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May 26 - June 22, 2019
the key player is not the giver, but the receiver.
Feedback includes any information you get about yourself. In the broadest sense, it’s how we learn about ourselves from our experiences and from other people—how we learn from life.
It doesn’t matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has; the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change.
the key variable in your growth is not your teacher or your supervisor. It’s you.
Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback.
Our triggered reactions are not obstacles because they are unreasonable. Our triggers are obstacles because they keep us from engaging skillfully in the conversation.
when we use the word “feedback,” we may be referring to any of three different kinds of information: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. Each serves an important purpose, each satisfies different needs, and each comes with its own set of challenges.
When people complain that they don’t get enough feedback at work, they often mean that they wonder whether anyone notices or cares how hard they’re working. They don’t want advice. They want appreciation.
Coaching is aimed at trying to help someone learn, grow, or change. The focus is on helping the person improve, whether it involves a skill, an idea, knowledge, a particular practice, or that person’s appearance or personality.
Type of Feedback Giver’s Purpose Appreciation To see, acknowledge, connect, motivate, thank Coaching To help receiver expand knowledge, sharpen skill, improve capability Or, to address the giver’s feelings or an imbalance in the relationship Evaluation To rate or rank against a set of standards, to align expectations, to inform decision making
THERE IS ALWAYS EVALUATION IN COACHING
The coaching message “here’s how to improve” also implicitly conveys the evaluative message that “so far you aren’t doing it as well as you might.”
(1) What’s my purpose in giving/receiving this feedback? (2) Is it the right purpose from my point of view? (3) Is it the right purpose from the other person’s point of view?
Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding. Explicit disagreement leads to clarity, and is the first step in each of you getting your differing needs met.
“Feedback” is really three different things, with different purposes: Appreciation — motivates and encourages. Coaching — helps increase knowledge, skill, capability, growth, or raises feelings in the relationship. Evaluation — tells you where you stand, aligns expectations, and informs decision making.
Before we determine whether feedback is right or wrong, we first have to understand it.
If we strip back the label, we find that feedback has both a past and a future. There’s a looking-back component (“here’s what I noticed”), and a looking-forward component (“here’s what you need to do”).
If the reason we see a particular piece of feedback differently isn’t simply that one of us is wrong, then what is the reason? There are two: We have different data, and we interpret that data differently.
One of the primary reasons we interpret data differently is that we have different rules in our heads about how things should be. But we don’t think of them as our rules. We think of them as the rules.
Your goal is to understand the feedback giver, and for them to understand you. If you end up thinking the feedback is helpful, then you’ll take it. If you don’t, at least you’ll understand where the feedback comes from, what they were suggesting, and why you’re rejecting it.
The evaluation we give people is a reflection of our own (or our organization’s) preferences, assumptions, values, and goals.
The goal shouldn’t be to remove interpretation or judgment. It should be to make judgments thoughtfully, and once made, to have them be transparent and discussable.
Feedback is delivered in vague labels, and we are prone to wrong spotting. To understand your feedback, discuss where it is: Coming from: their data and interpretations Going to: advice, consequences, expectations Ask: What’s different about The data we are looking at Our interpretations and implicit rules Ask: What’s right about the feedback to seek out what’s legit and what concerns you have in common.
We are often more triggered by the person giving us feedback than by the feedback itself.
Systems Insight Number Two: Each of us sees only part of the problem (the part the other person is contributing).
Systems Insight Number One is this: Each of us is part of the problem.
Receivers react defensively because they see clearly the giver’s contribution to the problem, and givers are surprised by the receiver’s defensiveness because the receiver’s contribution is obvious to them.
How are our roles contributing to how we see each other, and to the feedback we give each other?
Seeing Feedback in the System One Step Back: In what ways does the feedback reflect differences in preferences, assumptions, styles, or implicit rules between us? Two Steps Back: Do our roles make it more or less likely that we might bump into each other? Three Steps Back: What other players influence our behavior and choices? Are physical setups, processes, or structures also contributing to the problem? Circling Back to Me: What am I doing (or failing to do) that is contributing to the dynamic between us?
You can’t take meaningful responsibility for causing a problem until you understand the combination of factors that actually caused the problem.
Carrying all the weight of fixing relationships and projects by yourself may feel noble, but it obstructs learning just as surely as rejecting responsibility altogether.
If you soak up all the responsibility, you let others off the hook.
Seeing my own contribution to my circumstances makes me stronger, not weaker. If I contribute to my own problems, there are things I have the power to change.
To understand the feedback you get, take three steps back: One Step Back: You + Me intersections. Are differences between us creating the friction? Two Steps Back: Role clashes. Is this partly a result of the roles we play in the organization or the family? Three Steps Back: Big picture. Are processes, policies, physical environment, or other players reinforcing the problem?
“Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures.”
simple labels are too black-and-white to be the whole story about who you are.
You will make mistakes, you have complex intentions, and you have contributed to the problem.
As feedback conversations get more emotional or the stakes grow higher, it gets easier to hear evaluation, and tougher to hear the coaching.
When you solicit suggestions you know you may not take, you can avoid heartache by saying so up front.
Unhelpful feedback is useless; relentless unhelpful feedback is destructive.
We are wired for empathy, but only toward those who we believe are behaving well.
If you say, “That advice is wrong,” the giver will simply respond by explaining again why it’s right. If you say, “I disagree with that advice,” the giver can’t argue with the fact that you happen to have an opinion on the matter.
Positions are what people say they want or demand. Interests are the underlying “needs, desires, fears, and concerns” that the stated position intends to satisfy.
Feedback can be accurate, timely, perceptive, and beautifully conveyed, but if it involves too many ideas to keep track of, too many decisions to sort through, too many changes to make, it’s simply too much.
Don’t say, “I’d like some feedback.” That’s too vague. Instead say: “What’s one thing I could work on?”
In any contest between change and the status quo, the status quo has home field advantage.
Workers who seek out negative feedback—coaching on what they can improve—tend to receive higher performance ratings.
Even if you’re head of a global bank or playing in the finals at Wimbledon, you can improve with coaching.
Good coaching requires different parameters to work well. Those who are improving need frequent, close-to-real-time suggestions, and the chance to practice small corrections or improvements along the way.
