The feedback paradox
It is valuable, but not a lot of people like giving or receiving it
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I have been reorged a few times and that typically means I end up reporting to a new manager. Whenever I get a new manager it is my tradition to set up an introductory 1:1 and during that 1:1 I always give my new overlord the following spiel: “Just so you know, I operate best on direct feedback. If I do something that you don’t like or if you think I am going in the wrong direction, please tell me immediately! And do not be too subtle about it, because then I might miss it.”
The value of feedback is very well recognized. Why is it then, that good feedback is so rare?
Over a decade ago one of the L4 software engineers I was working with asked for my support for his promotion case (this was in a company and at a time where L4 still meant something and consequently L5 meant a lot). I went into that chat with the message that I couldn’t support the promotion because I didn’t see a lot of evidence of next-level work. My colleague was upset: “But everyone always says that I am doing well!”, he exclaimed. I agreed: “You are doing very well as an L4 software engineer. You write excellent code and do not need much guidance. Definitely a ‘high meets’. But, I don’t see anything beyond that.” In the rest of the discussion I explained my philosophy around promotions and specifically the fact that promotions do not exist to reward great performance at a particular level, but instead should recognize doing a good job that is essentially at the next level. This engineer was doing a great job at the current level and should be recognized for that, but he was not doing the work of an L5 engineer.
My colleague was not happy and we parted ways. Soon thereafter, I left the team and joined another division in the company. However, before I ultimately left the company, he contacted me and said the following magic words: “Hey Jos, I wanted to thank you for that meeting a few years ago. I was quite unhappy after it, but ultimately I realized that you were right, that other people thought the same, but nobody had ever told me; you were the only one…”
Right there is one of the problems with feedback: People don’t like giving it. Good feedback doesn’t mean a positive message; good feedback means a constructive message. If you are truly doing a great job, that’s always nice to hear. But what you really need to hear is when you are not doing a great job, or not good enough for a promotion, or a bonus, or some other boon. That is never nice to hear because it means that you are not as amazing as you thought you were and, on top of that, you might need to change something. People would therefore rather not hear constructive feedback. As Dutch author Arnon Grunberg so aptly put it: “Nobody likes Death, but people would rather not dine with the Truth either.”
Everyone likes giving good news. Good news makes people happy and, unless you are a miserable sociopath, you like it when you can make people happy. Also, being the bearer of good news rubs off on you a little bit, like it was you who did the thing that makes people happy. However, I rarely learn something when I do things well. Sometimes I learn that I was just lucky, but at other times when I do something well it is just because I am doing something that I know how to do. It is still nice to hear, and by all means give compliments, but there is limited long-term value in compliments. When I hear constructive feedback, I might be miffed a bit, but I almost always learn something.
Recently I made a plan for this new project I got assigned to. I thought about it a bit, and knocked out a plan that covered all the bases but that was structured in a particular way. Specifically, the plan front-loaded all the research and design work and then had a build phase at the end where we would turn all of the knowledge we had gathered into a working solution. It was not a bad plan and it would definitely have produced the thing we need. Instead, the immediate feedback I got was that the plan was not great because it would take months before something tangible was produced. The moment I got that feedback I had two choices: I could either be upset about it and defend the plan, or I could see it as valuable directional input that the organization wanted and needed something else. I restructured the plan so that we would build things as we went along. The next feedback I got was that this was going in the right direction, but could I please be a bit more specific about what it exactly was that we were delivering at the end of each phase. The third and (until now) last iteration of the plan added that and now everyone was happy.
As feedback goes this is very simple: I did a piece of work and it was not as good as it should have been. That’s not a problem, I work for a very demanding organization and I must admit that I am not always in tune yet with the culture. Being protective of your work is fine, but really, just let it go. Fortunately, someone cared enough to tell me so that I could change course.
Behavioral feedback is much harder to give and much harder to receive. Every now and then I am overcome by my own enthusiasm and then dominate the discussion and use way more speaking time than I am owed. One leader that I worked with put it quite nicely and told me that he appreciated the enthusiasm and the stream of ideas that accompanied it, but that the abundance of energy and the associated disruption could be hard to deal with. I am still fit to bouts of enthusiasm, but I try to recognize and contain it (thanks Ian!).
A good way to structure this kind of (behavorial) feedback is to use the SBI method: Situation, Behavior, Impact. SBI has been shown to reduce the anxiety of delivering feedback and also to reduce defensiveness in the recipient. The method is simple and straightforward: You capture and clarify the Situation, describe the specific Behaviors observed, and explain the Impact that the person’s behavior had on you. The beauty of the model is that you anchor the feedback in the impact it has on yourself. Feedback given using SBI does not judge any behaviors as good or bad, instead it describes the effect it had on you and then the person the feedback is addressed to can figure out whether they want to change their ways or not. I often advise people to split the impact in two parts: It makes me feel like this and then I do that. This modification of SBI seeks to create more understanding about why the impact is what it is.
A common place to give and receive feedback is during the annual performance review process. Many people struggle to write performance reviews because they shy away from being truthful, lest they hurt the other person. This is truly terrible because you are not doing anyone a favor. Many people think that giving feedback through a performance review means that you are giving a holistic review of someone’s performance and they thus feel they need to give a complete fair and balanced overview of someone’s entire performance profile. Nothing is further from the truth: It is the manager’s job to cobble that holistic overview together based on a collection of individual signals. Your signal might be spot on. Or it might not. It might be an outlier. Or it might reinforce a signal also given by other people. Anyway, withholding your signal does nobody any favors. It’s especially unkind to the person you are reviewing because you are withholding the primary driver for their improvement: Honest information on how well they are actually doing.
Over twenty years ago I was teaching Java coding at a bank that was running a program to convert college dropouts to software engineers. A few weeks into the program there was a mini performance review of all the participants by someone from HR (Human Remains). As the course instructor, I was asked to give feedback on everyone’s skills, learning abilities, and the way they behaved in class. The reviews took place over the course of an afternoon. The next morning I was dealing with twenty very upset young people, most of whom had been on the receiving end of some honest feedback for the very first time in their life. One of them managed to say: “And I shared the feedback with my mum, and she thought it was ridiculous too”. To which I responded: “Yes lad, but your mum thinks that everything you do is amaaaaazing!”
When receiving feedback there is a non-zero probability that it will upset you. As I wrote above, nobody really likes getting constructive feedback, and it is completely understandable if, when receiving some, you feel a flush of annoyance and immediately get defensive. However, remember that feedback does not need a response! It is not the start of a conversation, it’s just a message to you. The best way to respond is to say: “Thank you” and then take some time to mull it over. You might (eventually) want to get back to the feedback giver, but generally there is no reason to. What are you going to do? Change their minds?
Remember this when the feedback comes: It doesn’t materially change anyone’s opinion of you! It just lets you know what other people are thinking of you already. What would you rather have: That everyone thinks you should do a better job but that you are the only one not to know that? And, seen from the giver’s side, if you give honest feedback, the only thing you are doing is making sure that someone knows what other people are secretly already thinking about them. It’s all about leveling the playing field, really…
