Feedback

"Feedback is a gift." This is a quote that is often heard when talking about managing teams and helping improve performance. But what is feedback? How should we approach it and how should we receive/give feedback?

This post focuses on feedback and covers some key elements that I believe everyone should know.

This blog covers the following:

• •Impromptu vs Planned
• •Constructive Feedback
• •Ask For Permission
• •It Is Not Personal
• •Share The Outside Perspective
• •Build On The Strengths
• •Be Contextual
• •Provide Specificity
• •Frequency
• •Directionality
• •Example

Impromptu vs Planned

Think of the last few times someone gave you feedback (in any way or form). How did that make you feel? Were you receptive of the provider's comments? Did you try to dispute the feedback? What was your state of mind before, during, and after the feedback?

After these questions, I am assuming that you remembered times when receiving feedback, either from a family member/friend or a colleague, was unpleasant and maybe more so because you were simply not ready to hear what was told and less so about what was actually told.

The reason is that all of us want to be right and when we see our actions from our perspective we believe we did not do anything wrong. Therefore, when someone gives us feedback we tend to have a visceral reaction to it, especially when we are not in a state of deep listening.

The above is to emphasize the importance of timing and whether a feedback session should be planned or performed in an impromptu fashion. Having someone tell us something we may not want to hear is not fun (at least not at the moment it happens) and it is better that we are prepared.

This is the reason I highly advise against providing impromptu feedback. Impromptu feedback may catch the receiver off guard and in a bad mood, while we may also not be ready for the receiver's reaction. There are times that feedback needs to be given on the spot, but in these cases I advise for extreme caution and high levels of mindfulness to get the best results.

Impromptu feedback is something that I will not cover deeply in this post, but the ideas below can be used every time feedback is provided.

Constructive Feedback

Constructive feedback is called constructive because it is done in a way that helps the receiver build on their strengths and use the feedback as a constructive element towards improved performance over time. Also, we should keep in mind that as feedback can be constructive it can also be destructive if done in a wrong way; this contrast is crucial for us to grasp the importance of feedback as a gift.

Some key characteristics of constructive feedback are covered below.

Ask For Permission

Before any feedback session, even if the session is planned, please ask the recipient for permission. Receiving feedback means that the recipient must be fully open and vulnerable, as well as in deep listening state to be able to receive it fully and build on it. This means that the recipient must be in a healthy mental and emotional state, which can easily be disturbed in the course of our daily lives.

Asking for permission means that you, as provider, are respectful of the recipients current state and that the recipient's acknowledgment allows you to start.

It Is Not Personal

Remember that feedback is not to "attack" the person but rather assess the behavior of the recipient. This means that we are not claiming that the recipient is a "bad" person, but we might be saying that the recipient's behavior was not aligned with the expectations.

At this point, also keep in mind that the expectations may have not been well understood, so you as a provider must also be prepared for this response, especially if you were responsible for making sure the recipient knows the expectations.

Another way to look at this is by using data, which is rather impersonal. Let's say that a specific metric was not met or that an action by the recipient led to a problem, e.g., a software bug. This is a great way to ground the conversation around hard and indisputable data, but the important thing here is to understand the reason behind the problem; just saying the metric was not met only states the obvious but does not help the recipient move to the next step.

Share The Outside Perspective

Make sure to emphasize the fact that the feedback is your (or externally solicited) perspective and it is not the truth; this is even more true when the feedback is about behavior or actions.

The first step is for you, as provider, to accept that this is the case and you are not always true. The second step is to emphasize the fact during the feedback session by, for example, say something like "I believe..." or "I think..." (note: I will provide some examples at the end of the post).

Build On The Strengths

Many people have a desire to point out all the negatives of someone else, but if everyone was all but negatives, then we would have not achieved anything in this world. It is vital that you acknowledge the strengths of the recipient in tandem with the opportunities (a more subtle and smooth way of saying "negatives").

I have observed many cases where people focused solely on the opportunities, but this has a twofold negative impact. One, the recipient needs to stand on their strengths to be able to work on their opportunities. Two, this removes any motivation from the recipient to put the required effort and improve.

Be Contextual

This item (as well as the next one, "Provide specificity") is extremely important and is what makes constructive feedback constructive.

Most times we observe only the outcome of a situation or behavior and tend to forget the context. For example someone might have made a mistake, but that someone might have been joggling 3 tasks at the same time or might have been very junior and did not know what to do.

Now, we cannot always have that context, but it is important to be receptive of the fact that the context might be valuable for the feedback and we need to seek it out. So, we can focus on the outcome for which we are giving the feedback and depending on the context we can even more focus on what the right course of action should be given that context.

Provide Specificity

Specificity is a key element of feedback, because it allows the recipient to truly understand what happened. Vague statements like "you could have done this better" lets the recipient question (or even worse, interpret) what "better" means in the case.

On the other hand, a specific statement like "before merging your code you did not check with the reviewers about their comments" clearly explains to the recipient what the issue was and where the recipient should focus on and/or contemplate on. Specificity goes hand-in-hand with context, because together you can outline what exactly happened (from your perspective) and under what (assumed) circumstances.

Frequency

One may ask how often feedback should be provided and there is no single answer to this. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it depends on the nature of the job and the more objective / data driven the feedback is, the more frequent the feedback can be given. Second, it takes time for someone to internalize the feedback and act on it, which means that the feedback cannot be given as often as we think it could, because we do not want to overload the recipient with more feedback before action has been taken on the previous one.

There needs to be a balance between frequency and action. At the same time, I believe that for top performing organizations the feedback needs to be provided fairly frequently, namely at least once a month. If we look at sports teams, which in my opinion are some of the most performing organizations in the world, the feedback provided is almost instant and daily. Even though doing this in every job is not possible, it might be a good example of what it takes to be best. My preference is to have planned feedback once a month with interim feedback sessions as needed.

Directionality

Last but not least, we need to keep in mind that we are not only to provide feedback but also receive it. I highly encourage you to plan your feedback sessions to be bi-directional, meaning that you are to both provide and receive feedback.

This serves two primary purposes. One, it allows you to become better by understanding how the other person sees you; as we said in the beginning, feedback is a gift. Two, it is a clear demonstration of deep respect for the other person, as you are giving them the opportunity to not only listen, but also to be heard. This approach can help build tremendous, long-lasting relationships.

Context: Joe is a programmer working on two projects in parallel. Feedback topic: Joe's code for one of the projects had several (more than average) bugs that were identified after the code was merged. Impact: Joe had to work late to debug the issues, fix them, and re-merge before the deadline. Because he had not communicated this to the team early on, we had to prepare for urgent communication with the customer.

The feedback could be something like the following:

"Hi Joe, I would like to give you some feedback, if you are ok with that.

I know that you faced an issue with one of your projects and you had to work late to fix the bug; from what I understand, you were the only person working on this code and you ended up putting long hours in order to debug the problem and fix it before the deadline.

I understand that you are working on two projects at the same time and it is great to see such strong work ethic, commitment, and desire from your side to make the project successful. At the same time, I think you could have been even more effective if you had requested for peer feedback/review prior to merging your code to the main branch.

Also, I think you could have contacted me and the team to let us know that you may have been overloaded with both projects; this could have allowed me to identify a plan B or figure out a way to provide more help to you." :::