Two Simple Truths about Feedback

HR Heresy

Feedback, they say, is the breakfast of champions because it enables continuous improvement. But everyone struggles with it. Managers, because they want to be kind and effective and often fear those two goals cancel each other out. Direct reports because it’s hard to hear hard truths about oneself and defensiveness is instinctive.

But there are two fundamental aspects of feedback that I think we often get wrong. Not everyone will agree with me, but here they are.

TIMING

Typically feedback is given either on an annual basis (part of the oft-dreaded performance review process) or at the end of a big project. Neither timing is particularly effective. At Imperial College, they found that feedback given midway through a project was twice as effective as at the end. Why? Because the opportunity still exists to apply the feedback and improve. By the end of a project, it’s too late—and anyway, what the student cares about is the grade. All that individual feedback I’ve written for students at the end of a course? Utterly wasted. The grade, promotion or bonus is salient in a way the words are not.

Patty McCord at Netflix did away with annual performance reviews because they cost hundreds of thousands of hours and seemed to make no real difference. (That’s also why GE eventually gave up on forced ranking.) Typically in most organization, reviews are folies a deux: the manager hates writing them, the employee hates writing responses, everyone loathes the conversation and nobody tells the truth. And anyway: who learns on an annual basis? Imagine learning a language or learning to walk that way! Feedback needs to be offered in the moment when it can be applied and made real. The rest is paperwork for lawyers.

© General Mills - with thanks!

CRITICISM

‘Build on strengths, don’t worry about weaknesses.’ That’s a mantra. It has its points: building on strengths is obviously good. But weaknesses can’t be fixed unless they’re recognized. I expect we have all sat through hours of reviews trying to find nice ways to convey negative observations: a proliferation of weasel words saying nothing. Tedious and insulting, they are gentle ineffective half-truths.

Twice in my professional life I’ve been given direct, harsh feedback. The first time, my boss and mentor told me I often polarized people. My inner voice responded furiously—No I do not!—perfectly illustrating his point. That comment stuck in my head for years as I started to hear myself doing exactly what he’d said, and then teaching myself better ways to respond. I’m not certain I am always successful and frankly, there are times I’m not sure I always cared. But this off-the-cuff, less than entirely considered remark helped me immeasurably and still does. It also helped that it came from a boss who had expressed his big ambitions for me. He was clumsy but I also trusted that he meant well.

The second clumsy piece of negative feedback came from a colleague who I think simply didn’t like me. After a strategy debate, he rather lost it, saying: ‘Margaret you talk too much!’ On reflection now, I think he felt affronted that I dared to disagree with him. But what he said was thoughtless, uncontrolled and clearly not designed to be useful feedback. Yet it did make me think. For about a year after that, any time we were in a meeting, I resolved not to say a word, unless someone else had not be heard (in which case I would re-state what had been ignored) or whenI thought that some obvious truth was being carefully skirted. What started as sulking turned out to be a magnificent experiment.

Knowing I had to say nothing made me listen acutely. I discovered more about my colleagues, their values and frames of references, their strengths, styles and weakness. That made me respect most of them more. I also discovered how much more you hear when you aren’t going to intervene. Half the time we are at meetings, we don’t listen at all, because we’re rehearsing our own adamantine contributions. I discovered that the less I said, the more weight it carried. Dazzling result. I’ve got over my sulk now but I will never get over the power of listening. It’s a great relief and a mark of respect to listen, and I love doing it.

These 2 pieces of feedback were sloppy and careless and, in the moment, hurtful. But they have helped me prodigiously. I’m not quite sure I can find it in myself to thank the people who produced them, but they have made me recognize that sometimes we do people no favours when we tiptoe around truths.

If You Want to Go Deeper

Patty McCord talks great sense about company cultures, procedures and how to work effectively with people without creating an Alpine ridge of bureaucracy. It’s practice, not theory. Her book Powerful lives up to its name. She’s also just a ton of fun.

For the Love of It

I was in Amsterdam recently and visited the new Tulip Museum. I’m a great lover of tulips; having grown up in the Netherlands, my garden is packed with them. At the Tulip Museum I learned that they got their name from the Turkish word for turban, which they were thought to resemble. But the single tulip fact which I’ve retained for years is that the Dutch produce two new tulip varieties every week. This is extraordinary creativity. One of the strange and hidden advantages of being a small country is knowing that power won’t give you dominance—so you have to be creative. A classic example of weakness producing strength. Bad luck as good luck.