The Feedback Fallacy
March 6, 2019 12:54 PM Subscribe
Why does feedback rarely do what it's meant to? The Harvard Business Review's cover article tackles the current state of feedback, and suggests a better way.
From the conclusion:
1. We can't give feedback because (a) we aren't good judges (b) other people don't need criticism to learn, and (c) we can't define excellence anyway.
2. Positive reinforcement, calling attention to good behavior, is much more impactful than highlighting mistakes.
3. Replace the sandwich method with "Present, Past, Future"
From the conclusion:
How to give people feedback is one of the hottest topics in business today. The arguments for radical candor and unvarnished and pervasive transparency have a swagger to them, almost as if to imply that only the finest and bravest of us can face these truths with nerveless self-assurance, that those of us who recoil at the thought of working in a climate of continual judgment are condemned to mediocrity, and that as leaders our ability to look our colleagues squarely in the eye and lay out their faults without blinking is a measure of our integrity.The article is broken into three sections:
But at best, this fetish with feedback is good only for correcting mistakes—in the rare cases where the right steps are known and can be evaluated objectively. And at worst, it’s toxic, because what we want from our people—and from ourselves—is not, for the most part, tidy adherence to a procedure agreed upon in advance or, for that matter, the ability to expose one another’s flaws. It’s that people contribute their own unique and growing talents to a common good, when that good is ever-evolving, when we are, for all the right reasons, making it up as we go along. Feedback has nothing to offer to that.
1. We can't give feedback because (a) we aren't good judges (b) other people don't need criticism to learn, and (c) we can't define excellence anyway.
2. Positive reinforcement, calling attention to good behavior, is much more impactful than highlighting mistakes.
3. Replace the sandwich method with "Present, Past, Future"
This is quite a good article.
I was sort of inclined to think that writing in the Harvard Business Review would be totally vapid. I mean one of the author's job titles is "Senior Vice President of Leadership", which reads like parody. But actually, it's not vapid at all! This is very thoughtful and makes a compelling case and gives a lot of good advice.
I wish they didn't feel the need to rely on vaguely-summarized neuroscience to make their point, though. I don't trust that kind of thing anymore. Too many bad studies, and I don't have the expertise to tell the bad from the good.
posted by vogon_poet at 1:13 PM on March 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
I was sort of inclined to think that writing in the Harvard Business Review would be totally vapid. I mean one of the author's job titles is "Senior Vice President of Leadership", which reads like parody. But actually, it's not vapid at all! This is very thoughtful and makes a compelling case and gives a lot of good advice.
I wish they didn't feel the need to rely on vaguely-summarized neuroscience to make their point, though. I don't trust that kind of thing anymore. Too many bad studies, and I don't have the expertise to tell the bad from the good.
posted by vogon_poet at 1:13 PM on March 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
Heh. I worked for a company that "valued" "honest" "input." Operationalized, it meant a stunning lack of actionable feedback, every minor mistake was overscrutinized, and employees' positions were only as secure as managers' vague patterns of anxiety and trust.
posted by entropone at 1:13 PM on March 6, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by entropone at 1:13 PM on March 6, 2019 [10 favorites]
This is aimed at Bridgewater, really.
posted by praemunire at 1:17 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 1:17 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
The solution to the issue of everyone being "color-blind" in different ways is to have the person giving feedback also answer the question, "What, exactly, is wrong with you?"
posted by little onion at 1:19 PM on March 6, 2019
posted by little onion at 1:19 PM on March 6, 2019
I actually read Ray Dalio's book (I had good reasons I swear), and he goes on for hundreds of pages about the need for radical transparency, but then carves out a specific exception for employee salaries, because people might be disgruntled and want higher pay.
posted by vogon_poet at 1:19 PM on March 6, 2019 [40 favorites]
posted by vogon_poet at 1:19 PM on March 6, 2019 [40 favorites]
*flinch* Well, this is timely. One of my self goals lately is actually learning to ignore feedback, because I have been finding a) that prizing being good at feedback and receptive to it means I attract more criticism than people who are not receptive to it, and b) taking too much criticism into account is paralyzing and leads to not producing anything.
Suck it, world, I'm a flawed human being and I'm sick of apologizing for it!
posted by sciatrix at 1:23 PM on March 6, 2019 [32 favorites]
Suck it, world, I'm a flawed human being and I'm sick of apologizing for it!
posted by sciatrix at 1:23 PM on March 6, 2019 [32 favorites]
Why? Because it reflects the real world!
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:27 PM on March 6, 2019
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 1:27 PM on March 6, 2019
I think it's bullshit because all HBR is advocating is making feedback implicitized. It is feedback under a pretense that it isn't. It's a technique that allows people in power to silence criticism. HBR has been constitutionally blind to questions of sociology and philosophy, and that's why they embrace these ideas. The whole article is its own contradiction; it is quite literally disseminating feedback. That says a lot.
posted by polymodus at 1:35 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 1:35 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think the article is doing a little bit of double speak and trying to say "feedback" is wrong, but not really providing a clear model of performance growth that doesn't involve feedback. It's cornering contemporary "feedback" into something that is negative, frequent, and biased. I think these are definitely features of bad feedback, but it ultimately creates a framework for how to make feedback better, not remove it entirely from the equation.
