timing or setting. Feedback delivered in front of others, or in the middle of a tense moment, can land badly however carefully it is phrased. Last, using SBI only to criticize can teach people to hear the structure as a warning sign.

Explore: the sbi feedback model

SBI compared with the feedback sandwich

The feedback sandwich places a criticism between two compliments. SBI works differently: it does not rely on surrounding praise, and instead makes the criticism itself specific and factual. The two can be combined or kept separate, and nothing in SBI forbids you from also saying what went well.

The evidence on the sandwich is thin and mixed rather than settled. A 2020 randomized study by Prochazka, Ovcari and Durinik in Learning and Motivation, with 91 university students working on math problems, found that students who got sandwich feedback prepared longer and solved more problems on a second set than students who got only corrective feedback or none. The authors themselves describe this as only partial evidence, because it tested one condition, computer-written feedback on a math test, and they say it is not yet known whether the order matters or just the presence of positive statements. I did not find comparable controlled evidence for SBI versus the sandwich, so this page does not claim one is better.

Feedforward versus feedback

Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach, wrote an article titled Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback. His argument is that feedback focuses on the past, on what has already occurred, while feedforward is a suggestion about the future. In his exercise, you pick one behavior you want to change, describe it to another person, and ask for two suggestions for the future. You listen, take notes, and say thank you without commenting on the ideas. People who know your history are asked not to give feedback about the past.

Goldsmith says he observed more than thirty thousand leaders do the exercise and that the reactions were almost always very positive. That is his own account of an exercise, not a controlled comparison, and the article cites no data showing feedforward works better than feedback.

The two are not rivals in a practical sense. SBI is for when something specific has happened and the other person needs to know how it landed. Feedforward is for when you want ideas about what to do next, and it does not require the other person to have watched you. A common pairing is to use SBI to describe the moment, then ask what the person might do differently, which borrows the forward-looking spirit of feedforward.

Explore: feedforward

How to practice it

Start with positive feedback, because it is lower stakes and builds the habit. Pick one thing someone did this week and write out the situation, the behavior, and the impact in three plain sentences.

For corrective feedback, write the three parts down first. Read the behavior line and ask whether a camera would have captured it. Strike any adjective that labels a person. Then check that the impact is something that actually happened.

Say it soon enough that the moment is still shared, and in private. After the impact, ask a real question. What was going on for you is an open question. Does that make sense invites a yes. Listen to the answer, since you may have part of the situation wrong.

If your feedback keeps going sideways, it can help to notice what you are bracing for. Rehearsing with a friend or a coach before the conversation can show you where your wording drifts toward judgment.

Explore: radical candor · nonviolent communication · active listening · crucial conversations

Where coaching fits

SBI covers the words. It does not decide whether to speak, how you feel when you do, or what you do with a reply you did not expect. Those are often the harder part, and they are the kind of thing a coaching conversation is designed to help with: noticing what you are reacting to, and what you want from the other person before you say anything.

IX Coach is an AI coaching app designed to ask questions rather than hand over scripts. If you have a feedback conversation coming up, one way to use it is to talk through the moment and draft the situation, behavior and impact together before you speak. It is not a substitute for a manager, HR, or a professional if the situation involves harassment, discrimination or safety.

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