By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT
You ran the 1:1. You named the problem. Your report nodded, said thanks, and left knowing exactly what went wrong on Tuesday. On Thursday it happened again, because nobody in the room said what should happen instead.
That's the gap in the SBI feedback model. Situation, Behavior, Impact is a three step structure for describing what someone did and what it caused. It makes the past hard to argue with. It says nothing about next week.
In the 1:1 Protocol I teach, feedback that never reaches the future is venting. And feedback softened into a maybe isn't heard as feedback at all. My rule for the firm part of the conversation is short: "No softening. No maybe or perhaps."
Here's SBI step by step, its SBII variant, a side by side table, and eight rewrites that add the missing step.
Quick answer: The SBI feedback model is a three step method for describing a behavior: the Situation where it happened, the observable Behavior, and its Impact. The Center for Creative Leadership developed it. SBII adds a fourth step that asks about the person's Intent. SBED, a related model, ends with Demands instead: the specific change needed going forward.
What does SBI stand for in the SBI feedback model?
SBI stands for Situation, Behavior, Impact. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) owns the model and describes each step on its own page, last updated in 2025.
Situation Behavior Impact (SBI) is a feedback model that separates what a person did from what it caused, so the listener hears observable facts before consequences.
The order matters. Skip the context and the person spends the conversation working out which meeting you mean.
Situation: one time, one place
Name when and where. "In this morning's budget review" works. "In meetings" doesn't.
The rule: Situation is specific, never "you always." Always turns one incident into a verdict, and the person spends five minutes hunting for the exception.
Behavior: what a camera would have recorded
Describe the act, not your reading of it. "You sent the draft to the whole leadership group before I'd seen it" is behavior. "You went around me" is an interpretation.
Same rule, second letter: Behavior is facts, never "you were rude" or "you dominated." Adjectives start debates. Facts don't.
Impact: on you, the team, or the work
Say what changed because of it: a second client call, a deck two people had to redo, a Friday afternoon spent repairing a relationship. CCL notes impact can be positive or negative, so the model works for praise too.
What is the SBII feedback model?
SBII is CCL's extended version: Situation, Behavior, Impact, Intent. The fourth step is a question. CCL's SBII guidance (2025) suggests asking something like "What were you hoping to accomplish with that?" so both people can look at the gap between what the person meant and what actually landed.
It's a good addition. Most people who derail a meeting didn't mean to, and asking lowers the temperature.
Here's the problem. Intent opens a conversation about the past, and a defensive person will happily stay there. Twenty minutes later you're arguing about perceptions and nothing has been agreed.
The 1:1 Protocol has a response for that person, the Defender: "I might have seen it differently. Walk me through your perspective." Then: "Regardless, here's what I need going forward."
The governing rule: "Don't argue about perceptions. Redirect to commitment."
So ask about intent. Just don't end there.
What SBI leaves out: the step that turns feedback into a change
Read the three letters again. Situation, Behavior, Impact. Every one of them is about something that already happened.
The listener leaves knowing what went wrong. They don't leave knowing what done looks like next time. That's the conversation where your report felt heard, thanked you, and nothing changed.
I teach a fourth letter for this. SBED runs Situation, Behavior, Experience, Demands, and the D states specifically what you need going forward. The rule on it is the sharpest in the model: "This is not optional. Skipping this step turns feedback into venting."
Venting isn't cruel. It's useless. The standard stays in your head where nobody can see it.
Stat block. 80% of employees who say they received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged. Source: Gallup, "Fast Feedback Fuels Performance," 2022, Gallup Panel of 13,490 full time US employees.
Stat block. In the Leadership Readiness Index Q3 2026 skills chapter (n = 66 of 480 completions, self assessed, 0 to 20 scale), Clarity and Directness averaged 7.6 and Relational Intelligence averaged 11.1. Source: Leaders ADAPT, leadership skills statistics.
That's the pattern I see in coaching. Leaders rate themselves stronger on the relationship than on saying the clear thing. The D forces the second.
Boomerang check: does your work stay delegated, or does it come back?