If we break it into 3 sections, we can see a lot of value from identifying the 3 fallacies of feedback that people are re-discovering. That is re-discovering, because a lot of this is already widely known and taught in management courses. Like all too often, this stuff doesn't necessarily make it out of a textbook and instead we get a watered down version that is inartfully executed by managers who don't receive coaching until after being in the role (and often not for several years!).
Feedback as a source of truth problem, totally makes sense. We need better definitions of what is great and we need better raters. It points out not necessarily that we need no feedback, just that we need better feedback from objective sources and standards. I think the main point is really that we need QUALITY feedback, rather than QUANTITY of feedback. We need actual information specific to what is great performance (more on excellent later).
The second source, "how we learn", is also widely known. We don't just learn from hearing things. Often we need a lot of training to unlearn our mistakes that have been reinforced over long periods and that training has to match the outcome we're expecting. What the author is actually calling for is coaching or shaping performance. It's great to point out that the mode of the feedback is wrong, but having feedback that aligns with a desired outcome is still highlighted as "how we learn". It continues and uses a lot of mystical cognitive neuroscience terms to simply say, it's not what you say, but how you say it. Again a widely known concept that doesn't undermine feedback, but actually shows how we can engage the recipient to maximize the value it provides.
The third I think offers the most interesting perspective. Surprisingly, the science jargon being thrown around to seemingly add strength to the author's argument, disappears in this section. As if the author is creating the idea that excellence isn't something measurable.
Excellence actually is hard to define and is hard to coach to. But not by any fault of feedback. Excellence is a moving target that is defined by discovering small difference that provide advantages at high levels of performance. That is to say, excellence is important for the 1% of performers who are competing for diminishing returns.
Companies that can execute 50% of their projects successfully are seen as industry powerhouses. Recruiters struggle to do better than a coin toss without algorithms supporting their decisions. Sales can often improve by simply providing fundamental service.
The reality is probably closer to the author's point that "feedback" can help us achieve greatness, but not excellency. Excellency is hard to define and it depends on who it's excellent for. Excellency is often discovering a new way of doing something that no one else has figured out yet. It's an ever shifting target. At times, those things that made it excellent, can start to become standard, until something new is discovered. It's inherently going to be hard to make something truly excellent, because it might not exist yet.
Then you have excellency being something different for you vs a company. If you can make the average performance for your entire workforce improve, you're actually moving your company at a macro level, closer to excellence. Excellence at an individual level, because it's harder to achieve, will have smaller impacts on the overall company sales or performance. Think of the tanks in world war 2. Germans had excellent tanks, but americans had more great tanks. They ultimately used that strategy to win many conflicts against a "excellent" tank. Excellence will always be nebulous, but also expensive and not necessarily the best strategy for a company. The resources required to make a single sales person excellent, simply might not be enough of an ROI. The "correcting grammar" approach might actually be better here. Companies that succeed, have the fundamentals down.
Which brings me to focusing on failure. The author's point is more about the problems with causation being conflated with correlation. I think it's a great call out, we read the research and then execute it without the nuance that lies in the conclusion section. But again, this merely shows that having the appropriate topic for feedback, like success, is what makes up good feedback. Not that feedback is ineffective.
The middle section of the article reveals the truth of the article. Much like nonviolent conflict resolution, we discover that focusing on the behavior of the employee and being objective and specific is a better form of feedback. This model is tested and highly effective. That's why we see it in other areas, like non violent conflict intervention. Ultimately this is still feedback though, not some new discovery as the author portends.
When it finally comes time for the author to provide a new model of feedback, it actually goes against the prior argument and focuses on a socratic approach with a dash of Carl Rogers; the author literally states that the employee has the solution available to them (in their mind's eye? really? who let this through?) and you're now helping them unlock it. We are now suddenly left without any studies but we see the use of mystical cognitive neuroscience terms re-surface as if to add weight to the weak argument. This part really jumped off the rails for me. Why are we now ignoring the phrases above and focusing on unlocking the hidden powers within our employees? Why are we asking high performers how they do something? Instead we just need to use the Charles Dickens model of feedback and ask our ghosts of performance past present and future to help us discover that we had it in us all along.
I really doubt that model would be more effective than simply taking the advice the author provides only a few paragraphs before. I think it would work for a moderate to highly skilled performer who is facing a performance based challenge at work (not structural challenges or resources challenges), but I don't think little Timmy will be getting much more turkey that christmas.
posted by Ragnarok at 1:36 PM on March 6, 2019 [9 favorites]
If we break it into 3 sections, we can see a lot of value from identifying the 3 fallacies of feedback that people are re-discovering. That is re-discovering, because a lot of this is already widely known and taught in management courses. Like all too often, this stuff doesn't necessarily make it out of a textbook and instead we get a watered down version that is inartfully executed by managers who don't receive coaching until after being in the role (and often not for several years!).
