Feedback is a Many-Splendoured Thing
Feedback is important to any organisation. Unfortunately, not everyone is adept at seeking, giving or receiving it. To some, feedback is most welcomed, especially those with a growth mindset. For others, it can be nerve-wrecking. (By the way, I particularly discourage the sandwich model of giving feedback. You can refer to the hyperlink for the reasons.) Common sense dictate that we need feedback to do better. Yet not all feedback we receive is common-sensical.
An organisation with a healthy feedback culture comprise the following elements:
- Composing: Composing actionable suggestions based on reliable data
- Seeking: Having a regular habit of seeking feedback
- Giving: Preparing well with regard to when and how to give feedback
- Receiving: Reflecting on any observations received
All these elements must be present at the same time for the culture to exist. Notice that none of these elements require organisations to invest in snazzy feedback tools or to install suggestion boxes. Instead, they are habits which anyone can exhibit. After all, a good culture is only as strong as the people demonstrating the desired behaviours.
How to Have a Good Feedback Culture
In my coaching and consulting practice, I often hear about poor feedback culture at various workplaces. Most entail supervisors and colleagues who are either unwilling or bad at seeking, giving or receiving feedback. When I think about it, there are at least 3 underlying reasons for this trend:
- The Nature of Feedback itself
- The Lack of Reflection at Work
- The Lack of Practice
So what can we do to improve the culture for feedback at the workplace?
Reduce the Shock of Feedback
Feedback, whether positive or negative, always dislodges one’s sense of peace. Because it is personal, time and effort is needed to process the information. Mostly, it is about getting over the emotions in order to attend to the information. These emotions are not easy to process, even when they are positive and affirming.
Another reason why feedback is a shock to receive is because of the difference in preparation between giver and receiver. Whereas the giver has likely agonised over the message, for the recipient, it is the first time he/she is hearing it. No wonder any feedback comes as a surprise or a shock!
Clear Your Feedback Deficit
The best remedy to reduce shock is to ask for feedback regularly and pre-emptively. Good leaders know to do this. Great leaders make special effort to do this well no matter how busy they are. For example, in Bhutan, the King regularly visits far flung places in the Kingdom to stay in touch with the people.
An analogy for seeking feedback is to regard it as spring cleaning. If one does not clean regularly, dirt builds up over time. Similarly, if one does not seek feedback regularly, we accumulate what I call a “feedback deficit.”
To clear this deficit, it is better to seek input from others regularly. The poorer alternative is to wait until someone delivers it to you explosively at a moment least expected. By that time, chances are you will be attending to the triggers that broke the camel’s back rather than to the actual underlying causes.
Encourage Reflection
Without reflection, it is impossible to cultivate a good feedback culture in any workplace. Some organisations invest in expensive hardware to collect suggestions, but do not pay enough attention to the ‘software.’ In doing so, they have missed the most important element. Leaders should not invest in any expensive tools for their organisations until they have habituated self-reflection in themselves and others.
Without attending to the ability and opportunity for employees to reflect, any suggestions for improvement will be based on knee-jerk reactions, which is essentially badly processed data. But when employees are reflective, they will work out ways to self-correct based on valid information. More importantly, reflective employees do not require much prompting from others to improve themselves.
Conversely, when individuals do not practice self-reflection, they will receive even the most well-intentioned and meaningful input very poorly. The poor and often explosive reaction to any input creates a backlash against any future feedback to be given. As a result, a vicious cycle emerges. Eventually, this creates a toxic environment which becomes hard to eradicate.
Compose Your Observations
Like a beautiful letter, it takes time and skill to compose a good critique. Good composition comprise 2 key steps: Making observations and reflecting on the observations.
Leaders need to be skilled in making observations. This means taking the time to make careful notes about what has transpired during the day. This practice produces important data which forms the basis of any good decision-making. Yet too often, I find managers embark on a ‘fire-and-forget’ style of decision-making. Consequently, when the time comes to review why decisions were made, the necessary note-keeping is missing.
Great leaders go beyond good note-keeping. They also need to reflect on the significance behind the observations made. Great leaders lead through the quality of their thinking. They know that when they are muddled, they infect the organisations they lead with an impenetrable fog. By reflecting on the significance of things, they receive insight on people and the causality between events. The former leads to fodder for feedback. The latter leads to strategy.
