Feedback: the myth and the magic

How to make sure it benefits those that should be primarily benefited…

People need feedback. So that they can improve. So that they can learn from others. So that they know where to focus on in terms of self-development. Etcetera, etcetera… A bunch of laudable intentions. As they saying goes – “the road to hell is paved of good intentions”… And are we benefiting those that we should?

How can we make of it about the ‘other’ (not about us)?

Because here is the deal… There is a bit of myth on what typically is entailed by what ‘feedback’ means. Some would use even a stronger word to define that –as in a ‘lie’. It is one of the ‘Nine Lies About Work’ in the book by Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall (which I highly recommend to leaders). It all started with a laudable intention of creating more opportunities for exchange than the traditional annual performance review, and from there it scaled.

And you might ask yourself – is there anything fundamentally wrong with getting more input, more exchange? Not necessarily… But there are concrete issues we should be aware of, so that it does not get turned upside down and not primarily benefit the ones that it should – those at the receiving end. Here is a list of examples of where it can possibly go wrong:

• We humans are ‘wired’  to only see what we are looking for.

• We also work under a fastest pattern match paradigm, not a best pattern one, which also means we tend to match to latest or more recently things.

• Attribution error is a thing we do… And we can ‘project’ on others, thus sounding awfully judgmental even if we don’t mean to be mean.

So, we should stop ‘feedbacking’ then!? Absolutely… NOT! As I wrote before, feedback loops are essential in an ecosystem. We can and should reframe though how we go about it:

• From sort of formal moments and a process, prepared upfront (the so-called having a tough conversation of sorts), to an ongoing  and continuous conversation. After all, as Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall highlight in their book, the counterbalance to the lie of ‘people need feedback’ is the truth that ‘people need attention’.

• From a documentation of a judgment of other’s work and behaviour to talk and discuss about facts as well as feelings (“when you did ‘X’, I felt like ‘Y’… can we talk about that?!”).

• From “talking to a mirror” (“I am telling you X because I think that Y is how it should be done…”) to “holding a mirror” (like when you provide some mechanism of reflection so that the people can think for themselves in a more oblique fashion).

It is one of those things where unfortunately language may fool us… Feedback can mean different things to different people and there is what is mainstream and is typically advocated for… In my view, we need to try to be precise on what we mean. Feedback loops are essential and a big opportunity for magic to happen. For as long as it is done in a way that we avoid the traps which may impair the ability to make of it primarily of benefit for those that it is meant to benefit. Then it’s magical - and we are on the money.

More about ‘them’, less about ‘us’.

Start with giving attention. Build up trust through ongoing conversation. Let things emerge and talk about them, in context, with no judgment. Eventually that will move into having much meaningful conversations. And that goes a long way.

by Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect (I only refuse invites from people clearly with an agenda to ‘coldly’ sell something to me), happy to engage and interact