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THREE STEPS BACK: THE BIG PICTURE (OTHER PLAYERS, PROCESSES, POLICIES, AND STRUCTURES) The third step back enables us to take in the big picture, which includes not only other players but also the physical environment, timing and decision making, policies, processes, and workaround coping strategies. All of these influence behavior and decisions, and the feedback we give one another. They are part of the system we’re in.
FEEDBACK THROUGH A SYSTEMS LENS
THE BENEFITS OF A SYSTEMS LENS There are a number of advantages to understanding feedback through a systems lens. IT’S MORE ACCURATE The first benefit is simple: It’s reality. Systems thinking corrects for the skew of any single perspective. If I tend to see what you are contributing to the problem, and you tend to see what I’m contributing, we can add our two perspectives together to get a better sense of the whole. As
IT MOVES US AWAY FROM NEEDLESS JUDGMENT A second benefit is that systems thinking eases the temptation to treat other people’s contributions to the problem as automatically “bad” or “wrong” or “blameworthy.”
IT ENHANCES ACCOUNTABILITY Fine, you say, but what about the times the other person’s behavior really is blameworthy?
You can’t take meaningful responsibility for causing a problem until you understand the combination of factors that actually caused the problem. A systems approach helps you clarify your choices and actions, and how they created the outcomes you got.
systems approach helps you get a sense of appropriate action going forward. IT HELPS CORRECT OUR TENDENCY TO SHIFT OR ABSORB There are two common feedback profiles that are particularly challenging to deal with on the topic of accountability: shifters and absorbers. A systems perspective helps us fight these tendencies in ourselves and understand them in others as we talk about feedback.
Blame Absorbers: It’s All Me The first common feedback profile is the blame absorber. When things go wrong, you point the finger at yourself, now and forever. You cheated on me? I must not be attractive enough. Our product didn’t sell to expectations? I screwed up the launch. It’s raining out? Must be something I said.
Another challenge for absorbers is that resentment can build over time. Deeper down we know realistically that it’s not all us, yet others don’t seem to be taking their fair share of responsibility.
Blame Shifters: It’s Not Me The other feedback profile includes people who are chronically immune to acknowledging their role in problems. When they get feedback or suffer failure, they are quick to point to everyone who hindered their efforts or must be biased against them: It was the finance folks, the new IT system, the neighbors, that squirrel over there.
the experience is ultimately exhausting. Shifters find themselves constantly assaulted by everyone else’s incompetence or treacherousness. They are victims, powerless to protect themselves. Life happens to them. In fact, life happens at them.
A victim stance makes it impossible for feedback to penetrate;
IT HELPS US AVOID “FIXES THAT FAIL” When we don’t understand the system that produces the feedback, we often make the mistake of trying to adjust just one component of the system, and expect that to solve the whole problem.
TALKING ABOUT SYSTEMS Exploring systems skillfully starts with the awareness that what you’re facing may indeed be a systems problem. BE ON THE LOOKOUT Pay attention to your own silent switchtracking reaction to others’ feedback: I’m not the problem! or I could get you better numbers if you didn’t wait until the last minute to ask for them or I’m only crabby because you’re always late. These knee-jerk “not my fault!” thoughts are clues that stepping back to understand the interaction behind the feedback will be helpful. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR PART The next step is to be accountable:
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“HERE’S WHAT WOULD HELP ME CHANGE” A feedback giver may not be ready or able to acknowledge their contribution to the problem. They may still be stuck in thinking this feedback party is all about you. If that’s the case, there’s still something you can do. Rather than trying to force them to admit to and take responsibility for their part in the problem, describe how they could get a better reaction from you.
You’re asking them to change, but you’re casting it (legitimately) in service of helping you change.
LOOK FOR THEMES: IS THIS A ME + EVERYBODY INTERSECTION? Sometimes the feedback you get is the very direct product of your particular intersection with this particular person. You sort of mumble and they are hard of hearing. But at other times a disturbing consistency surfaces—no matter who you are in a relationship with, they have the same feedback for you.
USE THE SYSTEM TO SUPPORT CHANGE (NOT THWART IT) Sometimes feedback is simple: Shine your shoes before inspection.
What’s interesting is that, once we identify the contours of a system, we can often make useful changes that don’t require that people change their personalities. We can shift their roles, change the processes we use, or even change the environment.
that’s what seeing systems does: It creates possibilities.
Summary: SOME KEY IDEAS 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? Looking at systems: Reduces judgment Enhances accountability Uncovers root causes Look for patterns in your feedback. Is this a You + Everybody intersection? Take responsibility for your part.
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Feedback can be threatening because it prompts questions about the most challenging relationship you have: your relationship with yourself. Are you a good person? Do you deserve your own respect? Can you live with yourself? Forgive yourself?
our feelings influence our thoughts, and the story we tell ourselves about what the feedback means can become distorted.
Once you see the feedback clearly, the next task is to figure out how to square the feedback with your identity—your self-story about who you are in the world.
Learn how Wiring and Temperament Affect Your Story
THE LIBERATION OF HARD WIRING One reason why Krista and Alita respond so differently to feedback is their wiring—their built-in neural structures and connections. Our wiring affects who we are, tilting us toward being anxious or upbeat, shy or outgoing, sensitive or resilient, and it contributes to how intensely feedback—both positive and negative—affects us.
