Why do you need feedback?
By: Emanuel Hristov
Tags: Personal Development, Feedback, Learning And Development, Management And Leadership, Radical Candor

There will come a time in your career where you’ll walk into a meeting and receive feedback. What’s most important while you experience it for the first few times is to be aware of why you need it.

It’s all about personal growth.

Whether you are at the start of your career or already have some experience behind you, feedback is a major key which will help you improve your performance. When feedback is is exchanged regularly, people are more open to share and give feedback back. Not surprisingly, the larger and more innovative the company, the higher the importance of continuous feedback in the team is.

Feedback is art.

Feedback is understood by people differently, whether due to years in the industry, job seniority, personality or mood during the day they receive it. It’s important to understand who your ‘audience’ is and what are you trying to express. For example, juniors need to feel valued and encouraged, so they can be invested in making the product profitable.

While researching and reading dozens of book on personal development, the common point I came across is to help and structure your feedback to others in two buckets: positive constructive, negative constructive and negative destructive. The difference between constructive and destructive is intention. If you want to help someone develop, it’s constructive; if your aim is to make them feel bad for their behaviour then you are crossing the line into destructive.

On the other hand, if you are receiving feedback always split it in 3 categories: strengths, weaknesses and personality traits. For the first two you can work on and improve while reading, learnings or watch how others do it better. While for your personality traits, you should be comfortable with what is an obstacle in your career development and learn how to overcome it.

Radical Candor

While working for a large corporation and then a start up, I’ve learned that in the latter it’s where experimentation happens quicker. However, at the same time it’s difficult to develop a process of continuous feedback and the reason for that is the fast pace and the ‘lack of time’.

Recently I’ve experienced a change at work where we’ve introduced the idea that honest feedback is the ‘atomic building block of good management’. There are two fundamental dimensions where people should focus and remember - ‘challenging directly’ and ‘caring personally’.

To be a kick ass boss, create a culture where people can thrive and increase the average tenure in your company, you must be clear and avoid the following three sections of people management:

Ruinous Empathy — caring too much and avoiding telling the truth, so you don’t hurt them. The problem here is people will leave eventually and this approach is setting them up for more failures in the future.

— caring too much and avoiding telling the truth, so you don’t hurt them. The problem here is people will leave eventually and this approach is setting them up for more failures in the future. Obnoxious Aggression — Forgetting there is a person behind the work and simply attacking them for their weaknesses.

— Forgetting there is a person behind the work and simply attacking them for their weaknesses. Manipulative Insecurity — Not being loud about what you think because you want to be liked by others.

After the concept of ‘radical candor’ was launched within the business, people started sharing more often and established an environment where employees are keen to speak up and receive feedback. We have also introduced a 360 policy and structured 1:1s to help us track performance and drive personal growth.

What I found useful on the receiving end was to track and reflect on all records, did I improve my weaknesses, expanded my knowledge in specific areas and how did that happen. Notion has one of the easiest and slickest interfaces I’ve seen, so I’d highly recommend it for anyone that wants to track their training. I’m making sure that immediately after I’ve received feedback I log it and by the end of the week there is a follow up action plan, including learning materials and deadlines. Including a timeline and pressure, you are more likely to finish it by the time you have to report back.

Your career plan should match your feedback log.

In the book ‘Principles’ by Ray Dalio there are 5 steps to help everyone get the most from their feedback:

Have a clear goal. Identify problems that stand your way. Diagnose root causes of these problems. Design plans to tackle/work around them. Do what’s necessary to be on track of plans to get the end results

By having a clear vision and a mindset of constant improvement, you’ll be open to any ‘negative constructive’ feedback as it will only help you develop as a person and valuable team member.

And one last point.

Pay attention to your feelings. Take a moment to acknowledge how you feel before and during your feedback session. Thank the person that gives it to you and try to make them feel comfortable of what they just shared.

Great communication isn’t just about what you say, it’s about what other people hear. Stay curious and treat feedback as an invitation to become a leader people will want to follow.

Additional reading

‘Radical Candor’ by Kim