Rethinking feedback

Where are we now?

Let’s start with a short story. You come to the office. You have a meeting with somebody and you observe a pattern in their behavior that you feel might be improved. It bothers you but you have already learned how to live with that. However yesterday you read that giving feedback is important to improve your workspace. Your company supports feedback. In practice nobody does it too often. There are a few people who do it. You think that you would also like to give this person feedback because it might help them and it might improve the workspace overall. What do you do next if you haven’t done it before? Let’s say you google “how to give effective feedback”. You encounter the standard set of rules: be specific, prepare yourself, don’t give too much negative information, etc. You start preparations, you start imagining the conversation. After a few long minutes, you are almost done. You are thinking about scheduling a call but then you imagine the conversation… and you give up.

To me, this is a never ending story — how to properly give feedback. I have read about it, I know the most recommended format, I know how important it is. I talked with many people who value feedback and try to cultivate it in their work environment. Yet I feel we can do better.

Side note: in this post I mainly write about feedback between peers and coworkers in order to improve their work and be more effective. I feel however that this can also be applied to subordinate/supervisor relations. I also mostly refer to the feedback which might be harsh — because it is harder to do and simultaneously it is the most educating one. Remember that there is no negative feedback. It can be badly communicated but feedback in itself is neutral — it is just an information. People assign emotions to feedback sessions. If you want to more know about feedback itself research the topic of transactional analysis, stroke pattern analysis, stroke economy.

What bothers me?

My main problem with the current feedback framework is that it has completely wrong incentives for a person who gives it. What is even more absurd is that people reject feedback even though someone tries to help them improve (which is their job, which means that somebody does their work — and we are not talking about micromanagement). It is my responsibility to fix my mistakes, if someone comes and tries to help me, I should be grateful. Obviously this person can be wrong but this doesn’t mean I should be defensive or pushy towards him/her. You may also think that “it is not this person’s business to tell me how to do something”. First of all, you can tell that precisely to the other person, if you do not want to receive feedback. Second thing, it is simply a defensive behavior. You can always find an argument that “this is not his/her business”, “she/he made a mistake when she/he was communicating this to me”, “he/she was unclear”. Basically what we mean is that “he/she did my job poorly so I can tell him/her it is bad”. Do you see how twisted this logic is? The fact that somebody doesn’t know how to give feedback shouldn’t be an excuse not to take it seriously and not to appreciate it! There is a saying:

“feedback is a gift, you should always take it”

Later you can decide whether you will apply it or reject it.

Obstacles

To me the main obstacles with currently adopted feedback framework are the following:

Obstacle no. 1: the person who gives feedback must prepare to give feedback.

Basically what it means is that before I want to give you feedback (because I see that you might be doing something incorrectly) I must commit my time. If I am not good, let’s say it will take 5–10 minutes each time? Maybe 15? Who does that? You will possibly stop at maximum a few minutes but then you risk that you won’t be precise. You obviously will improve after a few feedback sessions… But don’t you prefer to go for coffee, relax and skip this topic completely? Actually, how bad do you want to give this feedback to other person? Don’t you feel you can live with that (and avoid confrontation)? ;)

Obstacle no. 2: You should be precise.

It is hard to always be precise about some situations. It is easy to say “you were late for this meeting.”. But try to be precise when for example you feel that “somebody is not concentrating at work”. Tell me, how can it be precise? The harder the topic of feedback, the harder it is to be precise. I know that I can think of a particular situation but one case might not be problematic and you might observe a pattern. How should you approach that? It might be your gut feeling that his behavior might be a reason for this person’s problems but you might be wrong and you don’t have time to analyze it more deeply. You have your own leaks and problems.

Obstacle no. 3: Try not to hurt other people’s feelings.

Basically we should try not to hurt other people’s feelings because our feedback won’t be welcomed and we do not want to spoil the relationship. Sounds great but you cannot be responsible for other people’s feelings. They can always feel offended. Plus many of us are not psychologists and we will have a hard time approaching other people in the perfect way (additionally considering that we do not know them very well). We are not talking about simple communication — feedback is something more.

Obstacle no. 4: You can worsen the relation.

If you give feedback incorrectly, or come unprepared, something can go wrong, emotions can appear and after such feedback session the relation between you and your colleague might get cooler.

Obstacle no. 5: Giving good feedback is hard.

You have to learn to do it, you have to improve over time, it might be stressful for you at first. It doesn’t sound encouraging.

Wrong incentives

Summing up — the incentives for the person who gives feedback are all wrong! In a nutshell, if you want to give me feedback, you have to commit your time, find a moment when it suits me so I will be more comfortable with it, try not to offend me, be precise, don’t tell me too many wrong things at once. To me this sounds really complicated. The truth is, that if you don’t want my feedback, then nothing will help. Once you see or feel friction, you will consider giving up.

Having read all of the above obstacles, could you tell how probable it is that someone, who doesn’t know you well, will give you feedback (from 0–100%)? To me it is basically 0%. Consider to whom would you give feedback today, at your work? Giving feedback from this perspective sounds like a professional suicide. You commit your own time, you risk not to be understood, maybe even thought of as a weirdo and you have an additional bonus risk of spoiling the relationship. To be honest at the moment of writing this, having realized how hard it is to give good feedback, I would like to applaud everyone who still does it and does it well. You are the best coworkers!

Basically under these assumptions I feel that it is only possible to receive feedback from someone else when the other person feels psychologically safe to give it to you, which usually happens when a) they know you well and b) they know that you want to receive feedback. But then it is a different story and possibly they can even come unprepared to you and they will be understood and appreciated.

Learn how to take and ask for feedback

To be honest even if you come to somebody and ask him/her for feedback about your behavior it still might be hard for this person to do it! They might not want to be rude. If this might be hard in such a scenario, imagine how insanely hard it might be for some people to do it once it is not welcomed by another person! It makes completely no sense, yet we still educate that “you have to learn how to GIVE feedback.” No! You have to learn how to TAKE feedback. You have to change your mindset and treat someone who gives you feedback not as an enemy but rather as a good friend. We (friends, parents, teachers, leaders) should also teach others about this topic and how to approach feedback. We cannot expect that it will magically work if we won’t educate ourselves.

There is nothing more to this blog post, because to me this change in our mindset speaks for itself. However here are some clues on how to take feedback better if you have problem with that:

• be open minded
• don’t be defensive
• appreciate that somebody came to you with feedback. Appreciate that other person had the courage to tell you that. Appreciate the time which he/she committed to communicate this to you. Be grateful because this person does your job and helps you improve.
• be proactive and ask for feedback yourself. Learn how to do it well. You can ask questions like:
  “Can you tell me what I did wrong in this situation?”
  “In this situation what were your thoughts about my behavior? Was it fine?”
  “Do you observe any other leaks in my actions when it comes to this topic?”
  “Do you have any feedback for me after this week?”
• if you do not understand the feedback, deepen the topic. For example ask:
  “What would you do in my position?”
  “In your opinion, how can I approach the same situation if it happens next time?“
  “How did you feel when I did it?”

If you understand everything, just say “thank you”. If you agree, try to improve. Simple as that.

Having written all of the above I feel bad for all the times somebody came to me and tried to help me/tell me feedback and I rejected it or was defensive. Now it sounds absurd to me… Yet I did it. I am sorry for that! ;)

I am also keeping my fingers crossed for your future feedback sessions. Good luck!