Category Archives: feedback

Giving and receiving criticism and praise.

Ask Before Giving – Making Feedback Even More Effective

Posted on February 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

The word “feedback” very often gets defences up and vibrating. Here are some approaches you might want to try  for getting past those defences.

1. Ask first

Why ask? Because then the target of your feedback has some control. Even if they don’t feel they can say no, saying yes to feedback helps lower the defences.

A bit manipulative? Maybe, or you could think of it helping them feel comfortable with what they’re about to hear.

You’re not the kind of boss who asks permission to do your job? Maybe, or you could think of it as being more effective. Defensive people aren’t listening and communication is about the listener does. Don’t worry, the big flashing red “boss” sign over your head never goes away no matter how nice you are.

2. Pleasantly Surprise Them

If you’re already giving positive feedback, good for you. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? There will come a day when you’ll need to give somebody corrective feedback. After all the positive feedback you’re giving they’ll be ready for it and they’ll hear it. In the meantime, keep feeding the monkeys.

3. Don’t push . . .

You’ve asked if you can give your employee feedback, and she says no. Now is not the time to push. You’ve given them a shot over the bow already, and they probably know what it is they’ve screwed up. They need time to collect themselves, or to fix the problem, or something else is on their mind which is why they’re having an off day. In any case, they’re not in a receptive mood. They’re not going to hear you anyway.

Either they’ll change their behaviour without having the conversation (you win, and they get to keep their dignity so you win), or they’ll come back later when they’ve collected themselves and are ready to listen (you win), or they won’t. If they don’t then . . .

4. . . . Until There’s a Pattern

. . . ask to give them feedback again. Do this two or three times until it becomes obvious they are closed to improving or working better with others. In that case it’s time for systemic feedback. Feedback about them not accepting what you, the boss, has to say about their performance. This is a bigger issue, and now they don’t get a choice.

Your Action

Ask to give positive feedback to somebody working for you in your organization every day this week.

Outstanding bosses give feedback continuously, many times a day. If you’re not used to this, and especially if your staff is not used receiving feedback from you, once a day is a good start. Walk before you run.

Further Reading:

Everybody Wants Feedback
How to Give Positive Feedback
How to Give Corrective Feedback
When Your Feedback Gets Pushback

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Posted in behaviour, change, coaching, communications, continuous improvement, developing staff, effectiveness, engagement, feedback, influencing, leadership, listening, mentoring, productivity, relationships

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How Often Should I Give Feedback?

Posted on February 21, 2011 | 4 Comments

My Smart House Cat

Sometimes our cat thinks she’s a dog. I believe this because when we house-trained our dog, we hung bells from the back door knob and he learned to ring them with his nose when he needed to go out. Persephone (my daughter named the cat for the Queen of the Underworld, which says more about my daughter than the cat, but not by much) observed this for a while, and then started to ring the bells herself.

I dutifully ran to the back door and let her out before realizing what I’d done. In that instant I’d trained the cat to expect that when she rang the bells somebody would open the door for her. Action and reward.

It’s been cold here in Calgary for a while, so even when we know Persephone is just checking to make sure the weather is the same out the back door as it was out the front just five minutes ago, she’s learned to be quite persistent. Eventually somebody will come along and let her out. Listening to the jangling bells is too annoying. Behaviour and reinforcement. The dog passed away about six weeks ago. We really could take the bells down, but I just don’t have the heart.

Many Fat Happy Monkeys

Training animals and giving feedback have some things in common. No, people aren’t cats, and humans aren’t monkeys. Yet there’s something to learn here. If you want to train a monkey to ride a skateboard, you don’t slap it on the skateboard and then yell at it for not performing tricks. First you put the skateboard in the cage. The monkey doesn’t freak out at this new and strange object that’s invaded its space.* You give it a slice of peach when it stays calm when the skateboard appears.

Maybe the monkey moves towards the skateboard. Peach slice. Maybe then the monkey touches the skateboard. Peach. The monkey sits on the skateboard. Peach. The monkey allows the trainer to push the monkey. Peach. Pretty soon you have a fat, happy monkey doing kick-turns and axle stalls.

The Human Advantage

Giving feedback to people isn’t really much different. The biggest difference is that because if we use language properly we can accelerate the process. Every movement, behaviour, or action in the right direction gets noticed and praised. Immediately, specifically, and sincerely. Progress ensues. Many fat happy monkeys, er, staff.

