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When your spouse or partner reminds you of all your shortcomings, how well do you accept this trip down memory lane?)
negative feedback shuts us down. We close ranks, turn into our shell, and shut the world out. Change does not happen in this environment.
One reason so many people deny the validity of feedback is that they believe that the feedback was delivered by the “wrong people.” Since my clients pick their raters, it is hard for them to deny the validity of the feedback.
As part of my interview process, I enlist each of my client’s coworkers to help me out. I want them to assist, not sabotage the change process.
I then present these coworkers with four requests. I call them The Four Commitments. I need them to commit to: 1. Let go of the past. 2. Tell the truth. 3. Be supportive and helpful—not cynical or negative. 4. Pick something to improve yourself—so everyone is focused more on “improving” than “judging.”
Here’s how you can get the people you know to commit to helping you. First commitment: Can they let go of the past?
you have to get this first commitment. Without it, you can’t shift people’s minds away from critic toward helper. As a friend wisely noted, “Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past!”
Second commitment: Will they swear to tell the truth?
Third commitment: Will they be supportive, without being a cynic, critic, or judge?
Fourth commitment: Will they pick one thing they can improve in themselves?
you’re actually doing is creating parity, even a bond, between you and the other person.
goading
This fourth commitment is the final piece in making the process a two-way exchange. And it is crucial if you want people to stick with you through the 12- to 18-month process.
Stop Asking for Feedback and Then Expressing Your Opinion
“You’re acting as if I’m wrong—that you’re the victim because I happen to be in the elevator while you’re breaking the law.”
I think about that elevator ride every time someone asks me for my advice and then after I give it, they render a less-than-glowing verdict about the quality of my advice. “I can’t believe it,” I say, with the lawyer’s words ringing in my ears. “You asked me for my opinion and now you’re arguing with me.”
I’ve included a 72-question leadership survey in an appendix to give you a picture of how professionals in this field operate.
It’s my contention—and it’s the bedrock thesis of this book—that interpersonal behavior is the difference-maker between being great and near-great, between getting the gold and settling for the bronze. (The higher you go, the more your “issues” are behavioral.)
feedback comes to us in three forms: Solicited, unsolicited, and observation.
I’m not saying that you, working on your own, cannot replicate my feedback retrieval methods. It’s quite possible that you could corral a dozen people who know you, qualify them with the four commitment test, and have them fill out a questionnaire about what you could be doing better.
My only concern is that we cannot be sure that you will (a) ask the right people, (b) ask the right questions, (c) interpret the answers properly, or (d) accept them as accurate.
In the workplace you don’t have to like me; we don’t have to be buddies who hang out together after work. All we have to do is work well together. How we really “feel” about each other is practically moot.
the Johari Window
Dr. Bob Tannenbaum.
had invented the term “sensitivity training” and had published the most influential papers on the subject.
fatuous
we need these painful unsolicited feedback episodes, when others reveal how the world really sees us, in order to change for the better. Without the pain, we might not discover the motivation to change.
Some of the best feedback comes from what you observe. If you accept it and act on it, it’s no less valid than people telling you the same thing at point-blank range.
1. Make a list of people’s casual remarks about you.
there’s a difference between observing and observing with judgment.
For one day, write down all the comments that you hear people make to you about you.
2. Turn the sound off.
I ask them to pretend they’re watching a movie with the sound off. They can’t hear what anyone is saying. It’s an exercise in sensitizing themselves to their colleagues’ behavior.
they see how people physically maneuver and gesture to gain primacy in a group setting. They lean forward toward the dominant authority figure. They turn away from people with diminished power. They cut rivals off with hand and arm gestures. It’s no different than what people are doing with the sound on except that it’s even more obvious with the sound off.
A variation on this drill is making sure you are the earliest person to arrive at a group meeting. Turn the sound off and observe how people respond to you as they enter. What they do is a clue about what they think of you. Do they smile when they see you and pull up a chair next to you? Do they barely acknowledge your presence and sit across the room? Note how each person responds to you.
3. Complete the sentence.
Pick one thing that you want to get better at.
Then list the positive benefits that will accrue to you and the world if you achieve your goal. For example, “I want to get in better shape. If I get in shape, one benefit to me is that . . .” And then you complete the sentence.
keep doing it.
until you exhaust the benefits.
As the benefits you list become less expected and more personal and meaningful to you, that’s when you know that you’ve given yourself some valuable feedback—that you’ve hit on an interpersonal skill that you really want and need to improve.
Listen to your self-aggrandizing remarks.
5. Look homeward.
Your flaws at work don’t vanish when you walk through the front door at home.
Anybody can change, but they have to want to change—and sometimes you can deliver that message by reaching people where they live, not where they work.
When you try the sentence completion technique, you’re using retrograde analysis—that is, seeing the end result and then identifying the skill you’ll need to achieve it.
Feedback tells us what to change, not how to do it. But when you know what to change, you’re ready to start changing yourself and how people perceive you. You’re ready for the next step: telling everyone you’re sorry.
I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make.
The apology gave him and the people he was addressing a sense of closure, however faint and bittersweet. Closure lets you move forward.
wallop
