Ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Summary:
Done well, feedback is a gift, it is an opportunity to grow!
I like gifts. Gifts = good!
Gifts beget gifts. If you want gobs of gifts:
1. Make sure you are good at receiving gifts (feedback).
2. Get good at finding gifts.
3. Wrap gifts well (ie word your feedback giving well)
4. Give lots of gifts, as doing this means you are more likely to receive gifts :)
Jingle: ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas. Why every day can and should be christmas :)
Preamble:
Aristotle - “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
They say that personal growth is one of the top three things that delivers happiness. One key part of ‘personal’ growth is getting feedback from others. I’ve been thinking about feedback and how to do it well. This blog will talk to three aspects of feedback:
Receiving feedback.
Ascertaining feedback.
Giving feedback.
For context this blog was written in December 2017, hence the ‘christmas theme’. There are not intended to be any implied religious tones, it’s just a bit of a fun analogy :).
Details:
Receiving feedback:
The continuum.
Poor: When receiving feedback act like you are under attack, make up explanations as to why what is being said is incorrect. Even perhaps ‘return fire’ and say ‘well you aren’t so great yourself, have you noticed this [insert negative feedback]’.
Internal (ie the person receiving the feedback): I think you want to ‘lean in’ to the feedback and try to be as open as possible to hearing what is being said and try to see what truth there is and what can be actioned on the back of it. So you want your mindset to be as ‘open’ to growth as possible. I’ve personally found that this is quite hard to do but that as I try to treat feedback as a ‘gift’ I’ve been able to get better at this.
External (ie the person giving the feedback): acting this way can mean that the person giving feedback is actively discouraged from giving feedback again in the future. This could rob you of the opportunity to grow in the future.
Good: Feedback is a gift, it is an opportunity to grow. Be actively thankful and make the person providing the feedback feel like they have given you a gift.
This means that they want to give feedback again in the future.
Neutral is in the middle of ‘good’ and ‘poor’. haha, very insightful duncan :P.
Comments:
I believe if you have feedback for someone you should provide it as not doing so is robbing them of the opportunity to grow. So not giving constructive / positive feedback is actually being a ‘bad friend / coworker / etc’.
What is the process I try to follow when receiving feedback:
When receiving feedback be as welcoming as possible and try to listen. No pushing back.
‘Actively listen’: ask qualifying questions, try to really get to the nub of what someone is saying (unfortunately in the past I’ve found I’ve only say 60% understood what someone was saying).
Once you and the other party believe you understand the feedback provided thank them for giving you this gift.
Then say you’ll consider this and come back to them with next steps.
What to do when considering:
Decide how much you agree with the feedback provided, I find that there is always something useful in the feedback, sometimes it’s 90% on point, but sometimes only 25%. If things aren’t on point this is typically because the feedback provider has partial context.
“Don’t try to decide if the feedback is right or wrong, try to find out what you can learn from the feedback.” I find that people can decide eg that they disagree with 20% of the feedback and then write off all of the feedback. This is robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn!
If i agree 80%+
I then go back and say I ‘agree’ with feedback.
Thank them again for the feedback.
Tell them what I plan to do in the future regarding the feedback
Ask them to please help me implement the changes and point out if I’m not doing what I agree.
If I agree less than 80%
I go back and explain what I feel might not be on point with explanation.
Then see what the feedback provider has to say.
Hopefully you get to a landing but it might need time for both parties to digest, clarify etc.
Once you have landed on what is ‘real’ then make a plan for what to do.
Summary:
When ‘receiving feedback’ you want to be the best ‘gift recipient’. Or ‘not a spoilt brat’.
‘make the person who provided you with feedback feel like they gave you a gift, they feel energised after providing feedback’
This should mean that you take on the feedback better and get more gifts (feedback) in the future. Gifts = good!
Ascertaining feedback:
What levels of confidence are there?
Low : <60%
Medium: 60 - 80%
High: 80%+
How do you find things to provide feedback on / increase your levels of confidence?
Observing
Investigating:
asking probing questions like councilor, ie ‘hey, what is the reason you said / did this?’. ‘Can you add some colour around [insert point]?’ etc etc.
Collaborating: speaking to others to second opinion
If you are speaking to others in an effort to uncover and then to help that person (eg say it to them, incept them) this is a wonderful supportive thing.
Speaking about someone behind their back without an intent to help them (aka bitching / politics) is not cool!
What do you do at different levels of confidence to increase confidence:
Option 1: continue observing - gather more information to move to a medium before you say something (see above)
Option 2: investigating: ‘Hey Duncan what was the reason you did this?’
Option 3: collaborating
Option 4: a combination of all of the above.
Summary:
you want to be the best gift creator. Or ‘elf’.
‘Find the best gifts and find many of them.’ I have the best gifts...
Giving feedback:
I’ve just developed this levels framework:
1. Ruinous Empathy:
This is where you have some feedback for someone but you don’t tell them eg because it’s easier to avoid doing so.
As Kim Scott (of Radical Candour notoriety) will tell you ‘this is not on’. I agree. Doing this will annoy you (as the person likely will continue the behaviour unaware) and rob the person of an opportunity to grow.
