Effective Feedback
Relationships are an artwork and most of us didn’t get any training on how to paint. Much of how we’ve learn to interact with people, respond to situations and have conversations are learned from our parents. How much they interacted with you [or didn’t] taught you how to interact with others. This starts to change as you move out of the house or go through coaching, but it’s tough to change.
Where I work, at CloudFactory, one of our values is speaking truth and life. It’s part of our culture code. In general, truth is sometimes hard and tough to say as well as hard to hear and receive. At the same time, we get frustrated… what does it mean to speak “life” when you’re frustrated or angry at someone? Speaking life means that you’re not negative or cursing people as you give them feedback.
A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
As I was reading through a few blogs from OfficeVibe (an insanely great resource), one quote that really stuck out to me was the process of feedback. They were talking about building relationships and the importance of building relationships before jumping right into “changing behavior”. They suggest that you approach the people you are managing and give them positive feedback for the first 10–20 times that you first interact with them. Starting the conversations off with, “Hey, I want to give you some feedback.” You frame it as completely positive feedback. This causes the person to recognize that feedback is positive and when you come to chat with them about feedback, they don’t know if it’s positive or constructive. After the first 10–20, you should intermix positive and constructive throughout your interactions and again, not only focus on constructive.
Did you notice something? There isn’t a how-to guide for negative feedback. Why?
Because negative feedback is just that, negative. If you really are living out the value of speaking truth and life, you will never find yourself giving negative feedback to anyone. Constructive is seeing the best possible version of your teammate/colleague/employee, and have the courage to call them up into that. Point out the ways that they aren’t there yet. Negative feedback is often just pushing someone down, an example of negative feedback is:
Jesse, you just rip through people when you talk with them. You have no thought of how they are feeling and it’s just stupid. Why don’t you just shut your mouth and stop talking.
An example of that same feedback in the constructive form is:
Jesse, your words are so encouraging and you are so good at using them to build others up, but sometimes you’re unaware of how your words impact people, like today when you were tired and you said…to…I know that’s not who you want to be and I just want to encourage you to use your voice to build others up and encourage them.
Research from Zenger/Folkman, a leadership development consultancy, found that:
People want what they call “corrective feedback,” which they define as “suggestions for improvement, explorations of new and better ways to do things, or pointing out something that was done in a less that optimal way.”
What’s interesting about their research, is that employees want this even more than praise, if it’s provided in a constructive manner.
You need to realize that your words have power, and the relationships you build will be the foundation for change in your communities and countries. Give yourself grace as you start to build relationships and work on perfecting your feedback [positive and constructive].
People are different, this creates some challenges in determining how to give feedback. There is so much diversity, that you need to make sure people are understanding what you’re trying to say. You might say, “You should speak clearly.” And someone hears you say, “You are a terrible speaker.” Don’t just try the same approach over and over if you recognize that someone isn’t improving. You should try multiple methods until you find out the best way to communicate to each individual. Giving feedback is sensitive because of how employees might react to it, so make sure you aren’t just giving feedback and walking away.
Lastly, if you’ve chatted with someone and given them feedback. Let them reply and talk with you about it. Don’t let them dismiss it but you should talk about it, don’t demand it though. Give them time to process. If they need it, set up goals for them to keep them accountable to change.
How have you seen feedback work for you? Have you ever received negative feedback? How did it impact you?