Feedback as a source of truth problem, totally makes sense. We need better definitions of what is great and we need better raters. It points out not necessarily that we need no feedback, just that we need better feedback from objective sources and standards. I think the main point is really that we need QUALITY feedback, rather than QUANTITY of feedback. We need actual information specific to what is great performance (more on excellent later).
The second source, "how we learn", is also widely known. We don't just learn from hearing things. Often we need a lot of training to unlearn our mistakes that have been reinforced over long periods and that training has to match the outcome we're expecting. What the author is actually calling for is coaching or shaping performance. It's great to point out that the mode of the feedback is wrong, but having feedback that aligns with a desired outcome is still highlighted as "how we learn". It continues and uses a lot of mystical cognitive neuroscience terms to simply say, it's not what you say, but how you say it. Again a widely known concept that doesn't undermine feedback, but actually shows how we can engage the recipient to maximize the value it provides.
The third I think offers the most interesting perspective. Surprisingly, the science jargon being thrown around to seemingly add strength to the author's argument, disappears in this section. As if the author is creating the idea that excellence isn't something measurable.
Excellence actually is hard to define and is hard to coach to. But not by any fault of feedback. Excellence is a moving target that is defined by discovering small difference that provide advantages at high levels of performance. That is to say, excellence is important for the 1% of performers who are competing for diminishing returns.
Companies that can execute 50% of their projects successfully are seen as industry powerhouses. Recruiters struggle to do better than a coin toss without algorithms supporting their decisions. Sales can often improve by simply providing fundamental service.
The reality is probably closer to the author's point that "feedback" can help us achieve greatness, but not excellency. Excellency is hard to define and it depends on who it's excellent for. Excellency is often discovering a new way of doing something that no one else has figured out yet. It's an ever shifting target. At times, those things that made it excellent, can start to become standard, until something new is discovered. It's inherently going to be hard to make something truly excellent, because it might not exist yet.
Then you have excellency being something different for you vs a company. If you can make the average performance for your entire workforce improve, you're actually moving your company at a macro level, closer to excellence. Excellence at an individual level, because it's harder to achieve, will have smaller impacts on the overall company sales or performance. Think of the tanks in world war 2. Germans had excellent tanks, but americans had more great tanks. They ultimately used that strategy to win many conflicts against a "excellent" tank. Excellence will always be nebulous, but also expensive and not necessarily the best strategy for a company. The resources required to make a single sales person excellent, simply might not be enough of an ROI. The "correcting grammar" approach might actually be better here. Companies that succeed, have the fundamentals down.
Which brings me to focusing on failure. The author's point is more about the problems with causation being conflated with correlation. I think it's a great call out, we read the research and then execute it without the nuance that lies in the conclusion section. But again, this merely shows that having the appropriate topic for feedback, like success, is what makes up good feedback. Not that feedback is ineffective.
The middle section of the article reveals the truth of the article. Much like nonviolent conflict resolution, we discover that focusing on the behavior of the employee and being objective and specific is a better form of feedback. This model is tested and highly effective. That's why we see it in other areas, like non violent conflict intervention. Ultimately this is still feedback though, not some new discovery as the author portends.
When it finally comes time for the author to provide a new model of feedback, it actually goes against the prior argument and focuses on a socratic approach with a dash of Carl Rogers; the author literally states that the employee has the solution available to them (in their mind's eye? really? who let this through?) and you're now helping them unlock it. We are now suddenly left without any studies but we see the use of mystical cognitive neuroscience terms re-surface as if to add weight to the weak argument. This part really jumped off the rails for me. Why are we now ignoring the phrases above and focusing on unlocking the hidden powers within our employees? Why are we asking high performers how they do something? Instead we just need to use the Charles Dickens model of feedback and ask our ghosts of performance past present and future to help us discover that we had it in us all along.
I really doubt that model would be more effective than simply taking the advice the author provides only a few paragraphs before. I think it would work for a moderate to highly skilled performer who is facing a performance based challenge at work (not structural challenges or resources challenges), but I don't think little Timmy will be getting much more turkey that christmas.
posted by Ragnarok at 1:36 PM on March 6, 2019 [9 favorites]
feedback is what sound does, and it is never a good thing.
posted by terrapin at 1:40 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by terrapin at 1:40 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
The arguments for radical candor and unvarnished and pervasive transparency have a swagger to them, almost as if to imply that only the finest and bravest of us can face these truths with nerveless self-assurance, that those of us who recoil at the thought of working in a climate of continual judgment are condemned to mediocrity, and that as leaders our ability to look our colleagues squarely in the eye and lay out their faults without blinking is a measure of our integrity.
I'm a big fan of how Martin Fowler puts it:
I'm a big fan of how Martin Fowler puts it:
I value people with good ideas and don't consider the thickness of their skin. Anyone driven away from expressing innovation or writing excellent code is a loss to all of us, however unoffended we think they should be.posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:55 PM on March 6, 2019 [19 favorites]
terrapin feedback is what sound does, and it is never a good thing.
