Be a Coach: On Giving and Receiving Performance Feedback

At work, giving and receiving feedback can feel personal. This time of year, if you are delivering and receiving performance reviews, can feel stressful. We're not sure how we'll feel about the feedback we get and we're not sure how others will feel getting the feedback we give. This can make a long period of time feel generally uncomfortable.

I've seen some people spend hours pouring over word choice and writing scripts for delivering a review and others who just want to keep the process moving, don't think enough about how they deliver the review and then end up causing much more work for themselves when it doesn't land. All very understandable.

But it was a stark contrast to how I experienced giving and receiving feedback as a gymnast, which I did for almost as long as I've been working in the professional world. In this contrast, there is something really important we can learn.

In gymnastics, feedback and corrections never felt personal. Maybe because it was physical, it was really obvious where there was room for improvement. If I didn't land on my feet, everyone could see it. But, there was also a very clear group support system. Everyone wanted everyone else to land on their feet, no matter if they were a teammate or competitor.

Because of that openness about everyone's strengths and weaknesses, that group support system, coaching was easier to receive and give to others.

Here are four insights I've had translating this experience from gymnastics to my work as a design leader in tech.

1: Coach your coach

One day, after about 10 frustrating tumbling passes in which I landed on my face, my coach said, “you need to commit or get out of the gym.” I froze as I took in that ultimatum. I started to walk toward the door and right before walking through it, I stopped and argued with him in my mind. I am committed. I'm desperately trying to get the height, the more passes I do, the more tired I get, and the harder it is to land on my feet. In a moment of clarity, I walked back to the floor and said, “that's not going to work for me. I need to see what you're seeing to make the correction, trying blindly won't get me there.”

2: See what your coach sees

He agreed, and videoed my tumbling pass into a foam pit, where I always got enough height. Then he videoed me doing it on the floor where I would land on my face. He played them for me slowly and pointed at where my feet were after my back handspring in each pass. Into the foam pit, my feet landed straight under my hips propelling my high up. On the floor, my feet landed way in front of my hips, sending me straight back, far but low.

Seeing what my coach was able to see in my performance, enabled me to grow. Just like at work, if you truly want to grow, and get that next skill, you need to be honest with yourself about what you are not seeing and trust what your manager is seeing.

As a manager, I try to be an objective mirror for my reports, to be that video camera and help them see the pattern I am seeing and what unintended outcome it is having.

One method to try to help structure your feedback is the COIN method: Context, Observation, Impact, Next Steps.

3: Coach yourself

At work, it can be tempting to act like you have more skill than you do, to cover up for imposter syndrome or to try and get a great review or promotion. If you do this in gymnastics, you will get hurt. The stakes are high enough that you have to be able to admit it when you need a spot (when your coach or team mate supports your body during part of a move).?

If the stakes are high enough at work for you, like you want a new opportunity, you need to be able to ask for support. The more you do this, the more independent you can become. If your manager knows you know yourself well enough to come to them or to ask for support, they will feel good letting you run with things too.

When it came to the trick I was trying to learn on floor, once I saw the feedback clearly through his eyes (the video) I started to coach myself with those same words on repeat in my head, "give 110% and get your feet underneath you”. After too long working on that trick, I landed on my feet that same night, right before the gym closed. I went back the next day and did it again. When your coach teaches you how to coach yourself, your growth will be exponential.

4: Coach, don't compare

As a gymnast, you lean on your peers who have skills you don't and they rely on you for skills you have that they don't. You ask them to spot you, they ask you to spot them. You gather different perspectives from them on your performance to augment what your coach is telling you. You do this because in addition to wanting to be a team player as most people do, increasing your individual score, also increases the overall team score.

This is also true at work, but it's less obvious that it is true. With multiple teams (discipline vs. product) and goals that may or may not ladder up into the same place, it can be hard to draw a line from your success to team success to product success to company success. In absence of that, it's tempting to compare yourself to others — your cross functional peer, or someone in your discipline at your same level.

But, in gymnastics and at work, looking at others slows you down. The skill they need to work on is not always the skill you need to work on. So comparing yourself does nothing but make you feel bad. If you stay in a place of feeling bad for yourself or bad about yourself, you halt all progress.

Just as every gymnast on a team is responsible for the team score and their individual score, I believe every coworker is responsible for their coworkers success and their own.

I like to tell my teams at work that they need to implicate others in their success while they offer themselves towards others success. Your peers are sometimes in the best position to give you the opportunities you need to grow and learn. Tell them what you are working on and ask them what they are working on. Sharing your intentions—what you see as your strengths and growth areas—openly allows others to support you. Knowing what others see as their strengths and growth areas, allows you to support them.

Don't forget to coach all year long

I hope we can all become coaches — now and throughout the half — both to ourselves, to our managers, to our peers, and to consider the people we work with our coaches too. Look at giving performance feedback this time of year as taking responsibility for the people around you, to make them the best they can be, to make the team the most impactful it can be. And then keep it up for the rest of the year.