On Feedback.
The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 46.
To grow one needs to continuously improve.
A key ingredient to improvement is feedback.
Feedback however is both difficult to give and receive.
Feedback challenges are even more pronounced these days due to three factors:
a) Covid: an increasingly sensitive workforce emerging from a year of Covid-19 driven challenges with heightened emotions and changed mindsets.
b) DEI: a concern that criticism may be taken as a form of insensitivity or discrimination as companies rightly focus on ensuring Diversity, Inclusion and Equality.
c) Polarization: a polarized social and political environment.
The six steps to giving better feedback.
Best practices suggest that there are six approaches that can help people give and accept feedback in ways that recognize these and other realities.
1.Focus on how the task or the process could have been improved rather than criticize the person: By focusing on how an assignment could be done better the emphasis is in on the product and not the person.
2. Compare the shortfalls to a higher standard that might have been met on another project or another time: By recalling assignments or times where the individual or team did a great job, one re-enforces to the person or team that they are capable of having done better. The emphasis is on what was less than ideal on this occasion versus rather than believing the individual or team is incapable of doing a good job.
3. Make yourself sensitive and aware of extenuating circumstances: We all have bad days and many times these are a result of something else distracting us or worrying us in our lives. It may be illness, family issues or other challenges. By empathizing with an individual via wondering if there is a reason quality has slipped indicates both concern and humanity.
4. Provide input as specific as possible as to what could be done better: Pointing out what went wrong or was less than optimal is only one half of feedback. The more important half is showing or teaching or guiding on how one can improve. Identify either steps or training or changes that need to be made.
5. Identify the next opportunity or project for a do-over or try another take: By showing both how one can improve and then identifying an upcoming opportunity to put the feedback to work concentrates the mind and channels emotions to action and the possibility of correcting the shortfall.
6. Provide personal help and perspective: If feedback is provided in the context of what others have struggled with over the years or what you may have learned and improved it lets people know that mistakes, mess-ups, and other shortfalls are par for the course in career growth. By also asking how you can help re-enforces that you are on the persons side and are committed to try to make them improve.
The importance of holding ourselves accountable to getting feedback.
If we do not get continuous feedback, we begin to lose our edge and slowly wither into mediocrity.
But for a variety of reasons including those discussed earlier (Covid, DEI and polarization) but also because we may be too senior or too powerful and therefore either believe we do not need it or people are afraid to offer it to us many of us may not get feedback unless we actively solicit, listen and are sensitive to nuances and signals.
We should all be concerned if we do not get feedback of some sort because it may mean we a) don’t really matter, b) are being put out to pasture, c) are considered too difficult or prickly to deal with or d) have a reputation as bullies who punish anyone pointing out faults.
Three ways of ensuring one is getting feedback
1. Scan for signals: People are constantly providing feedback even if they are not vocalizing it. In some instances, you may gauge it in numerical signals from how well your writing is read, reacted to, or shared or whether you are invited to key meetings. Other times it is to watch facial and body language. You learn a lot by reading a room or a Zoom gallery.
2. Ask for feedback on a regular basis: One can do this with three simple questions which by the way they are framed ensure people are comfortable helping you since they are positive in tone:
a. What worked well?
b. If/when I do this next time what could be better?
c. Who do you think does what I need to do well and where can I learn more?
3. End of Day or Week Self Review: Most people know in their gut what worked or went well and what did not. Many successful individuals end the day or week with some variation of a quick review :
a. The Work: What went well with my work product that I feel proud signing it and what could have gone better.
b. The Team: What felt good and productive in the way I interacted with people and where could I have been better in some ways in handling my or someone else’s emotions.
c. The Improvement: What little improvement did I manage to make today or this week? A new habit. Learning a new approach. Strengthening a relationship.
Compound Improvement
One improves slowly over time.
Some days one improves and other days there are setbacks that one learns from. A practice of continuous improvement is what drives not just success for athletes but for all people.
The day we stop learning we stop growing and we begin dying.
By being accountable for our own feedback and by being comfortable helping others with feedback to unleash their growth is a sign of not just successful businesspeople but people who find success in every component of life.
Happiness is not necessarily where you start but how you get better and where you are going.
Feedback is a key to growth and the journey forward.
(And as many do every week please feel free to provide feedback to this piece as well as this thought letter. Your input has improve it bit by bit…)
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Rishad Tobaccowala (@rishad) is the author of the bestselling “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” published by HarperCollins globally in January 2020. It has been described as an “operating manual” for managing people, teams and careers in the age we live in and The Economist Magazine called it perhaps the best recent book on Stakeholder Capitalism. Business and Strategy named it among the best business books of the year and the best book on Marketing in 2020. Rishad is also a speaker, teacher and advisor who helps people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves. More at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/
Thank you Rishad for eloquently sharing extremely valuable suggestions and approaches for providing and receiving helpful feedback. I learned a lot from this article and find this particular statement insightfully important: "by being accountable for our own feedback and by being comfortable helping others with feedback to unleash their growth is a sign of not just successful businesspeople but people who find success in every component of life."
I read your email today with the “six steps to giving better feedback”.
I always appreciate and have taken an interest in your writing, but I can’t agree with you about your top-down feedback approaches.
First, non-performance is not the problem to be addressed with feedback - non-performance is the symptom of something bigger, that’s missing, that if it weren’t missing you wouldn’t even be looking at needing feedback. Your six steps don’t get a manager to the core of the problem – and you’re not going to find out with your approach – without damage being done to any relatedness in the workplace. Relatedness and connectedness define high-performance business cultures that become the Best Places to Work.
The only thing an employee hears when you give your version of feedback is, “there must be something wrong with me, why am I this way?”, and “I give up trying to please this guy”. or, something worse. Then they leave. Your feedback focuses an employee not on working to improve performance, but on trying to figure out what they need to do to avoid the shaming and embarrassment of your so-called feedback. Comparing an employee’s performance to another employee’s performance is shaming and humiliating. It makes for an unsafe work environment.
Also, your approach has all the solutions in the hands of the employer – not the employees. In most cases employees, as a team, have better knowledge about the source of a core problem and as a result, the solution – ask your team “what’s missing” that if it wasn’t missing they’d be where you want them to be.
Not all employees will give you a BS answer just to get you off their back when you are being relational in your approach – and you're willing to own that you might not have set this whole thing up for success. You need to collaborate with the employees who are tasked with executing the strategy.
So, just ask them, “what’s missing?” What’s missing that if it weren’t missing nothing would have fallen through the cracks. Performance wouldn’t be an issue. Your personal feedback would not be necessary. If they don't come through with what they agreed to do it affects the entire company. So, the entire company needs to be involved in setting the direction of the business and it’s them who need to be the source of any feedback. All you do is ask the question, not provide the answer. They know what’s missing better than you. And now they're accountable for revenue growth.
This is known as Promise-Based Management; where instead of managing the employee, you manage aggregated employee team promises to take bold action - measuring the completion of ALL committed-to promises. You want action – you don’t want to have to spend your time, and experience the anxiety of coming up with employee “feedback”.
There’s much more to setting up a culture of performance through Promise-Based Management. You’ll find much of it in my book ‘THIRTEENERS Why Only 13% of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy – and How Yours Can Be One of Them.’ You can get it free by connecting with me on LinkedIn and requesting it. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dprosser/