2. Alain De botton - “Arguments in relationships are often one partner trying to teach the other something about themselves.” This is feedback by emotion without explanation.
An argument where you don’t give feedback on what caused you to be annoyed. The other person should just somehow know.
In a romantic relationship: “They should somehow just know. And if they don't know they don't love me.”
At work parallel: being frustrated visibly in a meeting without providing any explanation.
Again, this one isn’t great. Feedback should be appropriate emotion + appropriate explanation.
3. Insulting feedback
Feedback provided with spite. It’s antagonistic and will often make the feedback receiver not receptive and / or dislike the person providing feedback.
4. Feedback with insufficient explanation
5. Feedback with appropriate explanation at appropriate time
Please note there are different types of this one. Here is how I view this:
5.1 ‘Soft and soon’: you provide really gentle feedback and pose it as a question. I normally expect to have to provide feedback 3-5 times for something to click with someone.
Providing feedback to someone is an opportunity for you to strengthen your relationship with someone… and to worsen it.
It’s really important to make sure you don't overstep the mark with someone as this can undo lots of good work.
5.2 ‘direct and full frontal’: only if you high relationship strength and the person is ‘ready for feedback on this point’.
6. Inception
This is where you help the person realise the feedback without providing it directly. You ‘incept’ them.
How do you do this?
‘investigating’ (see above) - By asking soft probing questions you can often get the person to realise something.
‘planting idea with someone’ - you specifically deconstruct something and feed someone one piece at a time when they are ready. It might be a matter of three steps from where they are so you give them 1 or 2 step and then ask them to ponder. They make the jump to step 3. Incepted :)
‘Orthogonal’ - you ask an adjacent question about someone / thing else which has parallels for what you are really trying to talk about.
Example 1: let’s say you think there might be a better way for ‘person A’ to go about ‘activity x’. ‘You could say ‘hey, person A, do you think that the way person B does activity x with approach C is a good way to do things?’ Then you see what they say. Then you might say ‘I was speaking to person B and we talked about doing ‘activity x’ with approach D instead of approach C, what do you think about this?’.
Example 2: ‘do you think that activity A is something person X enjoys?’ when what you are really wanting to know is ‘does the person you are speaking to like activity A’. They volunteer things and open up much more and you can have a conversation.
7. Working together collaboratively
Eg you work with another person to help someone realise something. This might mean two people provide feedback to someone at the same time.
Or you set up someone doing certain actions and another person doing a different lot of actions. Ie multiple touch points.
Comments:
I’ve found that giving feedback that is received as a ‘gift’ is really hard. Done well I’ve found it can really strengthen a relationship, done poorly it can really hurt one :(.
One of the reasons I wrote this blog is to try and ‘level up’ in how I think about doing this, ie to improve my gift wrapping skills!
Summary:
So you want to be the best ‘gift discoverer’ and then best ‘gift packager and giver’. Or you want to be a great ‘santa’.
‘Make your feedback be perceived as a ‘gift’ and not a ‘shit sandwich’ ‘
When do you give feedback and how to do you give feedback?
Eg do you wait until you have 80%+ confidence to speak to someone about something?
I used to think this but now I feel it depends.
Eg if I’m below 60% confidence on a possible piece of feedback you can just ask softly ‘I was wondering why you said / did this?’ And then you can get to the ‘root’ of something and see if there is feedback to be provided. Eg you are ‘investigating’ if there is actually any feedback, I try to do this all the time now. So much fun :).
How do you give feedback?
Ideally you are only doing actions 5, 6 & 7 from above.
What are the key variables I try to weigh:
1. How much confidence you have on feedback
2. How ready someone is to receive feedback on this topic.
You basically need to custom craft a solution depending on the feedback, person and timing.
The core resource everyone has is themselves, so if you ‘grow’ then you can get more done. So basically investing in ‘giving gifts’ and ‘actioning gifts’ is likely one of the highest ROI things you can do. I’ve been investing more time into ‘gifts’ and feel that is has been wisely spent, I think I want to spend more and more time on it in the future :).
Alright, summary summary:
The parts of feedback:
Receiving feedback => ‘not a spoilt brat’
Ascertaining feedback => ‘elf’
Giving feedback => ‘santa’
So… you want to be ‘not a spoilt brat’ ‘elf’ ‘santa’:). Yes, I’m quite happy with this one :). Should I get a t-shirt made up somehow symbolising this? A ‘gift’ to myself about ‘gifts’, how wonderfully meta :).
Gifts beget gifts. The better we get at feedback the more and higher quality gifts should be given and received. Gifts = good. Gifts = yay. Gifts = woo hoo!
Ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas everyone!!!!
… ok some more:
Every day can be christmas and your get to be every participant :)
The joy of receiving a gift (feedback) - joy
The joy of giving a gift (feedback) - joy
And the joy of making sure it's a gift not a shit sandwich. Happy not unhappy.
"Happy, not unhappy, joy joy". OK I think I've gone a little overboard on engagement here...
… I also thought about rewriting a christmas carol… but I think it’s time to do something else. This is as far as I got:
“It's beginning to feel a lot like christmas, gifts are everywhere, edrollers are experiencing joy, being happy not unhappy…”