Some leaders claim to give good feedback but do not demonstrate a habit of reflecting and journaling. They deceive themselves. It is impossible to craft good input to others without proper composition. Journaling is the manifestation of this composition. With practice, one can compose more efficiently and even on the fly. But the necessary intermediary is still composition, whether done in one’s journal or in one’s mind. Hence, I would urge leaders to practice their composition through the habit of journaling. With practice, they may even become proficient enough to write their own speeches without the aid of ghost-writers and staff writers.
Practice Your Delivery
As in all things, good feedback delivery comes with deliberate practice. The clearest indication of frequent practice is when the input is insightful and masterfully delivered. When this happens, gratitude is evident in the recipients, and they feel indebted for a long time.
Conversely, some leaders encounter sullen silence, active resistance or grudging compliance during feedback sessions. It may be tempting to infer then that the target is a bad team player. More often than not, it just means that the leader has not practiced enough the art of composing and delivering feedback.
Some leaders choose to avoid any form of practice. Instead, they settle for “winging it as long as the message is gotten across.” These leaders deceive themselves and do great disservice to the organisations they lead. They convey that their own mediocrity is the acceptable standard by which excellence is defined.
The next time you encounter a person who receives your input poorly, do take a moment to pause. Reflect on how you could have handled it differently. Perhaps you are not as good in critique as you think you are. Or perhaps, you need more practice. Sometimes, the person who needs feedback the most may not be the one you ought to begin with. Until you have enough practice under your belt, that person may be beyond your ability to help.
Encourage Others to Practice
Not only should leaders practice the art of feedback diligently, they also need to encourage others to do likewise. One of my course participants was very keen to transfer what he had learnt into practice. When he returned to the workplace, he instituted a 30-minute weekly feedback and reflection forum. His colleagues would come to the forum having reflected on the week that has occurred. They would relate customer experiences and share their thoughts on how to improve things at work. All the reflections were then collated so that proper follow-up can be made.
To date, the unit has compiled 7 volumes of such reflections. Even though they were not able to implement every suggestion raised, they remain engaged and energised by the weekly ritual. The value of a community in practice is the hope they stoke in each other. Where there is hope, good people will want to stay long enough to make a difference.
Exchange Seats and Shoes, Surrender Thrones for Towels
While in Bhutan, I noticed the high power distance and the insulation senior leaders face. They rarely get the true picture of the realities on the ground, even when they sincerely want to know. Hence, in a course I designed for these leaders, I had them report to their own organisations as a frontline or backroom junior staff. For example, a senior military officer reported to his camp as a newly assigned sentry. The kingdom’s Chief Tourism Officer went back to work as an administrative assistant. Another senior scientist worked as a farm labourer in one of the research centres.
Some of the participants could not remain incognito. Instead, they asked their new colleagues to disregard their rank and treat them as they would their fellow labourer. Intrigued by this newfound humility, many of their new colleagues took pains to orientate them to the tasks at hand. Some even shared their lunch boxes with the leaders-turned-co-labourers. Through this experience, the leaders realised firsthand the types of workplace improvement needed on the ground. They also experienced what it was like to receive direct input from others on their performance.
At the end of the attachment, each of the participants penned their reflections in their journals. They then shared the lessons learnt with their own organisations, with fellow participants, and also with me. These reflections range from the practical to the profound. Yet the greater lesson from such an assignment is that unless one is ready to exchange ones’s seat and shoes with another, one will not be ready for feedback. And when one is ready to surrender one’s throne in exchange for work towels, any input received becomes a gift.
Give Feedback in Love
Composing a good critique is like writing letters to a loved one. The attitude behind the practice is the same, i.e. it is out of love. Without love as the motivation, even the best prose will come out wrong. When we see love on a person’s face, we will receive his/her input with grace even if the delivery was awkward.
Unfortunately, we seem to have misplaced love from our place of work. Some of us love our work more than we love the people at work. Others simply hate their work. As a result, they also find it harder to love those at work. Either way, our eyes are too focused on the work, and not focused enough on loving the people we encounter at work.
Leaders must learn to love those they lead. Similarly, colleagues must learn that loving others is a necessary expression of self-care. We need to recapture how to love others appropriately at work. Only then will the labour of feedback becomes a natural expression of love in action.
Feedback Needs to be Given a Chance
Some of us have given up on feedback. It feels too hard to receive, too harsh to give, and altogether too heavy to harbour within us. It is time that we give feedback another chance. In the song “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing“, the lyric goes:
“Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living
The golden crown that makes a man a king”
Feedback is nature’s way of giving us a reason to be living. It is the golden crown that helps a man become a king.