The Who would like to disagree with you.
posted by SansPoint at 1:57 PM on March 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
The Who would like to disagree with you.
posted by SansPoint at 1:57 PM on March 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
Feedback is systems jargon, and is an internal information flow that regulates and guides a system (turning a mic plus room plus speaker into a tuned noise generator is feedback in the classic systems sense - a complex self stabilizing behavior enabled by a cross system flow of audio information).
Feedback was borrowed by management because they wanted it to seem more scientific, but most usages in companies today are totally detached from the technical context it comes from. Your boss evaluating you isn't feedback, it's old fashioned one directional communication. Feedback would be multiple participants from various levels guiding a process together to maintain the integrity of a working system, and it's a radically different thing.
Healthy relationships and families are built on actual feedback (communication from end to end that is allowed to guide future decisions on the scope of the entire enterprise), but most companies wouldn't dare.
posted by idiopath at 2:01 PM on March 6, 2019 [15 favorites]
Feedback was borrowed by management because they wanted it to seem more scientific, but most usages in companies today are totally detached from the technical context it comes from. Your boss evaluating you isn't feedback, it's old fashioned one directional communication. Feedback would be multiple participants from various levels guiding a process together to maintain the integrity of a working system, and it's a radically different thing.
Healthy relationships and families are built on actual feedback (communication from end to end that is allowed to guide future decisions on the scope of the entire enterprise), but most companies wouldn't dare.
posted by idiopath at 2:01 PM on March 6, 2019 [15 favorites]
the phlegmatic king: I've been in a couple of work situations where people around me have gotten a "360 feedback review" and in all cases it just looked like psychological torture.
Is "360 feedback review" anything like a struggle session?
posted by clawsoon at 2:25 PM on March 6, 2019 [5 favorites]
Is "360 feedback review" anything like a struggle session?
posted by clawsoon at 2:25 PM on March 6, 2019 [5 favorites]
It may be worth caring about their advice if you work for one of the many companies or managers who have become enamored of Radical Candor. Which was written by a woman, but I think that's only important as proof that being not-male doesn't mean you can't have bad ideas.
Though in fairness to Kim Scott (the author of Radical Candor), I think a lot of people who claim to follow her principles haven't even read the book; they've just taken the title and some vague idea of what she espouses in it, and run with it. "Radical candor" is a perfect justification for "being an asshole to your coworkers" for people who are looking to do that anyway.
I'm glad to see some serious pushback against it, and the associated "cult of feedback".
Personally I am on the other end of the spectrum from "radical candor"; I think people should shut the hell up until they've gone over whatever piece of 'feedback' they're about to say, and reviewed (1) "what am I intending to accomplish by telling this person this?", and (2) "how likely is what I'm about to say going to accomplish what I intend, viewed from their perspective?" Most 'feedback' that I've heard in "radically candid" environments or teams tends to be useless at best, terribly destructive at worst, and wouldn't remotely pass these two tests.
(N.B. these tests are also reducible to "don't be a dick", which I still think is the only rule of personnel management that really matters.)
a "360 feedback review" and in all cases it just looked like psychological torture.
360 reviews are another thing that probably have their place, but were also (ab)used by people looking for an excuse to be assholes to their coworkers. It's funny how that works.
In many ways, the failure of 360 reviews to live up to their promise is why I sideeye Kim Scott and "radical candor" pretty hard—at this point there's no excuse to assume that people aren't going to be total dicks to each other given the opportunity. So if you're creating a new management/feedback/performance-enhancing methodology, maybe don't create something that's going to obviously enable assholes. Sure, assholes gonna asshole, but we don't need to lay down intellectual covering fire for them while they do it.
The situation where 360 reviews are helpful are for mid-tier managers and junior executives, and it's a good way of weeding out sociopaths. You know, the kind of people who their bosses think walks on water, but do so by being shitty to their direct reports and their peers. To uncover people like that—and you want to, because they're generally a net drain on the organization—you can't just rely on their bosses' performance reviews. You need to actually go out and talk to their reports and their peers, and figure out if they're just blowing smoke up the reporting chain. In that particular scenario, the 360 review is pretty useful. And it can also be useful at correcting shitty behavior before it gets to full-on American Psycho level. But there's zero reason for doing 360s of people in non-leadership roles (I mean, you literally can't do a 360 on someone who doesn't have direct reports; at best you can do a... 180 review? That's nothing special, it's just a performance review with some peer input taken into consideration). Huge red flag if you're working someplace that does it for junior people or people in individual-contributor-type roles where they don't engage in personnel leadership.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:41 PM on March 6, 2019 [19 favorites]
Though in fairness to Kim Scott (the author of Radical Candor), I think a lot of people who claim to follow her principles haven't even read the book; they've just taken the title and some vague idea of what she espouses in it, and run with it. "Radical candor" is a perfect justification for "being an asshole to your coworkers" for people who are looking to do that anyway.
I'm glad to see some serious pushback against it, and the associated "cult of feedback".