Three questions, scored to the protocol that fixes the leak. The 5-Minute Leader is the four protocols, Delegation, 1:1, Accountability and Rhythm, written down so a manager can run them in about five minutes a day, so tasks stop boomeranging back half done.
Get the 5-Minute Leader or see what is inside the 5-Minute Leader.
What is the difference between SBI and SBED?
SBED is a four step feedback model, Situation, Behavior, Experience, Demands, in which the final step states specifically what must happen going forward.
SBED's Experience does the same job as SBI's Impact. The difference is the last step, and it changes what the person walks out with.
| Feedback model | Letters | What each step asks | What the listener leaves with | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SBI | Situation, Behavior, Impact | When and where; what was observed; what it caused | A clear picture of the past | Center for Creative Leadership |
| SBII | Situation, Behavior, Impact, Intent | The same three, then: what were you trying to do? | A shared view of the gap between intent and impact | Center for Creative Leadership |
| SBED | Situation, Behavior, Experience, Demands | When and where; what was observed; what it caused; what must change | A specific action with a standard attached | The 5-Minute Leader, 1:1 Protocol |
For the wider comparison with the 4 Cs, including a worked example on a different behavior, see the 4 Cs of feedback page.
The worked example, letter by letter
This is the example from the 1:1 Protocol. First, what most managers actually say:
"You need to be better in client meetings. You're too aggressive and it's hurting us."
Every word is an interpretation. Better how? The person has nothing to change except their mood. Here's the SBED version:
[Situation] In yesterday's client meeting, [Behavior] you interrupted three times while they explained their concerns. [Experience] They shut down and ended the meeting early, and I spent an hour rebuilding trust afterward. [Demands] Going forward, let them finish completely before you respond.
Stop after the Experience sentence and you've delivered textbook SBI. The person knows what went wrong. The last sentence is the only one that tells them what right looks like on the next call.
8 SBI feedback examples, rewritten with the missing step
Each row starts with a clean SBI line, the kind that follows CCL's steps correctly. The third column adds the D. Roles only; adapt the details to your team.
| Work situation | The SBI line | The D added (SBED) |
|---|---|---|
| A handoff with no context | "In Monday's handoff email to the new analyst, you listed the tasks without the deadline or the reason. She spent two days on the lowest priority item." | "From now on, every handoff names the outcome, the date and why it matters, in the first three lines." |
| A report that arrived unfinished | "The monthly forecast you sent Friday had three blank sections. I filled them in on Sunday." | "Next month, send it Thursday, complete. If a number isn't ready, mark it and tell me by Wednesday." |
| A decision made alone | "On Tuesday you changed the vendor terms without looping in finance. They found out from the vendor." | "Any change to contract terms goes to finance before it goes out. Copy me on the first two." |
| Silence in a planning session | "In today's planning session you didn't raise the staffing risk you'd flagged to me privately. The plan went through without it." | "When you see a risk, say it in the room. I'd rather hear it wrong than not hear it." |
| A missed escalation | "When the customer complaint came in last week, you worked it for four days before telling anyone. By then it was on the account owner's desk." | "Anything that can't be solved in 24 hours comes to me the same day, with your proposed fix." |
| Talking over a peer | "In this morning's stand-up you finished the designer's update for her twice. She stopped talking after that." | "Let each person finish their update. If you have a build, add it after." |
| A presentation that ran long | "Your board slide section ran 25 minutes against a 10 minute slot. We cut the last agenda item." | "Next time, three slides, ten minutes, and send me the draft two days before." |
| Positive: a clean handover | "When you handed the project to the new lead on Friday, you walked her through every open decision. She shipped on Monday without one question to me." | "Do that on every handover. And show the other two leads how you did it." |
The last row matters. "Do more of this" is still a demand, and a compliment with a D becomes a standard the rest of the team can copy. More lines by situation are on the constructive feedback examples page.
How long should an SBI conversation take?
Under two minutes, most of the time. Longer usually means explaining, defending or softening.
The timing rule matters more than the length. The 24/48 Rule: address it inside 24 hours, and if 48 hours have passed, don't deliver it late. Wait for the next time it happens.
It will. "Feedback has a half-life. After 48 hours, it's archaeology, not coaching."
