mindsets and moves that make “not taking feedback too seriously” work out
Yesterday, I glibly said, “don’t take feedback too seriously.” The premises here, the assumptions, are critical. For this to work, leaders have to make these assumptions explicit, then model what behavior based on these assumptions looks like.
The Assumptions
We’re all professionals here (as opposed to amateurs, who don’t worry much about the quality of the product and are mostly in the game to entertain themselves)
It’s all skills. We can all get better at each dimension of our jobs, down to the details of them (how we schedule a meeting; how we open a conversation; how we punctuate stuff).
Feedback is given and taken in good faith. The subtext of it is some version of “I believe in you. I believe in your ability to get better at what we’re here to do. You matter and what we’re doing matter enough to me that I won’t prioritize my own comfort over sharing something that could help you and move us forward.”
The Behaviors
We seek feedback from each other as frequently as possible.
If we have feedback, we offer it
as close in time as we can to the occurrence of the thing it’s about and
directly to the person it’s for or about.
We minimize practicing or vetting the feedback with third parties, which devolves too easily into withholding the feedback or delivering it after a good gossip with your office friend.
We take the feedback seriously. That means we consider it, and unless there’s a good, mission-chasing reason not to, we act on it.
We thank each other for feedback every time, especially when it’s “tough” feedback (given across a power divide, given when the stakes are high or there are acute feelings on either side)
This list of behaviors isn’t super scripted out. I find that too much structure too much of the time chills feedback and saps it of relevance. All that structure becomes a fetish, an end unto itself, that distracts from the rapid receipt and implementation that spark virtuous growth cycles.
My preference is for rules of engagement that look more like the Netflix ones described in No Rules Rules and Powerful and less like the 16-square matrix, granularly measured “radical transparency” touted in accounts of Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater.
Netflix has structures as a part of their feedback practice, including a very thorough, annual 360 review, but those are special occasions within a calendar that is peppered over with daily or even hourly instances of ad hoc feedback.
A middle path between Netflix and Bridgewater might be the way things look at Sam Corcos’ Levels, where the default expectation is that all meetings, including 1:1s, are recorded and searchable on the company server but participants can opt out of that in individual instances.
A pitfall of so much cultural programming is that it obscures or stands in for a kind of work that is way older than Title VII, HR departments, and even The Company as a way of putting people together - the work of being good to others.
Retreats, DEI initiatives, highly structured feedback delivery programs - all of these can be useful. They founder if leaders pretend that they can replace the risky, merciful, steady practice of giving our best to others and calling forth the best from them. That practice unfolds at the level of the daily conversation, the “typical meeting”, the innocuous Tuesday in August. It does not take hold through shock therapy.
Simple, durable assumptions about feedback and the moves to match - they won’t instantly turn the tide of history or short-circuit millennia of evolution. They can create conditions where you and your people have the chance (and are expected) to wield strength and compassion to get big things done.
-Eric
