---
title: "Giving Feedback: Three Data Points"
description: When your company's leadership team is meeting to resolve a people issue and the employee's manager is about to talk with her or him to solve it, make sure the manager leaves the meeting with three examples of the unproductive behavior that has been noted by members of the team.
---

[EOS Worldwide Blog | Tips & Advice for Entrepreneurs and Leaders of Growing Companies](https://info.eosworldwide.com/blog)

# [Giving Feedback: Three Data Points](https://info.eosworldwide.com/blog/giving-feedback-three-data-points)

 Written by [Don Tinney](https://info.eosworldwide.com/blog/author/don-tinney) | July 2, 2018

A helpful discipline when giving feedback to someone, or when having a tough conversation to help correct someone’s unproductive actions, is sharing three data points. Data points are examples of what the person is doing that demonstrates the bad behavior.

If you have to confront one of your people for bad behavior – let’s say he or she is treating people in the office poorly – you owe that person three examples. There is truly magic in three. Two is not enough and four is too many. If you don’t give three examples, he or she will rationalize his or her way out of it.

## Three Data Points

With the **first** data point, he or she will explain it away. With the **second** data point, he or she will have a relatively good excuse. But the **third** data point will show that it is an epidemic, and he or she will usually think, “Okay, you got me.” At that point, his or her mind is open, and you can then have a productive conversation about solutions.

So this is the rule of thumb: when your leadership team is solving a people issue and one of you is about to take the action item to meet with the person and solve it, make sure you get three data points from the team before you leave the meeting.

Strike while the iron is hot and the team is clear on the issue. Also, the others usually see the data points better than the manager due to the person putting a good face on in front of his or her boss. Try it in this week’s meeting.

## Next Steps

- Download a free chapter of [*How to Be a Great Boss*](https://www.eosworldwide.com/great-boss-book) to learn how to lead, manage, and create accountability on your team.
- Download the [How to Be a Great Boss Toolkit](https://traction.eosworldwide.com/great-boss-toolkit/) to access free tools and resources to help you lead, manage, and create accountability on your team.

[View full post](https://info.eosworldwide.com/blog/giving-feedback-three-data-points)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Don Tinney"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2018-06-29T16:46:52.044Z",
  "datePublished" : "2018-07-02T21:00:00Z",
  "headline" : "Giving Feedback: Three Data Points",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 365,
    "url" : "https://www.eosworldwide.com/hubfs/evaluation.jpg",
    "width" : 580
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://info.eosworldwide.com/blog/giving-feedback-three-data-points",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60.0,
      "url" : "https://www.eosworldwide.com/hubfs/social-suggested-images/Logo_small-1.png",
      "width" : 68.965515
    },
    "name" : "EOS Worldwide Blog <br> <span style=\"font-size:.8em;\">Advice and Insight for Entrepreneurs and Leadership Teams</span>"
  }
}
```