So what happens when the monkey throws the skateboard at the trainer? Nothing. Any body language, tone of voice, or facial expression that gives away anger is a clue on how to control the trainer. Animal trainers know that reacting to bad behaviour (shouting, waving arms, angry faces) is only letting the animal know what they need to do to provoke you.

Again, people are not monkeys (at least most aren’t). Funny enough it works the same way with many people. Emotions leak through, and that affects how the message we’re trying to give is received. Even on a subconscious level. If you can give specific, sincere feedback and still smile, then go ahead and give the feedback. If you can’t smile, then wait until you can. Otherwise you risk doing more harm than good.

Your Actions

In the next week, look for opportunities to give positive, specific feedback (or just a thank-you even) for people who are moving in the right direction. When somebody is trying, they’re actually looking for approval and encouragement.  Even if you suspect they got lucky or did it accidentally, recognize and reward at as many opportunities as you get. Don’t hold out on the peaches!

I wonder what it would take to get the cat on a skateboard?

Previous Blogs on Feedback:

Everybody Wants Feedback – having the courage to give feedback pays off for you, them, and the company
We Owe Ourselves Feedback – how do you react when somebody gives you feedback?
Why Feedback Doesn’t Work
Train Yourself to Give Better Feedback – start by practising this everyday for a week
Getting Better at Giving Feedback – from their behaviour to your reaction and back again. Knowing what going on underneath the surface.

*I can’t remember where I read this example. If you know the source please let me know in the comments so I can give proper credit. Thanks.

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Posted in behaviour, body language, communications, developing staff, engagement, feedback, influencing, leadership, relationships, self-awareness

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Getting Better at Giving Feedback

Posted on February 14, 2011 | 3 Comments

My wife and I spend the last couple of weekends with friends, and for the most part it’s been great. Having them over to our place for coffee last weekend, or eating Chinese take-out and drinking beer after an evening at the archery range this weekend. New friends and old mixing and matching.

Yet twice in the last ten days I’ve had  friends tell me they can’t be in the same room as so-and-so. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but so-and-so were also long-time friends. Naturally I asked why. The answer surprised me. Not only the answer, even though the we’re talking about completely different people, but also because both times the answer was the same: so-and-so is a sexual predator.

Imagine my surprise.

First Impressions

First impressions are funny things. In Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw he describe a situation where teachers’ abilities judged over a year is remarkably similar to the same evaluation of the teacher based on four seconds of video tape.

It seems that first impressions are remarkably accurate, or permanent and consistent, depending on your point of view and awareness of cognitive filters. That is, once we’ve decided what kind of person we’re dealing with based on our first impression of them, we immediately shift to either ignoring all evidence to the contrary or emphasizing any and all evidence to confirm our initial bias.

Which means you have about four seconds to make a “good” first impression. That’s faster than a Mazaratti goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour.

What does this have to do with giving feedback to? Everything and nothing. In a perfect world our biases of who a person is (or should be) won’t play into our management of their performance. But people are people, and our biases and filters affect how we perceive everything and everybody. It also affect how our direct reports perceive our feedback.

Can You Tell If Somebody Is Lying?

Here’s an interesting though experiment: What percentage of police officers, detective, judges, and psychologists do you think can tell when somebody is lying or guilty? They should be pretty good at it because of their training.

Got a number? Good. Now how many of those same officers believe they can tell when somebody is lying or guilty? Is your second number higher or lower than the first one?

Here’s the research-based number: in a 1984 study of 14,000 police officers, only 33 of them had an above random chance of detecting deception. That’s 0.2%.

Focus On Behaviour Not Attitude

This means that of all bad attitude, spitefulness, ignorance, stupidity, laziness, or predatory behaviour we might meet in our daily lives probably isn’t. I’m not saying that they doesn’t exist. I’m saying the we can’t crawl into somebody’s head and know what they’re thinking. We certainly can’t and shouldn’t give feedback meant to improve performance based on our assumptions of somebody’s motivation or mental state.

Projecting our own biases on a direct report whose behaviour we’re trying to influence is not effective at best, and counter-productive at worst . What can we do about it?

Focus on Behaviour Instead.

There are three things happening before we decide why somebody is doing what they’re doing, or are the person we think they are. They do something, we feel something, we make conclusions about their motivations. They say or do something that triggers an emotion in us. The emotion becomes our understanding of why they behave that way. Body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, eye-contact, words used are what make us feel threatened, unsafe, disrespected, or ignored. Those feeling drive our assumptions about their intentions.