Personally I am on the other end of the spectrum from "radical candor"; I think people should shut the hell up until they've gone over whatever piece of 'feedback' they're about to say, and reviewed (1) "what am I intending to accomplish by telling this person this?", and (2) "how likely is what I'm about to say going to accomplish what I intend, viewed from their perspective?" Most 'feedback' that I've heard in "radically candid" environments or teams tends to be useless at best, terribly destructive at worst, and wouldn't remotely pass these two tests.
(N.B. these tests are also reducible to "don't be a dick", which I still think is the only rule of personnel management that really matters.)
a "360 feedback review" and in all cases it just looked like psychological torture.
360 reviews are another thing that probably have their place, but were also (ab)used by people looking for an excuse to be assholes to their coworkers. It's funny how that works.
In many ways, the failure of 360 reviews to live up to their promise is why I sideeye Kim Scott and "radical candor" pretty hard—at this point there's no excuse to assume that people aren't going to be total dicks to each other given the opportunity. So if you're creating a new management/feedback/performance-enhancing methodology, maybe don't create something that's going to obviously enable assholes. Sure, assholes gonna asshole, but we don't need to lay down intellectual covering fire for them while they do it.
The situation where 360 reviews are helpful are for mid-tier managers and junior executives, and it's a good way of weeding out sociopaths. You know, the kind of people who their bosses think walks on water, but do so by being shitty to their direct reports and their peers. To uncover people like that—and you want to, because they're generally a net drain on the organization—you can't just rely on their bosses' performance reviews. You need to actually go out and talk to their reports and their peers, and figure out if they're just blowing smoke up the reporting chain. In that particular scenario, the 360 review is pretty useful. And it can also be useful at correcting shitty behavior before it gets to full-on American Psycho level. But there's zero reason for doing 360s of people in non-leadership roles (I mean, you literally can't do a 360 on someone who doesn't have direct reports; at best you can do a... 180 review? That's nothing special, it's just a performance review with some peer input taken into consideration). Huge red flag if you're working someplace that does it for junior people or people in individual-contributor-type roles where they don't engage in personnel leadership.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:41 PM on March 6, 2019 [19 favorites]
It would be a good thing if people just refused to play this game.
You can just say no.
Of course, your employer can punish you for this up to and including getting rid of you, but if enough people say no then that stops being an option. And as I've noted before, if you ask up and down your company you may be surprised how many people do not believe in and resent the whole review system, but 'feel they have to'.
There are so many 'how-to' management books, organisational books, big-idea radical restructuring books... has anyone done an employee handbook that encourages how to be constructively disruptive wherever you are in the chain?
(N.B. these tests are also reducible to "don't be a dick", which I still think is the only rule of personnel management that really matters.)
Suggested this exact phrase as a complete alternative in response to a proposed 'social media policy' of many pages that came down from on high with a request for comment. Was not alone. Did hear from legal that many pages needed to define what being a dick was, as dicks stubbornly refuse to self-identify. Hm.
posted by Devonian at 2:54 PM on March 6, 2019
You can just say no.
Of course, your employer can punish you for this up to and including getting rid of you, but if enough people say no then that stops being an option. And as I've noted before, if you ask up and down your company you may be surprised how many people do not believe in and resent the whole review system, but 'feel they have to'.
There are so many 'how-to' management books, organisational books, big-idea radical restructuring books... has anyone done an employee handbook that encourages how to be constructively disruptive wherever you are in the chain?
(N.B. these tests are also reducible to "don't be a dick", which I still think is the only rule of personnel management that really matters.)
Suggested this exact phrase as a complete alternative in response to a proposed 'social media policy' of many pages that came down from on high with a request for comment. Was not alone. Did hear from legal that many pages needed to define what being a dick was, as dicks stubbornly refuse to self-identify. Hm.
posted by Devonian at 2:54 PM on March 6, 2019
It seems like management techniques that you need to modify to avoid people being assholes can probably also be improved by not hiring assholes. Not hiring assholes is good for morale, improves productivity, builds team cohesion and doesn't require painful re-evaluation of your management style.
posted by Merus at 2:56 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Merus at 2:56 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
Kadin2048,
Have you ever considered writing a management book? You could market it as the un-management approach or the revolutionary management approach (or some other slick marketing buzzword). I think that's exactly the kind of sense that business people need beaten into their skulls, but they just aren't getting elsewhere.
posted by sardonyx at 2:59 PM on March 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
Have you ever considered writing a management book? You could market it as the un-management approach or the revolutionary management approach (or some other slick marketing buzzword). I think that's exactly the kind of sense that business people need beaten into their skulls, but they just aren't getting elsewhere.
posted by sardonyx at 2:59 PM on March 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
I agree that feedback has fallen out of style since the grunge bands in the nineties, but surely that's because all the cool kids are into circuit bending now?
I'm sorry, what?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:02 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry, what?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:02 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
After finding out that 360 reviews are ahem, only optionally anonymous apparently....well, the one time I was asked to do one, I gave nothing but rave reviews.
