The power of feedback

"I want extremely direct feedback as soon as possible. I don't care whether it's a private or public setting," the analyst said.

The team sat in a loose circle outside on a warm summer evening. Each team member was describing their work style. The McKinsey partner looked on approvingly.

I remember thinking at the time that I admired the analyst's attitude. I also remember thinking "that's probably what I would say if I had never heard feedback that hurt deeply."

The most valuable feedback that I've received hurt. Why? Because it touched on qualities that I was in denial about. It was the humiliating realization that I wasn't successfully "faking it": "Your desire to be liked is holding you back from being the type of leader your team needs you to be."

Every once in a while I'm reminded of that analyst who welcomed any piece of feedback. It was nearly a decade ago and I hope that he's still this gung-ho.

Feedback is extremely powerful, but I think it's often misunderstood.

The power of feedback

Feedback is one of the most powerful tools to build self-knowledge.

The Johari Window is a psychological framework for understanding how we come across to ourself and to others. It was initially developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram ("Jorahi" is a portmanteau of their first names). It lays out a simple 2x2 framework:

The power of feedback is simple: it moves data from the "Blind spot" into the "Open area." How much rich data is in the Blind spot? How empowering to be able to use that data?

There are different types of feedback

The term "feedback" has come to mean a bunch of different things and that makes it hard to talk about. Here's an informal taxonomy--

1. Behavior: A description of how my behavior is perceived ("can you share what went well and what I could have done better in our work together?")
2. Performance: An evaluation of?my performance ("am I meeting expectations at my level? What would it look like to exceed?")
3. Content input: Ask for help about my work from someone who has the expertise or organizational context to make my work better?("can you give me feedback on how to improve this slide?")
4. Organizational input: Ask for input from a stakeholder who is affected or is an approver for the work ("can you provide your thoughts on our plan? It will require support from your team")

For each type of feedback, it's important to identify the right people to ask.

Feedback is not "the truth"

A common pitfall of high-achieving individuals is to optimize for positive feedback.

The problem with that is that feedback isn't objectively "true." It's just an opinion; it's rooted in a particular point of view.

If someone is an important leader in our organization, then we tend to give their opinion more weight. This makes sense since their position and experience gives them a perspective that is uniquely valuable in understanding our work / impact / behavior.

However, it doesn't mean their feedback is always objectively "true." A good rule of thumb is to ask: "would I agree with this feedback if the person weren't an important leader?" In my experience, most leaders hate it when all of their opinions are taken as gospel.

Similarly, some people give well-meaning feedback that isn't helpful. Many firms (especially consulting firms) use feedback as a tool to drive conformity. In that environment, feedback is valuable if you're aligned with the firm's values, but it can be destructive if not.

Feedback is not "the truth"... but it is data!

There's a type of writing workshop that is designed to be negative. In the discussion, participants are only allowed to say negative things and the author is not allowed to respond (or speak at all). In practice, this means that people say conflicting negative things:

• A: "The Princess Character got too much focus and it was boring"
• B: "I couldn't get into it because I wanted to hear more about the Princess Character"

This is particularly effective for writers who are hyper-reactive to negative feedback. They need to decide what they agree with since they can't "people please" all of the conflicting negative signals.

There are a few concepts from this model that I find helpful:

• It's important to "find your editor": who is the person who can give feedback that brings you closer to your aspiration? Who is a person who "gets" your voice? This could be a mentor or someone else who knows a lot about you and shares similar career values. Their feedback is particularly valuable.
• Listen to data even if it's not from your editor: your work won't be read just by people who are exactly like you. It's important to hear from a variety of voices.
• Negative feedback tends to loom larger: This is called the negativity bias. However, negative feedback isn't necessarily the more important signal to act on. We need to remain vigilant and avoid optimizing for the negative by default. Big success often comes from maximizing a strength, not from minimizing a weakness.
• Seeing feedback as data can make it more valuable: if we take the message literally ("The Princess Character got too much focus and it was boring") then we will try to optimize for that particular message. However, hearing the full range of feedback (including listening to your own opinion), we can see a bigger picture. Why do some people like the Princess Character? Why do some experience her differently? What impact did I intend for her to have?

Use feedback, don't let it use you

When I was a first-year analyst at L.E.K. Consulting, the job had roughly three parts: (a) building slides, (b) modeling in Excel, and (c) conducting research by calling industry participants and asking them survey questions.

In my performance evaluation, I was told that I excelled at the first two skills but was weak on the third.

"Good," I thought to myself with a grim satisfaction.

I hated cold-calling industry participants to ask them questions.

***

While I hope that junior analyst is still as gung-ho about receiving feedback, I do hope that he's thoughtful about whose path he's following...