Show Notes
Is your feedback counterproductive? Mon-Chaio and Andy discuss a thought provoking article that says we’ve been giving feedback wrong. They tease out some truths, some tactics, and some insights into what it means to give useful feedback.
References:
- The Feedback Fallacy – https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy
- Cynefin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework
- Confirmation Bias – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- Plato’s Ideal Forms – https://philosophynow.org/issues/90/Plato_A_Theory_of_Forms
- Learning is horrible – https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2015/10/22/thats-what-learning-feels-like/
- Ray Dalio Management – https://fs.blog/management-lessons-from-ray-dalio/
- The Perfection Game – https://thecoreprotocols.org/protocols/perfectiongame
- Does performance improve following multisource feedback? A theoretical model, meta-analysis, and review of empirical findings – https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.514_1.x
- Performance Feedback Culture Drives Business Impact – https://ceo.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Performance-Feedback-Culture-Drives-Business-Performance-i4cp-CEO-002-1.pdf
Transcript
Mon-Chaio: thank you for joining us for another episode of the TTL podcast. Today we thought we’d talk about feedback, which is a really interesting topic and there’s a lot of areas in which we can go into. But the genesis for this was an old article that we came across that I believe I had read previously, but Andy, had you read this one previously or was this new to you?
Andy: This was completely new to me.
Mon-Chaio: Without burying the lede, the article is titled The Feedback Fallacy. It was from 2019 published in the Harvard Business Review.
And I would say it was an article that got a lot of folks talking online, and we thought it’d be interesting to bring our thoughts into the picture. But before we get into the article, I think maybe a great way to start, Andy, is to talk about how do most people learn to give feedback, or if you randomly searched online right now about how to give good feedback, what is the guidance that you would generally see?
Andy: You would probably see people saying to be specific and timely.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: About what you are talking about to focus on the behavior that you’re seeing.
Mon-Chaio: Do feedback in private. so don’t do it in public. And then there’s also the you know, sort of mix it in with positives as well. What a lot of people affectionately refer to as the shit sandwich.
Andy: If you go by what most HR software has you do, it would be be numeric gives, give someone a five rating on a 10 point scale.
And then fill in a text box that answers, please explain your rating.
Mon-Chaio: right. Yes. So we won’t be able to playact that part of it out probably as well. But focusing on the non-HR software model parts, maybe we could play act a piece of feedback giving using those rules and see how that feels.
Andy: All right.
All right. Yeah, that sounds good. I have a feeling I’m gonna be getting the feedback in this play, acting, aren’t I?
Mon-Chaio: Yeah. Well, I think the previous play acting that I remember we did, I was the CEO and you got to ask the questions. so, now I will give feedback and of course to our listeners, although this feedback is about podcasting, this is not actual feedback because I do believe in the privateness of feedback.
And so we would not be airing dirty laundry on the podcast. An example of feedback based on the rules that we just talked about might sound like this. It would be timely. So right after a podcasting episode, I might pull Andy aside and I might say, Andy, hey I’d like to give you some feedback.
Andy: Oh, all right.
Mon-Chaio: I like that you’re very enthusiastic and engaging with the listeners. The enthusiasm really comes across and elevates the ideas that we’re talking about and makes it seem very interesting. So that’s great. I really appreciate that
Andy: you. Thank you.
Mon-Chaio: for sure. I’d also hearing some feedback from listeners that you’re not really able to convey a strong message, given the points of the paper.
They feel like maybe you ramble on a little bit and your thinking’s just not quite there in terms of being able to piece all the ideas together. And it really causes me problems, honestly, because when I have to edit those sections of the podcast, it makes it a lot of work, right? I have to copy and paste and make sentences that didn’t actually weren’t sentences and piece them together.
So it just like, it almost probably doubles or triples the time I have to spend in those sections. So it just is not that great for me and it causes a bunch of trouble. Does that make sense, Andy?
Andy: I guess, Sure. I, I don’t know what to do with that though.
Mon-Chaio: So, yeah. I’ll tell you like what you really should do in order to get past this is take really clear notes when you’re reading the paper. Bullet points help me specifically and I think bullet points would be a good thing for you.
Definitely summarize and build a structure out of those bullet points. Lay that down and refer to it often. When you’re podcasting. So read it and read it again so that it really comes across and is strong in your head and maybe rehearse it a little bit prior to the podcast as well. That’s what I would really suggest.
I think you’d be much more clear, come across much more clearly if you did that.
Andy: All right, thanks. I’ll, I’ll see what I can do.
Mon-Chaio: Oh, definitely, definitely. And I just wanna say that I really appreciate you as a podcasting partner. Your voice really comes across clearly. You really enunciate well, and this helps our listeners be able to understand you. ’cause often they’re running and stuff and there’s a lot of background noise, so there hasn’t really been trouble understanding you. So I really appreciate that and I really appreciate all you do for the podcast. And I, you know, and I actually do appreciate you taking this feedback as well.