I feel like I've heard so much "helpful" criticism and critique that it is going through my head all the time at work and probably making me crazier. I liked the football example of "focus on what you're good at" because I'm so tired of constantly trying to combat other people's critiques of how bad I am at what I'm not good at. I'm exhausted.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2019 [5 favorites]
I feel like I've heard so much "helpful" criticism and critique that it is going through my head all the time at work and probably making me crazier. I liked the football example of "focus on what you're good at" because I'm so tired of constantly trying to combat other people's critiques of how bad I am at what I'm not good at. I'm exhausted.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2019 [5 favorites]
We are all of us terrible judges of ourselves. We learn and grow through feedback - from our parents, our friends, our teachers. In a work environment, feedback can be very helpful if 1) it is delivered by someone you trust and/or respect and 2) you are open to the idea that you are not perfect. The confluence of those two scenarios in most work environments is probably pretty rare, and of course most of the anecdotes about feedback will be negative because who remembers positive reinforcement? But also it is, as many have pointed out, often weaponized.
Feedback is not useless or bad, per se, but it is certainly not a cure-all for a terrible work culture.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
Feedback is not useless or bad, per se, but it is certainly not a cure-all for a terrible work culture.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
The article is missing references*, let's have some evidence to support these theories. Show us some academic research, some studies and hell even some data. Without that, it just reads like the opinions of two people trying to sell their new book... which will contain more of their opinions, unsupported by evidence.
*perhaps in Harvard format ;)
posted by Dr Ew at 3:27 PM on March 6, 2019
*perhaps in Harvard format ;)
posted by Dr Ew at 3:27 PM on March 6, 2019
Uh... do these two guys realize that whole departments exist attached to education schools that largely deal with how to shape and deliver effective feedback?
Actually let me rephrase that.
I think it's good that these two are thinking about feedback beyond a reductive and intuitive sense of simply correcting someone's behavior towards what you want. If I was writing this article, I might think about other disciplines that also research the topic: for example, the entire field of education, and specifically schools of cognition and instruction. Isn't a school teacher's job to deliver effective feedback to shape student perception of a topic? Can't we all agree that good school teachers exist? In the future, I might think about what we can learn from those other disciplines, even if it requires not using studies rooted in small N experiments with undergrads, or hooking people up to an MRI. Looking forward to reading the next draft!
posted by codacorolla at 3:54 PM on March 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
Actually let me rephrase that.
I think it's good that these two are thinking about feedback beyond a reductive and intuitive sense of simply correcting someone's behavior towards what you want. If I was writing this article, I might think about other disciplines that also research the topic: for example, the entire field of education, and specifically schools of cognition and instruction. Isn't a school teacher's job to deliver effective feedback to shape student perception of a topic? Can't we all agree that good school teachers exist? In the future, I might think about what we can learn from those other disciplines, even if it requires not using studies rooted in small N experiments with undergrads, or hooking people up to an MRI. Looking forward to reading the next draft!
posted by codacorolla at 3:54 PM on March 6, 2019 [13 favorites]
There's no magical feedback format that you can use to both effectively mentor a junior person on the team AND drag into line the person who is making life harder for everybody else. You have to have processes for both of those things. Lots of managers don't.
I work on a team that does a lot of positivity, and the result of this is that I've spent two years with the lion's share of the responsibility without the lion's share of the pay, because certain (always male, in my experience) coworkers revert to doing as little as possible once they see that there's no stick and they have no immediate need of carrots. I have a feeling a lot of these "radical honesty" processes came about because management wanted to be able to be harsh when necessary without being perceived as singling anyone out--obviously, that isn't any better. "Performance review" being a catch-all for management's entire role in the team is a problem that has to be solved before excellence is even on the table.
posted by Sequence at 4:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [7 favorites]
I work on a team that does a lot of positivity, and the result of this is that I've spent two years with the lion's share of the responsibility without the lion's share of the pay, because certain (always male, in my experience) coworkers revert to doing as little as possible once they see that there's no stick and they have no immediate need of carrots. I have a feeling a lot of these "radical honesty" processes came about because management wanted to be able to be harsh when necessary without being perceived as singling anyone out--obviously, that isn't any better. "Performance review" being a catch-all for management's entire role in the team is a problem that has to be solved before excellence is even on the table.
posted by Sequence at 4:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [7 favorites]
Management at my office would benefit from this article. But would not read it.
posted by Glinn at 6:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Glinn at 6:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
So we had a management consultant who talked about the feedback research at a company thing a few years ago. I did try to apply it, including with an employee who was very good at some aspects of their job but really bad at one important category. I'd been giving feedback and working with them when that sort of task came up. I decided to try the advice--backed off on the feedback, more praise, still available for advice if desired, etc. I was skeptical but hey, I don't pretend to know anything. Maybe it'd work but also it was honestly selfish too. It is not fun to tell people things they don't want to hear.
It did not work. The employee did worse and worse at this task as they stopped getting told to keep working at it. After an especially embarrassing instance I needed to tell them this wasn't "a work on it to patch up a weak part of your job" situation but a "this is so poor it is making everyone around you look bad" thing. I snorted when I read the "source of truth" claim that we only know our own reaction and perspective. No, I heard from lots of people. And not mean people! Like "we know employee's got good qualities but that was pathetic, employee needs help" feedback to me. I still feel guilty for what I now consider shirking the "give feedback" part of my role; the employee regressed in this critical area while I tried that approach.
All management advice is situational--it depends on the person, attitude, expertise, level of challenge, etc. These change. I really think a lot of popular advice like this (and there is a lot like this) works with some types of employees in situations where they mostly know how to handle things, but the popularity of it caters to employees who don't want to be told what to do and bosses who'd prefer to dodge unpleasant parts of their job.
I will add personally I like feedback. I often get defensive as much as the next guy; when I catch myself doing that I try to take deep breaths, say "thank you" and then think about it later. Because I know I have blindspots same as the next guy, and someone of goodwill who is willing to walk into a stressful interaction with me is a really valuable resource.
posted by mark k at 8:16 PM on March 6, 2019 [9 favorites]
It did not work. The employee did worse and worse at this task as they stopped getting told to keep working at it. After an especially embarrassing instance I needed to tell them this wasn't "a work on it to patch up a weak part of your job" situation but a "this is so poor it is making everyone around you look bad" thing. I snorted when I read the "source of truth" claim that we only know our own reaction and perspective. No, I heard from lots of people. And not mean people! Like "we know employee's got good qualities but that was pathetic, employee needs help" feedback to me. I still feel guilty for what I now consider shirking the "give feedback" part of my role; the employee regressed in this critical area while I tried that approach.
All management advice is situational--it depends on the person, attitude, expertise, level of challenge, etc. These change. I really think a lot of popular advice like this (and there is a lot like this) works with some types of employees in situations where they mostly know how to handle things, but the popularity of it caters to employees who don't want to be told what to do and bosses who'd prefer to dodge unpleasant parts of their job.
I will add personally I like feedback. I often get defensive as much as the next guy; when I catch myself doing that I try to take deep breaths, say "thank you" and then think about it later. Because I know I have blindspots same as the next guy, and someone of goodwill who is willing to walk into a stressful interaction with me is a really valuable resource.
posted by mark k at 8:16 PM on March 6, 2019 [9 favorites]
Personally I am on the other end of the spectrum from "radical candor"; I think people should shut the hell up until they've gone over whatever piece of 'feedback' they're about to say, and reviewed (1) "what am I intending to accomplish by telling this person this?", and (2) "how likely is what I'm about to say going to accomplish what I intend, viewed from their perspective?"
Ironically this is exactly what Kim Scott advocates. That's the whole point of radical candor: it comes from both willingness to challenge directly *and* caring for the other person. And she gives plenty of examples of ways she had to modify her delivery to make sure that the people she was dealing with understood her to care about them.
(The book also made me grit my teeth a bug and I think it's not served well at all by the fact that the anecdote about Sheryl Sandberg is far and away the most memorable one in it.)
posted by asterix at 9:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [6 favorites]
Ironically this is exactly what Kim Scott advocates. That's the whole point of radical candor: it comes from both willingness to challenge directly *and* caring for the other person. And she gives plenty of examples of ways she had to modify her delivery to make sure that the people she was dealing with understood her to care about them.
(The book also made me grit my teeth a bug and I think it's not served well at all by the fact that the anecdote about Sheryl Sandberg is far and away the most memorable one in it.)
posted by asterix at 9:20 PM on March 6, 2019 [6 favorites]
> This is aimed at Bridgewater, really.
That fuckin' place, jesus.
posted by desuetude at 9:53 PM on March 6, 2019
That fuckin' place, jesus.
posted by desuetude at 9:53 PM on March 6, 2019
We think we’re reliable raters of others. We think we’re a source of truth. We aren’t. We’re a source of error.
This article really spoke to me.
I've really struggled in the past working out how to respond to workplace feedback. I believed it was holding me back in my career. In the end I was struggling so much that I actually started seeing a therapist about it. Not because I was unhappy about receiving feedback: it was because I started to perceive a catastrophic failure in myself that I couldn't seem to ever fully respond to and therefore eliminate the feedback, no matter what hoops I jumped through, or what contortions I made to my personality or approach (or tone or thought process or or or), and I wanted someone to help teach me to be better.
This was in a workplace which really, truly, valued feedback and where I was otherwise very happy. We were taught how to give feedback, as well as how to receive it. The expectation was still there, though, that people would be taking this feedback and responding to it; that we would be working to a (clearly defined - i.e. internally published) view of excellence. All the underpinnings needed to really hold someone to account for changing in response to feedback were 100% fully in place, both formal and informal. It was a key facet in the performance review process; it decided whether you were promoted, whether your bonus was 5% or 10% or nothing; anyone at any time could offer you feedback and you were expected to thank them for it.
What I've gradually come to understand (over a period of years in therapy) is that it is not possible or indeed necessary to contort oneself to eliminate feedback. I have learned to understand that feedback is a gift which you can - and often should - refuse to accept. Feedback is not fact; it is merely one person's opinion. That doesn't strip the feedback of value - opinions can be very helpful and I still take every piece of feedback, and consider what use it can be to me, and I do still use it as a learning tool, absolutely - but I no longer take feedback as gospel truth. Ultimately therapy has not taught me to be better; it has taught me to value what I am. I often joke with my partner that my therapist hasn't fixed me, she's just made me more confident in my strident errors.
