How to fix feedback

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast where each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and actions to help you find your way through your Squiggly world.

Sarah Ellis: Before we get onto this week's topic, I just wanted to mention a brilliant newsletter that has come out this week from one of our friends, Bruce Daisley.  He's not paying us to say this or anything, it just is brilliant!  Over the last couple of weeks, lots of people have been talking to us about how we return to offices; if we return to offices; what that hybrid way of working is going to look and feel like. 

We're definitely not the experts in this area, but Bruce is; and he's put together all of his knowledge and insights into his Make Work Better newsletter, which this week is a ten-stage guide to planning returning to some sort of normality that I think we're all craving in some way, shape or form.  He talks about things like experiments rather than decision-making; there are loads of stats, facts; there are loads of example from other organisations and what they're all doing.

We'll put a link in the podcast notes to it, or you can just follow Bruce on LinkedIn and then you'll get access to his newsletter that way.  But, if that is something that is a hot topic for you and your organisation right now, maybe it's something that you're really interested to read, or perhaps it's something that you could share internally.  So, we thought we'd just mention it, because it's just one of those things that I think will be a really useful go-to resource for next couple of months, if not the rest of the year, to be honest.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I feel like we'll be going in phasing, lots of returned phasing, so yeah; save it to your favourites for when it's right for you!

So today, we're going to be talking about feedback and I have to say, I'm sure we've covered this before?  We have covered this before, in Episode 19, almost three years ago; and last night I re-listened to it, Sarah.

Sarah Ellis: How bad was it?

Helen Tupper: The start was a bit clunky, lacked a bit of personality, but then actually some really good tips in there; it sounded more like us.  I was like, "Oh, even three years ago, it sounded like us", although I did say I thought you would slap my hand every time you heard me say it: what do you think is the cringeworthy corporate phrase that I said five times about feedback, about how you deliver feedback; there was one word that I used five times?!

Sarah Ellis: I don't know; what was it?

Helen Tupper: I was working at Microsoft at the time, so I think that was probably -- communication context was that it was slightly more on the corporate vibes.

Sarah Ellis: I don't know, I can't guess; go on.

Helen Tupper: "Land"; "Landing feedback"; five times, Sarah!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, Helen, I hope you feel bad about yourself!

Helen Tupper: I did feel horrendous about myself; and then I recognised how much I've grown.

Sarah Ellis: That's probably a good example of how not to give feedback; I'm like, "I hope you're feeling bad"!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, Sarah is my critical feedback friend.  And by the way, on how much I've grown, I probably could listen to an episode two weeks ago and I probably say "land" still, but it was pretty bad.

So today, we are going back to feedback, but instead of just general ideas of how to do feedback, we wanted to really focus on some feedback challenges.  It's probably useful to start with a definition of feedback, I think.

Sarah Ellis: So, the definition that we often use in workshops on feedback is, "Information to help you improve".  It should really feel like a conversation, not a confrontation; though I think often, it's not even a confrontation, it's just something that we ignore or avoid.  Stephen Covey's got a really great quote on empathy, which I think really links to this idea of the intent through which we give this information.  He says, "When you show deep empathy towards others, their defensive energy goes down and positive energy replaces it and that's when we get more creative in solving problems".

So, in this episode, we thought we would focus on four common feedback challenges and how to fix them, or to make some progress towards fixing them.  Those four challenges are: the first one, how to get more constructive feedback, so how to receive more challenging feedback; the second one is getting feedback from your peers; the third one is giving feedback to your manager; and then the fourth one is giving and getting feedback when you're working virtually.

So, we are properly taking on the nutty problems of feedback, I think, today.

Helen Tupper: In 20 minutes; what a challenge!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!

Helen Tupper: Well, we'll start with the first one, because we did the survey on Instagram about what people were most struggling with and it was this one about getting more constructive feedback.  The real reason this is a challenge is that people just aren't getting as much constructive feedback as they want.  There's a survey done by Harvard Business Review which we will link to, and in that it said that, "57% of people prefer corrective feedback", so that kind of even-better-if feedback, "versus praise or recognition" and we asked our community on Instagram and it was really similar findings.

I said, "Would you rather get more strengths-based feedback at the moment, or more [I think it called] developmental feedback or more even-better-if feedback" and we had a really similar percentage of people; 62% of people just wanted more and more of this kind of more constructive or challenging feedback. 

So, I think the really big question becomes, "Why are we not getting it?"  If the vast majority of people want to get more constructive feedback, why aren't we?  And the big barrier seems to be that people tend to avoid giving it.  So, we all want more of it, but we're all avoiding giving it to each other.

Sarah Ellis: It's like a real catch-22, isn't it?

Helen Tupper: It is; the constructive feedback catch-22.  I mean, it's not that snappy a statement, but hopefully we all get it.

So I think part of the thing that we can do to help ourselves get more constructive feedback is also to start giving more constructive feedback, because you're got to practise giving it if you want to receive it, but appreciate that's probably not what everyone wants to hear; because if everyone's starting point is, "I want more.  Helen and Sarah, don't just tell me to give more"; that is true, but what can you do to get more constructive feedback?

I recently, I think I read this; it was a tip from Adam Grant, which I thought was really, really good.  He was asking for some constructive feedback and one of things that he was noticing, so he's a very successful academic, lecturer, thought-leader, and one of the things that he was noticing was that people were really reluctant to give him honest, constructive feedback.  Maybe they thought that they admired him, so they didn't want to give him that feedback, or they didn't know how he would take it.  But, he definitely had this gap in the feedback that he wanted to get.

So, what he said was, when anyone gave him slightly vague feedback on an area he wanted to improve in, he would give them a scale and he would say, "On a scale of one to ten, how effectively did you think I presented that seminar" or, "How compelling was that article that I've just written?"  No one will ever give ten.  Even if they would have given you some strengths-based feedback before, they'll probably give you a seven or an eight, something like that.

What that meant that he could do is say, "Thank you, really appreciate that.  If it was to get to nine or ten, or just to move up by one or two points, what would it take to do that?"  And he said that giving someone this frame or a scale just helps them to get just a little bit more specific and a little bit more constructive in their feedback.  We've seen that before; people like a scale.  It makes a hard conversation that little bit easier.

I also wonder whether, and this is potentially a bit controversial, but given how hard it is to give constructive feedback and more developmental feedback, when people start to practise this more and if you do see people giving this a go, we haven't had that much practice.  We know that; we know that people are not doing it that often.  So sometimes, it might not be given to you in a brilliant way, it might not be the perfectly constructed sentence or exactly the ideal way of delivering that feedback and perhaps we need to give people a bit of leeway to start practising this.

So, it might not be absolutely brilliant in terms of how you've got that feedback, but remembering to say thank you to somebody, because it is a hard thing to do, and then asking a few more follow-up questions so that person knows that you really appreciate someone taking the time to do something for you that is hard and I think that is a tricky thing to do.

There's a tipping point, isn't there, of I don't think we want people to give feedback in a way that is hurtful or personal or all those things, which is not what feedback is for; it's not information to help you improve, if we go back to the intent for why we give that feedback.  But I think maybe, just giving people a bit of licence to practise this a bit more would be a good thing.

Helen Tupper: It makes me think as well about something that we didn't mention, actually, in that podcast that we did a couple of years ago; but, Kim Scott's work on Radical Candor, which I'm sure lots of our listeners are familiar with.  It's that balance between when somebody cares personally about you and your career, so they've got to know what it is that you care about and what you want to develop in; but also, when they have the ability to challenge you directly.  That's the sweet spot there, making sure that you are giving something to care about.

I might say to Sarah, one of the things that's really important to me this year is becoming a better storyteller; I've given her that thing to connect with me on.  But then knowing as well that she has the ability to give me that clear-is-kind feedback, that direct feedback, that balance is where we're going to get the radical candor that Kim talks about.

Sarah Ellis: So, let's move onto the second challenge, which is getting feedback from your peers.  So, peers are just people that are probably a similar-ish sort of level in organisation, people you work with frequently.  And I always think this is probably the most underappreciated, undervalued source of feedback that we have available to us. 

We often don't get very much feedback from peers, because we still are perhaps anchored to this idea of, "Oh no, feedback comes from more senior people", it's more of a hierarchical thing; and maybe also it feels a bit awkward to ask.  If you're working with someone a lot, maybe you're friends with them or you get on really well, maybe it just feels a bit weird. 

But I think it's a really big opportunity, because these people see you the most.  They've probably experienced your ways of working the most.  They've probably seen you at your best and your worst, which is helpful.  Hence why I always think these people are so important to your ability to keep improving, keep getting better.

So, what can we do to get more feedback from our peers?  One of the things we talk about is Three Rs: Regular, Routine and Real time, as principles for feedback.  So, how can you give feedback regularly?  As often as possible.  Routine is, how do you make it a habit and just how you work, rather than something separate or disconnected from your day job?  And real time, I mean obviously you can't quite give feedback in real time, because that wouldn't quite work, but as close to the moment of something happening as possible.

So I think particularly for peers, because these are people that you work with all of the time, think about what would it take to apply those principles to giving and getting feedback to each other?  One of the things that we find often works really well is framing and focussing your feedback.  So, rather than just all saying, "Oh, we're all just going to give and get a bit more feedback from each other, because we can see that might be useful", you go a step further than that. 

Perhaps you do focus on feedback for a week, where actually you think, "Right, as a small team", perhaps three or four of you, "at the end of every day we're going to give each other one bit of strengths-based feedback", because this doesn't always have to be things that you're not as good at that you want to improve.  This might be about going, "We all want to really see each other and give each other feedback about us at our best.  So maybe at the end of every day this week, we're all just going to say to each other, 'Helen, I saw you at your best today when…'".  What was you at your best on Monday; what was you at your best on Tuesday?

You could just do that for one week with each other as a small team.  The first time, it might feel a tiny bit awkward, but I bet you by the next day, it feels a bit less awkward and you get a bit more used to it.  Probably, by Friday, the examples spring straight to mind and you probably get better at giving and getting that feedback just within those five days.

Helen Tupper: I think as well we've got into a much better habit, I think, of giving each other feedback quickly, like at the end of a day, or even at the end of a meeting, when we spot something that's gone really well.  We're like, "Oh, you were really good in that because…" or, "That didn't feel quite like us at our best".  I think Sarah and I often come as a little buddy.  Or we often say, "That thing wasn't as clear".  But we do it so frequently that any emotion around it gets really reduced, because it's all about that improvement.

So I was thinking actually, when we're recording this podcast, it never always goes completely seamlessly, everybody; there's some sort of chat that gets cut out.

Sarah Ellis: Who knew?!

Helen Tupper: Who knew?  But earlier, we were recording this podcast, I was losing my way on a bit of a point, a bit of a research and I was just trying to gather my thoughts.  So, one bit of small feedback that I could give Sarah was that actually, when I was trying to gather my thoughts, Sarah was just really quiet; she didn't try to interrupt and give me suggestions; she gave me the mental space for me to collect my thoughts and that was a really helpful way of helping me to get clarity and be able to move on with the recording.

Now, that is a really small bit of feedback that I could share with Sarah, and just have, but that's the point; this doesn't have to be, "Oh, you completed that project today; it was amazing".  It can just be, "You asked a really good question [or] I thought it was really good when someone asked you a question and you didn't rush to answer it.  You had a big pause, which showed you were thinking".  It's that sort of small feedback about people's actions and behaviours that they might not know, or spot in themselves, that I think can be really, really helpful.

Sarah Ellis: And I do think with this, with your peers, you perhaps have to force it a little bit to get started.  So, this won't just happen by agreeing that feedback is important; you do have to create the time, space and opportunities to make feedback happen and also agree together, how would this work best.  There's no point doing it at the end of a meeting in a really rushed way where people get really frustrated about doing it, because people are panicking about not having enough space between their Zoom meetings to even make themselves a cup of tea.

So actually, if together you go as a group, "Okay, we recognise that feedback is going to help us all to improve individually and together; what could that look like; what might that look like?" and just try some stuff out.  Where I have seen this work really well, both for us and in organisations I've worked in before, is where you just try stuff and then, if you find out that maybe only half the people are doing it, or quite quickly if people stop doing it, you just know that wasn't quite the right thing.  But the point then isn't to give up; it's to try something different.

So the third challenge, which I think is a really hard one, is giving feedback to your manager.  So, when we say here, "What's the issue?" I think the issue is relatively obviously.  It's pretty hard to give feedback upwards to somebody who might be deciding on something like your performance reviews, who has a lot of influence and impact on your job and your career. 

I think in particular, if it's not something that you see happening elsewhere and if your manager isn't proactively asking for feedback, it's a big deal, isn't it, to go, "I've not been asked for it, I'm going to decide to give the person I work for feedback about what they're doing well, what they might want to improve".  You might not know how the person is going to receive that feedback.

Obviously, a lot of this I think depends on the quality of the relationship you have with your manager.  I've had managers I've worked for where I think this would have felt almost impossible and I've had other managers I've worked for where actually this would have felt maybe still hard at times, but much more doable.

So, I think the solution here is firstly to remember that you can give your manager positive feedback as well as constructive, maybe improvement feedback.  Sometimes we default straight to, why are they annoying me; how could they get better?  But I think remember, it can be quite lonely in senior positions and sometimes those people get very little positive reinforcement and feedback; and we all need that in our lives.  So, this is more than just positive praise; this is more than just saying, "Oh, thanks, Helen, I just felt like you've been really supportive this week"; tell Helen how.  How did she really support me; what was it that I really appreciated?  So, don't forget to do that.

If you've got more difficult feedback to deliver, think about how this can be a conversation, not a confrontation; and there's an acronym which spells COIN, which is useful particularly, I think, in preparing for conversations, because conversations are never linear, but just to make sure you've got clarity of what you're trying to say, this can be useful.  COIN stands for Context, Observation, Impact and Next steps.

So, this is essentially going, what's the context, so what's happening?  So, maybe it's talking about, "In regular meetings that we have…".  What's the observation, so what are you observing happening; what behaviours can you see?  "In our regular team meetings" that's the context, "I've noticed that you interrupt me quite frequently", that's the observation.  Impact; how does that make you feel, "When you interrupt me, it makes me feel that perhaps my opinion isn't valid or useful, or perhaps I don't even need to be in that meeting".  And then next steps is often more about going, "Well then, what might we together agree to do differently?" 

But I think often, before you've got to those next steps, you're starting to also ask questions of your manager.  So I think sometimes, we do make assumptions that our experiences are the same as everybody else's, because we go, well this is my experience; everyone must be thinking and feeling the same thing as me.  And I might have had that exact conversation that I just gave the example of there, so say I was saying that to Helen; and then Helen might say to me, "Oh, gosh, I didn't even realise I was doing that", so it was an unconscious behaviour and someone might just apologise and say, "I'll try harder not to do that in the future and let me know if I am".  Someone might say, "Oh, sorry, when I was doing that, I thought I was supporting you". 

So, the impact of their behaviour, they thought it was a positive thing, but you'd experienced it in a negative way.  So I think you've got to, as part of these conversations, ask loads of questions.  Also, think about what you can do, as well as what your manager can do.

I think the closest I've ever got to having really effective conversations in this area has also been about taking accountability and ownership myself to say, "Well, I've been considering this and I was wondering about maybe trying out doing something different", or I would often suggest some actions that I might do and then almost try and prompt my manager to say, "Oh, you know" and then, "Are there any other ideas you've got?"  That was as well, I think it's maybe a safer way to figure out where your manager is, how they respond, especially if you're not sure.

So, hopefully that helps just to get you started with that, but it's not easy.

Helen Tupper: There are two other small things that I have done in the past when I've been in this situation that I think have helped me.  The first has been, work about what your manager cares about.  My normal starting point here is values, but it doesn't have to be values; you might just have an awareness of some of the things that they care about.  It might be that they care about their profile or their relationships.  I had one manager that really cared about health, just really was into health.  So, the way that I could give feedback was if I hooked it back to health, they cared about it more.

So, let's say that manager was piling on quite a lot of pressure on to the team and the team was working an awful lot of hours and I thought they were getting quite stressed and stretched.  If I could give them some feedback that linked back to, "I know one of the things you really care about is team health and how everyone is at the moment", which is context really, "One of the things that I've observed is that the increased workload is affecting team health and I think the impact on that is they're becoming quite tired, quite disengaged, having fewer good ideas.  I wanted to talk to you about what your thoughts are on that and what we could do differently". 

The starting point being around the thing they care about almost got them to listen in from the very, very start, because they want more of that stuff.  So, maybe what they care about is also a good way to think about the context-setting at the beginning.  Then the other thing would be, if you are really nervous about it and you've got a peer that you trust, maybe go and talk to them about (a) have they ever given this person feedback before and if they had, what worked and how did the person respond, or (b) have they got any tips, because they will know this context.

Even if they've not given that person feedback before, they might just have some ideas and advice for how to do it in a way that could work for you, rather than you feel like you're going it alone.  At the very least, they'll give you some support and they'll know your context, so that will be quite helpful. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and actually one really nice that you did there, Helen, just listening to that example you gave, is in the language that you use, in the words that you choose, you said, "we" rather than "you".  So, this could feel like a, "Well, I'm blaming my manager and this is you and your fault", whereas actually you said, "What could we do?" 

Again, I think if you could make this a shared accountability, and that just shows again that you're also prepared to do something about this, rather than this just basically feeling like you're going, "Well, you're doing this wrong and what are you going to do about this?" which I just think, (a) is an incredibly difficult conversation to have well and (b) it's probably never going to be very constructive.

Helen Tupper: So, our final challenge is how to give and get the feedback that you need when you're working virtually.  If I think about what's the issue here, some of it I've seen in research; feedback has decreased when we're working virtually, partly because there are fewer informal moments for feedback but also because we've ended up in this scenario where a lot of people are in back-to-back Zoom meetings and we just haven't got as many pauses in our day for some of those conversations that we might have had. 

So, there's definitely something about the setup of an average working virtual week which might be slightly working against us, in terms of feedback; but there is also a fear that I read about that I thought was quite interesting, about people fearing that they are out of sight, out of mind, and so it's making them think, "I want more feedback, I need more feedback than maybe I did before, because I'm not getting the informal feedback".

Sarah Ellis: That's interesting.

Helen Tupper: I thought it was interesting as well.  It's almost like it's a worry thinking, "What are they thinking about me?  Are they think that I'm not doing the work?" just because they're maybe not with people as much, so some of that fear creeps in more. 

So, let's think about some solutions then for how we can maybe fix the feedback and try and resolve the fears that we might be having.  I think interestingly, it is worth thinking about some assumptions and challenging them a little bit, about feedback done virtually.  I think that some people might think that virtual feedback isn't as affective, and I think I've heard people say that to me actually. 

I was looking at some research from Harvard Business Review that said that, "As long as you have your camera on and as long as the camera can see more than your face", so maybe it can see your hands and your upper body, you're basically framing your body into the camera, "then actually, virtual feedback can be delivered just as effective as face-to-face feedback, because there are some more cues, not just your face in there".  So I think, don't assume that just because it's done virtually, it won't be as effective.

Sarah Ellis: I also think on that, I find difficult feedback easier to deliver when I can't see the person, interestingly.  I'm just thinking about when I have to give you difficult feedback, because I think that actually if I -- you know the whole seeing yourself reflected virtually as well and it's quite intense, isn't it, because I've seen some people talk about this.  If you're in a room, you don't make eye contact the whole time.  You're sitting in a different way; you've kind of got more space.  Whereas, I think it just feels really intense.

Actually, if I was in a phone conversation, I think you can just pause a bit more.  I suspect this is personal preference and down to different ways of communicating and I can see why face to face would really matter; but at times I just find it so full on, I think it might make it even more difficult for me.

Helen Tupper: I think it's probably about finding your way, but also challenging the assumptions.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I agree.

Helen Tupper: Don't make the starting point that virtual feedback means it's not as good.

Sarah Ellis: It's impossible.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it's impossible or it's not as good, because it's not true; you might just need to find your way through it.  But I think the one thing that is true, based on the research that I've seen, is that we've got less opportunities in our working days to feedback, so we have to find more simple ways to make frequent feedback happen.  Here are just a couple; I'm just going to put them out there and you can find the ones that might work for you.

So, something we've mentioned before, like a "win of the week", a team sharing, like one thing that's gone well that week.  And almost me doing that for Sarah, "Sarah, what do I think a win of the week has been that I've seen for you this week?" could be a way that you could give someone else feedback.  So I might say, "Oh, I thought it was a real win this week, Sarah, when you presented to the team and you got everybody really, really energised and excited about the project".  So, creating those moments when people can give each other positive strengths-based feedback; small thing.

Running, "lessons learned" sessions.  So, I always actually used to do this in person with teams, but you could translate this really easily to a virtual thing.  So, you could do a lessons learned session after a project has finished, for example, or something has launched; and you could make that really interactive using a tool like Mural.  So that could be, you take a project and you go, "What worked well; would be even better if…?" and you can do that on individual contribution. 

Sometimes, even using little breakout groups, so let's say you've got 12 people in your Zoom or in your Microsoft Teams, actually going off into smaller breakout conversations could be a way that you could dive a bit deeper into some of that virtual feedback so you get a bit more information, if it's information that helps you improve; the more information, the better.

I've seen examples of having Teams or Slack chat rooms, where people can do, at the end of every week, they can give each other feedback in those.  And also, just have regularly -- and remember Sarah mentioned earlier about the Three Rs and one of them was about routine?  Creating feedback moments in every meeting is also a way that you could just make this more frequent with each other as well.

Sarah Ellis: So, we've talked about those four areas of feedback challenges: how to get more constructive feedback; getting feedback from your peers; giving feedback to your manager; and giving and getting feedback when you're working virtually.  If you have any other ideas that have worked really well for you in your organisation, or that you're experimenting with, please do let us know; we love to learn from our community.  You're all smarter than probably we are; we're only two people! 

So, if you've got things that you think would benefit everybody else, please do let us know.  Probably Instagram is the best place to do that, where we're just @amazingif.  Or, you can always find us on LinkedIn and message us there. 

And, if you'd like to talk more about feedback or any of the other topics that we cover on the podcast every Tuesday, we also do something called PodPlus, which is every Thursday morning for half an hour.  It's the very start of the day where we share a quick summary of the podcast.  You don't have to have listened to join the sessions.  We probably end up with 50/50; some people have, some people haven't.  Then, we share things like tools and techniques that are perhaps more difficult to talk about on the podcast and it's a bit of a deeper dive.  That is also an amazing learning community of just like-minded people who love to both develop themselves, but are also really supportive of others.

Helen Tupper: So, thank you very much for listening everyone and we'll be back with you next week.  Take care.

Sarah Ellis: Thanks very much everyone.  Bye for now.