The problem is some of us leap directly to the motivation, without being aware of what the behaviour was , or even our feelings that triggered it. Our unconscious biases, based on our feeling, emotions, experience, and culture, are constantly filtering for us the things we are aware of.

To become good at giving effective feedback, we need to become aware of the behaviour that triggered the effect it has on us and the people around us. When we can name the behaviour, we can start to give effective feedback to change that behaviour.

Your Actions

Spend a week noticing your judgments of other people. Notice when somebody’s behaviour affects you positively or negatively. What was the emotion your felt, and the conclusion you drew from it?

Now, dig into this emotion – what did that person say or do that drove you to that particular conclusion?  What was their body language, facial expression, eye-contact, words they used, tone of voice, or work product? What did you hear or see that made you feel what you felt, and therefore draw the conclusion you drew?

Further Reading:

Malcolm Gladwell What the Dog Saw
Joe Navaro What Every Body Is Saying (Joe Navarro is a former FBI counter-intelligence agent and behavioural assessment expert)

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Posted in behaviour, body language, communications, conflict, conflict management, developing staff, emotional intelligence, feedback, focus, influencing, leadership, relationships, self-awareness, values

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Train Yourself to Give Better Feedback

Posted on February 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

Why I Hate My Brother

When my brother was six he started playing soccer. He was athletic (I wasn’t), and because he scored a goal or two every game, he go more motivated to work hard. The harder he worked, the better he got. The better he got, the harder he worked.

Unfortunately, after every game he had to tell us in excruciating detail the play-by-play of every goal he scored. If he’d had a good game and scored four or five goals, supper would be a long, boring, torturous recitation of every kick, dribble, pass given, pass got, and shot on goal. I hated those family meals, and so him, and made him pay as only older brothers can.

Change is Hard

Hey, I was eight. The thing is, we’re not much different now that we both have almost grown-up families of our own. He brags about his daughters (and rightly so), and I still can only bear the sound of his crowing in smaller doses. I’ve learned to steer conversations a little better, or to take the dog for a walk. Neither of us have changed much since we were kids, and neither of us are likely to change without a near-death experience. Which I wouldn’t wish on anybody. Not even my annoying little brother.

Change is hard, change is unpleasant, and change often won’t happen unless there is an overwhelming and pressing need to change. The culture, emotions, feeling, and beliefs that lie beneath the surface of our outward behaviour are powerful and hard to shift. Ask anybody who’s tried to quit smoking. The physical addiction to nicotine only last three days. The emotional connection to smoking last a life-time. My friend Karl recently told me that he still dreams about having a cigarette occasionally, and he’s coming up on 15 years smoke-free.

Driving Change in Others

So if change is unlikely and difficult, how do we affect change in the people who work for us? How do we drop the behaviour that holds back our team, department, or company. How do we bring out the best in our staff and develop them? What models do we have for successfully delivering feedback? Many bosses avoid giving feedback, or if they do it is so poorly delivered that it doesn’t improve performance, it degrades it.
We can’t make people change their behaviour. Especially if the feedback we’re giving is poorly timed, unspecific or un-actionable, or ignored. So the first thing we might do is train ourselves to give good feedback. Like a six-year-olds’ soccer game, we’re going to make it easy by sticking with the basics and having fun.

Yes, negative or corrective feedback is still necessary. Especially in cases of safety, abuse, or theft. If you see one of these situations you should and must step in to correct the problem. Yet “The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated”*, and we can leverage that while we learn to recognize when and how to give feedback.

Your Action:

Say thank-you to somebody every day this week.

  • Be specific

    Be specific enough that people know what particular action they’re being thanked for and can repeat it.

    Did Marcia work late to make sure the invoices got out on time despite the network problems? When Marcia does that we get paid on time, we have better cash flow and it reduces our borrowing costs. Thank-you.

    Did John the back-hoe operator spot a mistake? That would have cost us a lot of overtime, rework, wasted material, and probably affected the schedule and our on-time bonus. Thank-you!

    Did Francis finally land that key account after six months of effort? Thank-you and keep it up. What can we do to service this key client well, and use them to attract others like them?

    Catch them doing something right and recognize it. If you can’t find people doing something right in your company then you’re not looking hard enough, or you’re not in the right company.

  • Be timely

    Don’t wait to say thank-you. The longer you wait, the less useful any feedback will be.

  • Be sincere

    Look for genuine positive actions that deserve recognition. People will know if you’re faking it, and that only reduces your credibility. If you’re not one that recognizes others out loud very often, they will be skeptical at first anyway. Be ready for that, but be persistent. Eventually you and they will both be trained to expect and recognize positive behaviours.