And I think the quote I pulled above helps me better contextualise this. Every single person who ever offered me feedback thought that they were in a position to do so. Which means every time I've ever offered it, I thought the same. But - I am sufficiently flawed that I am unable to avoid feedback, so therefore I cannot be a reliable rater! So what conclusions can I draw about the people who offered me feedback?
I no longer work at the same workplace - once I stopped believing that it was my responsibility to unquestioningly respond to feedback, it started to reveal other cracks in the cultural structures which I could no longer tolerate.
posted by citands at 6:31 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
This article really spoke to me.
I've really struggled in the past working out how to respond to workplace feedback. I believed it was holding me back in my career. In the end I was struggling so much that I actually started seeing a therapist about it. Not because I was unhappy about receiving feedback: it was because I started to perceive a catastrophic failure in myself that I couldn't seem to ever fully respond to and therefore eliminate the feedback, no matter what hoops I jumped through, or what contortions I made to my personality or approach (or tone or thought process or or or), and I wanted someone to help teach me to be better.
This was in a workplace which really, truly, valued feedback and where I was otherwise very happy. We were taught how to give feedback, as well as how to receive it. The expectation was still there, though, that people would be taking this feedback and responding to it; that we would be working to a (clearly defined - i.e. internally published) view of excellence. All the underpinnings needed to really hold someone to account for changing in response to feedback were 100% fully in place, both formal and informal. It was a key facet in the performance review process; it decided whether you were promoted, whether your bonus was 5% or 10% or nothing; anyone at any time could offer you feedback and you were expected to thank them for it.
What I've gradually come to understand (over a period of years in therapy) is that it is not possible or indeed necessary to contort oneself to eliminate feedback. I have learned to understand that feedback is a gift which you can - and often should - refuse to accept. Feedback is not fact; it is merely one person's opinion. That doesn't strip the feedback of value - opinions can be very helpful and I still take every piece of feedback, and consider what use it can be to me, and I do still use it as a learning tool, absolutely - but I no longer take feedback as gospel truth. Ultimately therapy has not taught me to be better; it has taught me to value what I am. I often joke with my partner that my therapist hasn't fixed me, she's just made me more confident in my strident errors.
And I think the quote I pulled above helps me better contextualise this. Every single person who ever offered me feedback thought that they were in a position to do so. Which means every time I've ever offered it, I thought the same. But - I am sufficiently flawed that I am unable to avoid feedback, so therefore I cannot be a reliable rater! So what conclusions can I draw about the people who offered me feedback?
I no longer work at the same workplace - once I stopped believing that it was my responsibility to unquestioningly respond to feedback, it started to reveal other cracks in the cultural structures which I could no longer tolerate.
posted by citands at 6:31 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
I hired a guy that spent a year at Bridgewater. He made it sound like a corporate hell on earth. Radial transparency and continuous criticism in the form of "feedback" is just a recipe for resentment and mistrust.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:51 AM on March 7, 2019
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:51 AM on March 7, 2019
I have Thoughts about all this.
1. I'm the kind of person who seems to attract completely unsolicited, uh, analysis. "You know, Weftage, the problem with you is [$LIST]." Ten minutes later, someone completely unrelated: "You know, Weftage, the problem with you is [$CONTRADICTORY_LIST]" Rinse and repeat. This is feedback, I suppose, but how am I supposed to use it?
2. Do not bring me any Sandwiches. I am not a dog, and you cannot fool me by wrapping the pill in a treat. All you will achieve is that if you try to reinforce me with a compliment, I will disregard it because I know there's a Problem hiding in there.
3. Feedback is part of existence. Let's say you do a thing. There will be results. Were they, or were they not, the results you were hoping for? Why or why not? The results are the feedback.
posted by Weftage at 10:40 AM on March 7, 2019
1. I'm the kind of person who seems to attract completely unsolicited, uh, analysis. "You know, Weftage, the problem with you is [$LIST]." Ten minutes later, someone completely unrelated: "You know, Weftage, the problem with you is [$CONTRADICTORY_LIST]" Rinse and repeat. This is feedback, I suppose, but how am I supposed to use it?
2. Do not bring me any Sandwiches. I am not a dog, and you cannot fool me by wrapping the pill in a treat. All you will achieve is that if you try to reinforce me with a compliment, I will disregard it because I know there's a Problem hiding in there.
3. Feedback is part of existence. Let's say you do a thing. There will be results. Were they, or were they not, the results you were hoping for? Why or why not? The results are the feedback.
posted by Weftage at 10:40 AM on March 7, 2019
Feedback is information flow within one system that guides and corrects the behavior of that system. If the information comes from outside the system it's not feedback, if there's no mechanism to trigger new behavior it's not feedback. Communication, giving commands, and providing information are important but feedback has a specific meaning.
posted by idiopath at 1:22 PM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 1:22 PM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
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