How Do We Make Feedback a Gift? with Pete Berridge
By: Senia Maymin
Tags: Positive Psychology, Management Skills, Feedback, Systems Thinking

How do we give feedback that really works? How do we express it so that the other person can take it in and benefit from it? To explore this question, we invited Pete Berridge, co-creator of the Shift Positive 360 program.

To watch the entire conversation, click here or play the embedded video below.

All the words below are Pete Berridge’s, except where noted.

Would you like to receive a gift? Notice the feeling that just went through you. What if I told you that the gift is feedback. Did the feeling change?

We tell people that feedback is a gift. It is, but that’s not exactly the way it feels. You only get it so many times in your leadership career. It’s important to receive it openly and constructively. But when we ask people in trainings to reflect on the experience of receiving feedback, we find around 90% of the comments are negative. People don’t associate favorable emotions with feedback. They don’t enjoy giving feedback either.

Design Flaws in Feedback Systems

I believe that feedback is broken, but not because of poor intention. We designed feedback systems because we want people to be their best, to learn, and to have the best experiences possible at work. That’s just not how it feels.

The first design flaw is that feedback is often tied to decisions around compensation or promotion. Think annual performance reviews.

The second design flaw is that feedback, especially 360 reviews, is often confidential. We receive it without knowing who it came from and in what context. It’s confusing. We don’t know really what to do with it.

The third design flaw is that the focus is often on what is not working. That leaves us wondering what we should be doing.

The final design flaw is that we get no support dealing with it. We don’t feel like somebody’s there helping us along the way.

There was a 2012 meta-analysis about 360-degree feedback that concluded that about a third of feedback experiences actually led to poorer performance and more disengagement.

So, should we just stop giving feedback at all?

Tom Rath in StrengthsFinder 2.0 reports on a study of actively disengaged employees. Only one in 100 report that they receive any feedback on their strengths. Twenty in 100 report that they receive feedback on their weaknesses. What about the rest of the actively disengaged? About 69% reported that they didn’t receive any feedback at all. The idea that no news is good news is simply wrong.

What Could Feedback Be Like?

To stay engaged, people need feedback. All too often feedback isn’t happening at all. When it is happening, it’s done poorly.

We want to change feedback into a positive and constructive experience. I want you to imagine what it would be like to receive feedback on what people love most about you, what they think you’re fantastic at, what they think are your greatest skills. Imagine they go further to talk about what you can do to be even more effective. Notice this is what to do, not what not to do. Then imagine they take it a step even further, promising to support you as you make those changes.

Now, ask yourself how it would feel to trust the intention of the person that shares the feedback with you. You believe that it is truly for your benefit, that they really want you to be your best. They share what they want to share, and you are free to take it or leave it. You know the context of the feedback, the circumstances around it. You also feel clear about what to do, not just what not to do. The feedback focuses on future possibilities rather than past mistakes. It’s done in a timely way. Finally, you know you will have social support going forward to help reinforce any changed behavior.

Example

Let’s say that you and I are in a meeting together, and afterwards we do a little debrief. I say, “I love the way that you managed that meeting. You were concise, you were compelling, your points were really good. You observed the way people’s faces changed, and you asked good questions. I think one thing that you could do that would take it over the top is to uncover any sort of resistance before we leave the room so you can make sure that people are really committed to the decision. If you think it would be helpful, I’ll watch for you doing it in our next big meeting. We can do another debrief afterwards.”

How would that feel? I’m trying to encapsulate the elements of feedback at its best.

Foundations of Good Feedback

Two important foundations of good feedback are drawing on positive psychology principles and creating a system of social support.

Positive psychology is the scientific study of what’s right with individuals, organizations, and communities with a focus on well-being. We need to look beyond what’s broken and see what’s already working well. A core tenet is that identifying and growing the positive is not the same as understanding and alleviating the negative. When we study mistakes, all we learn are the characteristics of mistakes. We learn nothing about success from studying failure.

We’re often very good at solving problems, but it takes more to look beyond problems to what is already working well and to imagine what we want. What is good? People tend to become more engaged when we talk about their strengths. As for strengths, I’m partial to the definition by Marcus Buckingham, that strengths are not necessarily the things that a person is good at; they are the things that strengthen the person. When exercising strengths, the person feels more capable and more energized.

Next, people tend to ask, “What about weaknesses? What are this person’s weaknesses?” I challenge that tendency. What if we never asked about weaknesses? The things people say about weaknesses might be insightful, but they’re insufficient to make change. The listener has to work to overcome the negativity bias. Think of your tongue forever cruising around your mouth looking for any sort of invader. When it finds a piece of popcorn husk, it’s going to focus on it and work on it until it gets it out of there. That’s what happens in our heads with talk about weaknesses, the negativity bias at work. Our attention goes entirely to the negative. Think about it. Your tongue does not frequently cruise around your mouth admiring how smooth and clean your teeth are.

