The trap Of Feedback

Despite working in ThoughtWorks for over 5 years, I have been too lazy to warm up to the feedback. If you have to benchmark me by OCEAN traits, I will score more than average on Agreeableness and would try to collaborate than confront someone. The inflection point came, thanks to covid, where I lost connection with people and in my role ( Delivery Principal), my day job involves resolving conflicts every week. So, I started to learn to give more feedback, some hard and it took some effort to overcome the hesitancy of giving hard feedback. ( I was always good in receiving feedback, but giving feedback would come a yard second)

Of course, I didn't become a champion of feedback in my teams - there are few folks who are brilliant in the art of feedback , with a strong conviction of change driven by feedback. One great lesson I learnt is that people mostly appreciated critical feedback, if given on time.

One great lesson I learnt is that people mostly appreciated critical feedback, if given on time

As I started becoming regular in giving feedback, I noticed a distinct pattern which can be summarised as

1. The focus on number of appreciations had a skewed distribution
2. People expected quick changes from critical feedback

Skewed Feedback

Skew in general is not wrong- but when there is a skew in dimensions of time and people, it has interesting effects. For example, the number of appreciations during crunch time goes low, probably with leaders - the fear and incorrect association of 'appreciation' and 'getting relaxed' drives this behavior. In my experience, I found that people need right validation & picture during crunch times. Its when you are out of form, that you need to know what has worked, which helps you to anchor strongly and stay afloat. The next dimension of people is when you find a person who has many things to change, one tends to offer appreciation just as a conversation starter and it loses genuineness of feedback. I have observed that improvements follow a non-linear feedback- it starts incrementally and then in certain moments it jumps, as though the incremental improvements pushed a rock to the top of the mountain and pushed it down.

There is this popular joke which goes like this

"When do you want these 5 features to be done ?"

"Yesterday"

There is an expectation that when we give critical feedback, the person absorbs it and a visible change is possible within a short period of time

This has one of the biggest traps that a flawed understanding of feedback could have one on us. There is a class of feedback, which comes due to behaviors arising out of a certain personality interacting/working in a certain landscape which evolves over time- but when a feedback like ' hey, I expect more participation' doesn't have a short cycle. Participation has many underlying reasons which go into a cycle of Awareness, motivation, context and evolve to find motivation to participate- this requires internal changes, support from the team to be empathetic and welcome incremental slow growth, followed by faster changes.

If this is at the 'giver' end, trying to make changes quickly based on feedback is equally dangerous - feedback has a context, persona of the giver that it has to be looked and harmonised with one's own awareness and knowledge. If not, it becomes like a walk on a slippery lake- you may seem to make progress, but it's not a progress with harmony, awareness and very soon the receiver could get frustrated of trying to make so many changes which are not coherent, not visible. Added to that, many of the changes that you make take substantial time to be visible to your own conscious mind and might be treated badly for not seeing progress.

I would like to summarize with these two takeaways

1. If you are a giver of feedback, especially in leadership position, segment feedback and expect each segment 's response differently
2. If you are a receiver of feedback, try to have cohesive, holistic understanding of the self and give time for the changes to be visible.