Other Videos

The surprising science of motivation – Dan Pink’s TED talk
How to find the bright spots – Dan Heath on why focusing on the positive pays off especially in times of change
How to get things done – at the top of Tom Peters list is thank-you notes.

*William James, with thanks to Tom Peters

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Posted in behaviour, communications, developing staff, engagement, feedback, influencing, leadership, productivity, relationships, self-awareness

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Why Feedback Doesn’t Work

Posted on January 31, 2011 | 1 Comment

When my daughter Nichole was in middle school she liked to play on her Nintendo DS when she should have been in bed. Surprisingly my yelling  – “Go to sleep! You have school tomorrow!” – didn’t make her go to sleep. She did get better at hiding it.

Just like me at that age, except I was hiding a Heinlein  novel.

The word “feedback” provokes a reaction in many people. We think of situations like “Step into my office and have a seat.”, or “We need to talk.” I would bet that just reading those words some felt their stomach drop or the hair on the back of their necks stand up.

Poorly Delivered Feedback Worsens Performance

Why does “feedback” provoke such a strong reaction? Because it’s usually done badly. What’s been inflicted on you, you don’t want to inflict on others. You like doing things the right way and you know that wasn’t it. Or you’ve given feedback and it hasn’t changed anything. Or you want your staff to like you and everybody to work together, and giving them an honest appraisal of their performance just makes you look like an a**hole. You may have experienced any or all these situations.

. . . and you’d be right. Poorly delivered feedback w delivered in the wrong way and in the wrong context will just make things worse. Your staff will only learn to hide things better. Even insincere, unspecific but positive feedback will do more harm than good.

Old-school managers will tell you to give two pats for every poke. The old “tell them something good, tell them what they need to fix, finish with something good.” In my uniformed days we called this a “sh*t sandwich”. Something unpleasant between two pieces of fluff. The good news will be long forgotten, and even resented, long after the sting of the negative lingers.

But we also know that high performers need, crave, and demand feedback on their performance. Like high-performing athletes they need a coach. A third-party observer that can see things they can’t see to give them awareness they need. Somebody who has the skills to close the loop that allows them to excel.

How Do We Provide Good Feedback?

First, stop giving bad feedback. Bad feedback will usually have one or more of these characteristics:

  1. It’s insincere or unspecific – If you’re telling somebody that they’re doing a good job, but you can’t tell them why or give a specific example, then you’re just blowing smoke and they’ll know it. Stifle yourself.
  2. It’s a personal attack – if you are thinking the words “bad attitude”, or even worse say them, then you’re giving bad feedback. Even worse, being shouted at, growled at, or given feedback by somebody who’s clearly angry and upset won’t do anything except make things worse.
  3. There’s no plan for the future – if you give feedback that is sincere, specific, and based on reality, but you leave them without a clear idea of what they’re going to do about it, then you’re doing it wrong.
  4. It’s untimely – just like paper-training a puppy, the longer the gap between action and feedback, the less useful it is. Good feedback is as immediate as possible.
  5. It’s public – negative or corrective feedback is for consumption in private. Negative feedback given in public has only one effect: humiliation.

If the feedback you’re about to give meets any of these criteria, it’s bad feedback. Don’t do it. Stop doing it. Don’t do it again. You won’t go from tyrant to prince overnight, but you can at least stop being the tyrant.

Your Action

If you’re a manager who regularly gives feedback to her staff, then good for you. For one week, keep track of how often you give feedback, and whether it’s positive or negative. What’s your ratio after five days? Do you give more negative than positive feedback?

Other Reading:

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Posted in behaviour, developing staff, engagement, feedback, influencing, leadership, relationships, self-awareness

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We Owe Ourselves Feedback

Posted on January 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

When We Don’t Give Feedback

I was working with a client on hiring best practices two weeks ago, who shared with me how they lost one of their best people. She was working in a corporate environment at the executive level. They described her as the kind of person you hire and then figure out what to do with them. No matter which position she was slotted into, or was created for her, she excelled.

Suddenly one day she handed in her resignation. They were surprised and shocked. “You’re one of our best people. We want you to keep working here. You’re going to be hard to replace.”, they told her.

She said, “I wish somebody had told me. That’s the first time I’d heard I was doing a good job, but now I’ve accepted another position. Sorry.”
When was the last time you told your best worker they were doing a good job?

When We Give Feedback

What about the last time you offered advice that somebody genuinely listened to you? When somebody accepted what you had to say, or even just tried what you suggested? For me that’s the part I enjoy most about my job. When a clients come back and tells me that they tried that different approach and it works! It makes smile because they often seem so surprised. It’s even more gratifying when it has a big impact on somebody’s life, lets them do well, or helps their company grow.

We Owe Feedback

Managers and leaders owe the people working for us guidance on how well they’re doing. People can’t do better if they don’t know how well they’re doing now. They’re less likely to keep doing the right things if nobody tells them. Top performers, the kind of people whom we dream of working for or with us  push us to do better. They expect and demand to know how well they’re doing. They want to be measured, they want to see progress, and they want to keep doing better.

Like a high-performance athlete  they are competitive. Like any high-performance athlete  they have a coach. They can’t succeed without realistic, timely, specific observations of their performance. If they don’t get it where they are now, they tend to move on to somewhere else where they can.

Your Path

They are on the path of continually learning and improvement. They listen to what others have to tell them so they can become masters of their craft. Even when it’s hard to listen. Especially when it’s hard to listen.

Which path are you on? Do you receive and evaluate feedback gracefully? Do you have a hard time giving feedback because you have a hard time receiving it?

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Posted in behaviour, communications, developing staff, engagement, feedback, influencing, leadership, relationships, self-awareness

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Everybody Wants Feedback

Posted on January 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

Before Christmas I was working with a client who was feeling down because he was going to have let one of his key staff members go. It was bad timing, but it had to be done. The work product being produced was below standard and affecting the entire business.

The Courageous Conversation

I asked if anybody had laid out to the guy what exactly they expected of and what he needed to do to do well in his job. The answer was “No, but he has to know, right?” I asked what they thought would happen.

Then I suggested that they should have the talk first. The company at least owed it to him to let him fix it if he was willing and able. If he wasn’t interested or couldn’t change things, or didn’t think it was a problem, they could still let him go.

The Payoff

The next week I asked how it went. The response from the employee was one of gratitude, not hostility as expected. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.”, he said. He worked hard at fixing the short-comings in the work, the company was able to keep an employee that everybody liked and who fit in well. They didn’t have to go the pain of replacing somebody in a highly skilled and in-demand position.

Your Next Step

Have you ever wanted feedback and not gotten it? Have you ever assumed that somebody must know what they were missing in their work? What conversations have you been avoiding?

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Posted in behaviour, change, communications, conflict, developing staff, engagement, feedback

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The Four Skills You Need To Be an Effective Manager

Posted on November 14, 2010 | 3 Comments

Good advice from Ian Beacon on “4 Steps to Effective Performance Management“:

  • Effective performance management including setting goals, giving and receiving feedback, writing performance appraisals, and providing motivation
  • Identify and reward top performers – and no, the difference between a 3% and a 4.5% raise doesn’t cut it.
  • Address and resolve poor performance – yes, this is hard. If you can’t learn how to do this then stop fooling yourself and stop being a manager. You’re certainly not fooling anybody else.
  • Encourage continual feedback – also known as open and honest (but not derogatory) communication. See the previous bullet.

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Posted in behaviour, communications, conflict, developing staff, emotional intelligence, engagement, execution, feedback, mentorship, motivating, teamwork, values

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Impel Progress by Measures

Posted on October 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

Down at the Scout Hall we have a chart that lists the names of all the Scouts down the left side of the page, and all the badges they could potentially earn along the top. At the beginning of the year the new kids come in and they look at what the older ones have done. After a couple of years of this I can usually tell who’s going to last (they’re excited and asking all sorts of questions while figuring out which badge they’re going to earn first), and who’s there because their parents thought it would be a good idea and we probably won’t see them again after Christmas.

The chart gives us a clear, objective, and tangible means of measuring a Scout’s progress as they progress through the program. It compares Scouts to each other, is easily interpreted at a glance, and encourages a bit of the competitive spirit.

Engaged staff expect clear, objective, and tangible means of measuring progress. Staff who object to having their performance measured probably won’t last.

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Posted in engagement, feedback, metrics, motivating

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Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This

Posted on September 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

There’s an old joke that where a man goes  into the doctor’s office to complain about how it hurts when he raises his arm above his head. He raises his arm over his head to demonstrate. “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.”

The doctor replied, “Don’t do that then.”

So how come when we know something doesn’t work and can actual do more harm than good, why do we keep doing them?

It’s time to abolish the employee performance review.

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Posted in developing staff, feedback, motivating

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