All feedback is good feedback. Or is it? Turns out feedback does not always help us thrive. Here's an alternative approach you can try next time
Pressed for time? you can find a TL;DR snippet at the bottom of this article.
The importance of feedback
I consider myself incredibly lucky to work for a company that puts a lot of emphasis on personal growth (to the point we get 13 days a year in addition to annual leave to dedicate to self-learning, training and innovation... ) [To be fair it really surprises me how little other places do this: as a result of the investment, employees end up staying in the company for longer than they would otherwise as they recognise they are getting something back that is meaningful to them; and by learning new skills they get better at their jobs so the company ends up benefiting from it by default - it's a win-win...]
Part and parcel of nurturing a growth mindset is the encouragement of a feedback culture: at work, feedback is shared early and often and is one of the key elements used to assess the teams' performance.
When the feedback shared is positive it is awesome: people feel energised, the teams thrive, everyone is happy and the work gets better as a result. Things change considerably if we enter into the field of negative, AKA constructive, feedback... I don't know about you, but I struggle quite a lot with it!
It turns out there are a lot of valid reasons for this, the most important one being the inevitable tension between our desire to learn more about ourselves and our need to feel accepted:
It is true that hearing external feedback is the only way to know about our blind spots. There is also no way to know if what we do is having an impact without some sort of external signal that feeds back on how our actions are perceived by others. And there is no doubt that knowing where we stand helps us adjust the trajectory and allows us to learn and adapt our behaviour.
- NB: Part 2 of this article will be dedicated to the subtle art of sharing and receiving feedback. I will share lessons I have learnt the hard way and some really good insights from the book Thanks For The Feedback. The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well so stay tuned for more.
What's behind excellence?
While I recognise that it is mainly through dissonant feedback that we develop and grow the most, I can't but wholeheartedly agree with this article from HBR which encourages an evolution from a feedback culture to a coaching culture that builds on personal strengths and leverages positive psychology.
The Feedback Fallacy
The article synopsis goes: "For years managers have been encouraged to candidly praise and criticise just about everything workers do. But it turns out that feedback does not help employees thrive.
- First, research shows that people can’t reliably rate the performance of others: More than 50% of your rating of someone reflects your characteristics, not hers.
- Second, neuroscience reveals that criticism provokes the brain’s “fight or flight” response and inhibits learning.
- Last, excellence looks different for each individual, so it can’t be defined in advance and transferred from one person to another. It’s also not the opposite of failure.
Managers will never produce great performance by identifying what they think is failure and telling people how to correct it.
Instead, when managers see a great outcome, they should turn to the person who created it, say, “Yes! That!,” and share their impression of why it was a success. Neuroscience shows that we grow most when people focus on our strengths. Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly"
The authors do not dismiss the benefits of sharing instructive feedback to help people improve at their jobs: "To be clear, instruction—telling people what steps to follow or what factual knowledge they’re lacking—can be truly useful: That’s why we have checklists in airplane cockpits and, more recently, in operating rooms (...) But the occasions when the actions or knowledge necessary to minimally perform a job can be objectively defined in advance are rare and becoming rarer. What we mean by “feedback” is very different. Feedback is about telling people what we think of their performance and how they should do it better—whether they’re giving an effective presentation, leading a team, or creating a strategy." They however also point out that on this the research is clear: "Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning."
Language cheat-sheet
[I also quite like the cheat-sheet table below so I've pasted it here for ease of reference :) ]
"We humans do not do well when someone whose intentions are unclear tells us where we stand, how good we “really” are, and what we must do to fix ourselves. We excel only when people who know us and care about us tell us what they experience and what they feel, and in particular when they see something within us that really works."
Read more about the feedback fallacy here
I hope you found these reflection helpful. Feedback is always welcome.
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TL;DR
At work, I am confronted by an all-pervasive feedback culture. I understand why this is happening and I recognise the benefits of knowing more about others' perceptions: it does lead to a better understanding of how our own work is experienced by others and helps us pinpoint where we could improve, especially if this comes from us (we are seeking how to grow rather than being "told" what to do).
However, it comes at a price. In fact, I strongly agree with this article from HBR that argues that to foster a culture of excellence, the emphasis should be on a coaching culture which is grounded on positive reinforcement and positive psychology instead - so much that I am going to try this and experiment with this approach next to see what happens :)
But what if we have to deal with negative feedback about us? the next article will look at that in more detail and will offer some useful tips on how to protect yourself and make the most out of the exchange. Stay tuned for more :)
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Client Experience Lead at AND Digital
2 年Interesting read Chiara Consiglio ???? I’m looking forward to reading your follow up article with a ?? Keep up the sharing ??
Building trust in #ecommerce (ex-Amazon, ex-Army intelligence)
2 年Really like this and agree with you Chiara Consiglio "Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly"