Feedback's broken, here's how to fix it
Feedback has been a widely used tool in the world of work for many years, with millions of hours and billions of dollars dedicated to it every year in the form of performance reviews and 360s. The use of feedback is credited in the success of the very best creative people and companies. With this gigantic investment and laudable history behind it, feedback must be a great thing, right?
Wrong. We work with leaders across the globe and one of the most common pain points we hear is that people aren’t able to give or receive feedback well and this is causing problems in their teams.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, feedback is
“information about a person's performance which is used for improvement”
It’s an extremely simple concept that’s hard-wired into our DNA. We learn from the moment we’re born, taking feedback in the form of sensory input to learn how to talk, walk and engage with others. As we grow up, our communications become more complex and nuanced and our inner voice gets louder and unfortunately for many people the beautiful feedback loop that got us so far starts to break down. That’s not even the worst of it. A very common pattern I see as a coach is one where the feedback mechanism is working fine, but applied to feedback people think they would get from others. They hear the imagined feedback voice saying critical or mean things (inner voices have a habit of being critics!) and get stuck in defensive or angry mindset about feedback that is almost never what the other person would say.
Possibly due to so many people remote working, we saw a clear and negative trend around feedback in 2020. As opportunities for informal team interactions where empathy and trust are built have been reduced, more pressure has been put on formal moments of feedback.
The result has been less, and less effective, feedback resulting in reduced morale and missed opportunities for improvement of people, performance and products.
Where is the great feedback?
There are some very famous examples of great feedback in companies. Two of my favourites are Pixar's and McKinsey’s.
The famous animation studio coined the term “braintrust” to describe its culture of and approach to feedback. Harvard’s Amy Edmondson tells the story and the success beautifully here. Built on a foundation of candor, trust and always-on feedback, people at Pixar are continually “plussing” ideas to make them better and better. Creating the highest grossing animation franchise of all time in Toy Story, the results speak for themselves.
The McKinsey Feedback Model may not have a playful brand name, but Global Management Consulting is serious business - not child's play (more’s the pity... but more on that another day). Nonetheless McKinsey's is described as a feedback driven culture and their model has many similarities, emphasising frequent feedback that focuses on facts not individuals.
So feedback seems pretty easy... what's going wrong?
1. Feedback is rare
One of the reasons that feedback fails is that it’s become widely associated with annual performance reviews. There’s so much to fix with APRs, from their cost and burden, to the fact they’re almost universally disliked. Data also shows that they support gender and racial inequalities. Elizabeth Uviebinene captures many of the flaws in this great piece in the FT.
The biggest flaw is hidden in plain sight in the title: Annual.
If I had an idea that would improve your performance right now, would you want me to wait up to a year to give it to you?
Feedback is most effective when delivered frequently and as close to the event being described as possible. The memories are clear, the momentum creates energy and the improvement happens as early as possible, giving the greatest possible impact.
2. Feedback isn’t candid
Even when people know they have ideas that could help their colleagues and even though everybody knows they could improve, feedback often isn't given for fear that it will be taken personally and create conflict. Indeed from the receiver's perspective, feedback is -wrongly- taken personally and as a result ignored or worse causes ill-feeling amongst colleagues. An approach to feedback that helps many of our clients is described by Kim Scott in her book Radical Candor. Kim's beautifully simple model plots feedback interactions into a helpful 2x2 grid shown below. The vertical axis maps “caring personally” while the horizontal axis shows “challenging directly”. The book guides you through how to transform Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity and Ruinous Empathy into Radical Candor.
3. Feedback isn’t in the culture
The thing that links points one and two together is that Pixar and McKinsey have very deliberately created and nurtured a culture of feedback. They’re very different, reflecting the fact that they are very different companies with different visions, values and people. In most organisations I see, the opposite is true, feedback is pushed into the shadows except for very rare outings where it’s rushed and gamed while at the same time reducing employee satisfaction and business performance. Although people understand what feedback is and everybody can do it, it simply isn’t made commonplace or comfortable in most organisations.
So what can you do right now?
Talk about feedback - start a conversation about feedback. How is it working now? What are you building on and what would great feedback look and feel like?
Design your own feedback approach - look at the links in this post, read some books, do your own research or steal our approach below
Nurture a feedback culture - whatever you design, however good it is, find ways to improve it. Engage your people in the process of applying your new approach to itself!
At Curve we use a very simple 3 question feedback method which we use as often as we can and which we’ve built into every workshop we run for our clients.
What do I love?
What would it be “even better if”?
What questions do I still have?
Feedback can be one of your biggest assets. It can power you, your team and your organisation to greater things. You have everything you need - get started today!
Having seen just how many of our clients struggle with giving and receiving great feedback and the resulting impact it has on relationships, collaboration and the work produced in teams, we’ve created a workshop designed to introduce the foundations of great feedback and give participants the opportunity to practice and get feedback themselves in a safe and and welcoming environment. If you’d like to know more, drop a note in the comments or get in touch here: hello@curve.cc