Smaller still is micro-feedback: thirty seconds, no setup, right after the moment. Run enough of it and the full SBED conversation becomes rare.
Short also protects the message. Every extra sentence is one more thing to argue with, and SBI conversations that run long tend to drift from the behavior to the person's character. Four sentences, then stop talking and let them answer.
If you're tempted to open with the harshest version, don't. Start with the plain SBED line, and escalate only if the same behavior shows up again. Firm doesn't mean loudest first.
Where does this live? In the regular one-on-one meeting, not the annual review. The full sequence for a manager, from the first line to the follow up, is in the guide on how to give feedback to employees. If your check-in meetings already have a slot for what's not working, the SBED line goes there, and the coaching employees page shows how to hand the fix back with a question once the D is said.
SBI feedback model FAQ
Who created the SBI model?
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), a nonprofit leadership development and research organization, created and owns the Situation Behavior Impact model and publishes guidance on it. CCL's current pages describe SBI as its research based method and do not name an individual inventor or a year of origin. CCL also publishes the extended SBII version, which adds a step about the other person's intent.
When should you not use SBI?
SBI is a poor fit when the issue is a pattern across many incidents, a question of values or conduct that needs HR, or a performance problem already in formal process. It also struggles when the listener needs a clear instruction, because it ends at impact and does not state what should change. In those cases a structured difficult conversation with the employee, or a model that ends on a specific request such as SBED, works better.
Can you use the SBI feedback model for positive feedback?
Yes. The steps work the same way: name the situation, describe what the person did, and state the result it produced. Specific praise tells the person exactly which behavior to repeat, which generic praise such as "great job" does not. Adding a final line that asks them to keep doing it, or to show a colleague how, turns the praise into a repeatable standard.
How often should managers give SBI feedback?
Regularly and close to the event, rather than saved for a quarterly or annual review. CCL recommends feedback on a routine, day to day basis. The 24/48 Rule sets a tighter window: address a behavior within 24 hours, and if more than 48 hours have passed, wait for the next occurrence rather than raising an old incident. Short, frequent feedback keeps each conversation small.
What should you say when you receive SBI feedback?
The recommended first response is "thank you," not a defense or an explanation. Thanking the person keeps the channel open and signals that the feedback was heard. Questions come next if something is unclear, such as asking for another example. If you disagree with the facts, say so once, calmly, and then focus on what is being asked of you going forward.
Is the SBI model the same as the feedback sandwich?
No. The feedback sandwich wraps a criticism between two compliments, which can blur the message. The SBI model requires no praise and sequences facts instead: the situation, the behavior and its impact. SBI can carry positive or negative feedback, while the sandwich exists only to soften criticism.
Keep the three letters, then say the fourth out loud
The SBI feedback model is the right way to describe the past. Specific situation, observable behavior, real impact. Most managers never get even that far, and if you do, your feedback is already better than most.
It just isn't finished. The person needs one more sentence, the one that says what done looks like next time. Leave it out and everyone felt heard and nothing moved.
In Nordic directness the kind thing is the clear thing, said early, with the standard attached.
Tomorrow morning, take the feedback you've been sitting on longest. Write the SBI version in two sentences. Then write the third, starting with "Going forward," and say all three before lunch.
Where the fourth letter comes from: the 1:1 Protocol
SBED is the SBI feedback model with its fourth letter said out loud, and it's part of the 1:1 Protocol, the second of four protocols in The 5-Minute Leader. I wrote them down after scaling Arcules from 3 people to more than 150 as one of Canon's youngest CEOs, when my managers had learned my meetings but not the sentences that made them work.
Each protocol fixes one failure. The Delegation Protocol keeps the work handed off, so it doesn't boomerang back to your desk.
The 1:1 Protocol surfaces problems early, and it's where SBED, the 24/48 Rule and micro-feedback run. The Accountability Protocol makes the standard visible, so nobody has to chase anyone. The Rhythm Protocol gives the team a cadence it runs without you in every room.
Inside the 1:1 Protocol there's also one question, answered with a single number, that tells you who needs feedback before you've seen anything go wrong. Your first SBED line this week is the start of it, and the other three protocols are in The 5-Minute Leader.
