Forging a feedback culture

Have you been on the end of that dreaded phrase …. “I’d just like to give you some feedback ….”. That’s the point that we smile bravely and turn on the ‘I am a professional and I welcome constructive criticism’ face.

Let’s be honest. Most of us say we welcome feedback and most of us don’t want it. The occasional thank you is great for us (we want to do a good job) but we generally find it uncomfortable to hear that we need to change the way we do things. And that’s OK by me, its called being human.

So, I have been curious for a while about how we develop a freely-flowing feedback culture in which everyone wants to participate rather than feeling that they OUGHT to participate. For me it starts with honesty about our default human condition of defensiveness, then working subtle ways around that.

Our biggest obstacle is our tendency to have ‘feedback conversations’ such as appraisals. These set up the defence mechanisms to start with. Would it be possible perhaps to switch our feedback from a timetabled event in which we discuss a range of issues, into a live topic by topic conversation? I recently had a great conversation with a colleague in which she said to me “Thank you for doing X for me. Next time could you also do Y and Z it really helps me”. Basically, I had underperformed by not doing Y & Z and this is how she gave the feedback. And it was great, I felt I was being asked to do something rather than ‘being given feedback’ and I was of course, happy to oblige especially as she said it made her job easier and I’d like to be the kind of person to help her out.

So I received feedback (in fact I was being told off) but it didn’t feel like it. It makes me wonder whether the simplest and most powerful feedback is being asked to do something? Not even an analysis of what was done last time picking out the defects, but simply a request to do something a certain way next time? We are bright enough to know that this is quite rightly corrective, but we tend to feel less defensive receiving it?

Try this out with your team. If for example a colleague of yours doesn’t perform as expected in a meeting, simply say “In the next meeting could you make sure you do a b c, that would really help me”. By inference it is a correction, but we are not referring to the previous poor meeting at all, simply talking about the future. The recipient is bright enough to know that this is feedback but the word ‘feedback’ isn’t even mentioned. They wonder why we said it, think it through, own it and deal with it. If they don’t get it and start asking why, then we oblige and explain but again, we are not giving ‘feedback’ we are simply answering their questions.

The fundamentals of a great feedback culture can be built without even saying the word ’feedback’. Just say regular thank you’s, and for corrective action ask for specifics in the future without pulling apart the past.

Written by Mark Miller – Director Goodfoot