It’s very hard to do less of a bad behavior. We can’t simply stop doing something. We need to identify instead what to do more of. What can we do more of that will naturally result in less of the bad behavior?

If I were to ask you, “Why aren’t you meeting your budget?” you will respond differently than if I were to ask, “What might it take to make the budget?” or even better, “How could we meet the budget?” We’ve moved focus to the what and the how rather than the why. We’re also being curious and open, which tends to lead to more potential solutions and more subsequent energy to pursue them.

Example: Troy

Troy was one of my clients. He was told that he talks too much, interrupts others, and dominates meetings. That was useless feedback for Troy. I had to work a little harder when I interviewed people to get them to identify what they wanted rather than what they didn’t want. Then I kept pushing. What would the first step be? What would they see if he started to show these desired behaviors? By asking them that, I primed them to see the new behaviors if they started to happen.

When our attention goes to what’s broken, we’re not going to notice what we want instead unless we take the time to think about what success looks like. We leave the person receiving the feedback guessing. We won’t recognize it, even if it does happen.

It takes intentional effort to express what you want rather than what you don’t want.

Drawing a T Chart.

Think of somebody important to you to whom you need to give feedback. On a piece of paper, draw a big T chart. On the left side, write down what you want the person to change, what seems broken.

Now on the right-hand side, write down what you want to see instead. What would they be doing? What did it look like? Try to literally see those new behaviors in your mind’s eye. What is the smallest step that the person could take that you would notice? If you have anything in that right-hand side that starts with “Stop,” “Don’t” or any other negative, you’re not there yet.

Let’s look at an example. On the left-hand side, the person wrote, “Stop missing the big picture,” and “Stop getting over-focused on details.” On the right-hand side, the person wrote, “Think more holistically.”

I started asking questions. How would you recognize that the person was thinking more holistically? What would you actually see the person doing in your mind’s eye? What behaviors would indicate that the person started being more holistic? Maybe the person would start looking not only at the task within the team, but also at the bigger picture, such as dependencies that will impact the team’s deliverables and other things that could affect the schedule. Think people taking vacations and unexpected things occurring. How would you know that that’s happening? Perhaps the plans might start looking more realistic. You could ask questions when reviewing plans to see what contingencies the person is considering. You could also watch for the person talking to other teams.

What is the first thing you would notice that would tell you the person is working on this? Maybe you’d say, “I’d see the dates, and they would strike me as being realistic.” Notice you were starting to see what a better future could be, rather than focusing on what you didn’t like about the past.

As you go forward, just by noticing things like the person talking to other teams, you’re going to offer feedback in subtle ways. Maybe you’d smile or nod or make small comments that would reinforce the behavior that you want.

Prime People to See What They Want to Happen

We want to prime people to see what they want rather than what they don’t. It sounds easy, but it takes work. It’s important because we need to create a system of support. Change doesn’t happen alone, without other people noticing and reinforcing in subtle and overt ways.

We also want to identify one thing you’re willing to do to support the individual making the change. In our 360 interviews, we ask each person to make a commitment to our client of one specific thing that they’ll do to help. By the time we’re done with a 360, the client has six, eight, ten, or twelve individuals that have committed to doing at least one thing to support and reinforce new behaviors.

By thinking of the feedback providers as part of a support system, we can shift to a system of openness. I believe that people want to say things confidentially when they don’t know how to say them constructively. The approach I’m describing results in constructive comments. I will ask the people I interview whether they are willing to share with the person. Usually the response is, “Yes, I can do that. Definitely.” When we’re clear about what we want rather than what we don’t want, we don’t need confidentiality. We don’t need our feedback to be in some sort of anonymized report.

Feedback at its best includes the things on the right-hand side of the T-chart.

How Do You Invite Someone for a Session of Feedback?

I think people work too much on getting the right words. That’s the wrong place to focus. What’s important is having the right intent. What do you really want for them? If that’s right, the words come. If your intent is for the person to be successful, that’s going to come through. Start with heart. You don’t have to over practice the words. Just be clear on what you want the person to get out of the comments you’re about to make. When you get your heart in the right place, your posture is different, your voice is different, and you can connect with the person.

Visit ShiftPositive360.com for a whole host of resources to make feedback more effective and enjoyable.

You can get better at feedback. You really can. That’s the message.

Photo by Mr.phonlawat Chaicheevinlikit on Dreamstime

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