This chapter takes a look at our different emotional reactions to feedback and at the role our wiring plays in that. We’ll also look at how those emotions influence our thinking, and how our thinking influences our emotions. Understanding your own wiring and tendencies helps you to improve your ability to weather the storm of negative feedback—and to dig yourself out in the morning.
Learning that how you are in the world is due in part to your wiring might feel discouraging—just one more thing that’s wrong with you, and one that seems impossible to fix. But it can be freeing, as well.
A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT YOURSELF ON FEEDBACK Our understanding of the brain is under construction.
One of the brain’s primary survival functions is to manage approach and withdrawal: We tend to move toward things that are pleasurable and away from things that are painful. Pleasure is a rough proxy for the healthy and safe; pain is a rough proxy for the unhealthy and dangerous. But our approach-withdrawal function is too crudely calibrated to navigate the nuanced worlds of modern work and love. The brain gets tangled when it encounters short-term pain that is necessary for long-term gain—that exercising you put off, for instance. And the opposite is also true: Short-term pleasures that
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What does this have to do with feedback? Like sex, drugs, food, and exercise, feedback is one of these areas that boggle the brain and muck up the approach-withdrawal system. Doing what feels good now (finding a way to make negative feedback stop) may be costly in the long run (you are left, fired, or simply stagnate). And what is healthy in the long run (understanding and acting on useful feedback) may feel painful now.
“Baseline” refers to the default state of well-being or contentment toward which you gravitate in the wake of good or bad events in your life. “Swing” refers to how far up or down you move from your baseline when you receive feedback. Some of us have extreme reactions to feedback; we swing wide. Others remain on an even keel even in the face of disquieting news. “Sustain and Recovery” refers to duration, how long your ups and downs
1. Baseline: The Beginning and End of the Arc
As humans, we adapt—to new information and events both good and bad—and gravitate back to our personal default level of well-being.2 There will be highs and lows, but over time, like water seeking its own level, we are pulled toward our baseline—back up after bad news and back down after good.
There is enormous variance among individuals when it comes to baseline. This is why our uncle Murray seems perpetually dissatisfied with life, while our aunt Eileen is delighted with everything for no apparent reason. Happiness is believed to be one of the most highly heritable aspects of personality. Twin studies have led to estimates that about 50 percent of the variance among people in their average levels of happiness can be explained by differences in their genes rather than in their life
studies of lottery winners have shown that a year after claiming their prize, winners are approximately as happy (or unhappy) as they were prior to the windfall.4 Why does your baseline matter when it comes to receiving feedback? First, people who have higher happiness baselines are more likely to respond positively to positive feedback than people with lower self-reported well-being.
And people with lower general satisfaction respond more strongly to ...
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2. Swing: How Far Up or Down You Go
Brain imaging studies suggest that differences in sensitivity may correlate with anatomical differences as well. The adults who had low-reactive infant temperaments had greater thickness in the left orbitofrontal cortex than the high-reactive group while the adults categorized as high-reactive infants displayed greater thickness in the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex.7 Whatever is going on inside our cortexes, differences in swing are easy to observe within our conference rooms. When a client sends the same critical comments to both Eliza and Jeron, Eliza is frantic with anxiety while
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Because Eliza and Jeron are teammates, their disparate reactions create tension. Jeron thinks Eliza is melodramatic and attention-seeking; Eliza thinks Jeron is in denial about the depth of the problem. Now they have feedback for each other about how they are each (mis-)handling the feedback.
Bad Is Stronger Than Good Whether we are easily swamped or nearly waterproof, there’s one wiring challenge we all face: Bad is stronger than good. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt elaborates: “Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures.”8 This observation sheds light on an eternal riddle about feedback: Why do we dwell on the one criticism buried amid four hundred compliments? Built into our wiring is a kind of security team that scans...
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Richard Davidson has found that the amount of time that we sustain positive emotion, or need to recover from negative emotion, can differ by as much as 3,000 percent across individuals.10 Surprisingly, negative feedback and positive feedback are mediated by different parts of the brain; in fact, they appear to be mediated by different halves of the brain. And those different halves of the brain can be differently good at their job. This subject gets complicated quickly, but there are some simple insights that emerge from the research on this front. Negative Recovery: Righty or Lefty? It’s
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Sitting just behind your forehead, your prefrontal cortex is the seat of higher-order reasoning, judgment, and decision making. Like other parts of your brain, it is divided in two, with a right and left side. When you experience negative feelings like fear, anxiety, and disgust, your brain shows increased activity on the right side. When you experience positive feelings like amusement, hope, and love, your brain shows increased activity on the left side. Researchers have termed this the “valence hypothesis,” suggesting that people who have more activity on the right side (“cortical righties”)
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Strong activity on the left is associated with quicker recovery from upset. People who are faster to recover not only have more activity in the left side; they also tend to have more connections (“white matter” pathways that connect brain regions to one another) running between the left side of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.13 This appears to create more bandwidth along which the positive messages can travel to the amygdala.
people whose brain wiring and organization are more right-sided, or righties, are slower than lefties to recover from negative feedback.
While a fast recovery time has real advantages—those who are resilient are more likely to respond to setbacks with energy and determination and less likely to suffer from depression—being at the extreme end of this scale presents its own challenges as far as feedback is concerned. Because negative feedback has less emotional resonance for Krista, it may not adequately catch her attention or even stick in memory.