And I look forward to you, you know, you getting better and all of us getting better together.
Andy: Thanks, man.
Mon-Chaio: All right. So, that is an example of, I think we did a pretty good job of hitting all of the points that we talked about, about good feedback giving, right? It was timely. It was specific you know, the shit sandwich was there. I hope you heard that. You know, and it was meaningful and it had talked about behaviors that affected you, right?
Or affected me as, as the feedback giver.
Andy: And we, we added a little something into there, which is often also in feedback, which is what kind of change do you want the person to make in order to alleviate that or to change that?
Mon-Chaio: Oh, of course. In fact I think if you read about feedback online, that is the whole point, isn’t it? Why are you giving feedback if one, you don’t want the person to change? And two, why are you specifically giving feedback if you can’t help that person change? So, yeah I think that’s a core part as well.
And so many listeners or many people maybe hear that feedback and say, well, that’s great. That touches on all the points. It seems like great feedback, it gives ’em specific points to work on. But the authors of this article, which is why it’s so provocative, would say that that play acted feedback that we just gave.
Is completely wrong and almost useless, or maybe even worse than useless, but actually not just not contributing value, but contributing negative value.
Andy: Yes. And having heard it, I could tell you, even though I know it was play acting, I was sitting there thinking, man, what am I supposed to do with this? Which I think many listeners have had when someone has given them feedback and they think, well, I can understand that there’s something you don’t like. I can hear what you’re saying that you want me to do, but I don’t know how to get there. ’cause if I knew how to get there, I’d probably be there.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: And, and I think that that gets us to a good point of talking about the kind of three theories that this, this author, this paper uses as a foundation for what’s wrong with that kind of feedback.
And it’s the way that they talk about it is these are the three theories that we have in our head about how the world works that are wrong. They’re, that these theories are not supported anymore. And so if we continue to operate in this way, we’ll be giving bad feedback,
To, just to go through them really fast because I think they are useful for the, listeners to know is the first one is the theory of the source of truth.
That is, that the person giving the feedback can see something true, something objectively true about the person receiving the feedback, and they should be that source of that truth. They, they can be that source of that truth. So Mon-Chaio had this objective truth that he needed to convey to me that I had rambling discussions about the points in an article.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: They, the second theory, That we operate from is the theory of learning of people being just an empty vessel. That you need to just tell them a new behavior and that you can fill up their vessel and , they will advance and become excellent. And we got that in Mon-Chaio’s feedback when he told me take notes and write an outline and practice it.
and and I will say I do that.
Mon-Chaio: Yes. This, these podcasts would be much, much worse if neither of us did that.
Andy: I am reading from my notes right now. And then the last one is theory of excellence. And that is the idea that there is a ideal form of excellence that you can get closer to by judging me against that and saying that in that difference. I just need to shorten it and everything will be better.
And the feedback that Mon-Chaio just gave me hit all three of those theories, that way of thinking.
And the contention is that all of those are wrong and the feedback is ineffective. And, could actually even be worse than ineffective. It could be detrimental,
Mon-Chaio: That’s a great summary. And so let’s start at number one the the source of truth theory. Again, Andy, you mentioned this is the idea that. When we give feedback, like when I gave feedback, I have, an objective source of truth that you don’t know, and it’s up to me to tell you so that you know, this is the truth about you or about your behaviors, or about how you come across to other people in the world.
And what the authors of this papers would say is that there is no objective truth. Would that be a good summary?
Andy: I don’t know. I, I don’t know if they would go that far.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: I think I, and I think this was one of my points of like, disagreement with the article, is that I think that their advice fits very well in in cases that to use the Cynefin framework of complexity. So in cases that are complex, which is how a lot of human behavior is, and so complex, is that there’s, there’s a very unclear connection between cause and effect.
And which is cause which is effect the, the best you can do is to encourage solutions to emerge. And I think, I think their advice about feedback fits within that domain.
I think in that domain that that kind of like objective truth is very fuzzy because tho those connections are, are not clear or maybe, don’t exist.
I would disagree with them on things like the obvious domain of Cynefin, which is that you can categorize things into different ways that you should be acting, and then there’s a clear best practice that you should do. So for instance, how do I screw in a screw with a screwdriver?
Mon-Chaio: Absolutely.
Andy: You, you can watch me do that.
You can say, oh, you’re holding your hand on it wrong,
and you can tell me, hold your hand differently and you’ll use the screwdriver better. So I think one thing to realize about , their feedback stuff is it’s not about those kind of obvious or maybe a little bit complicated types of things.
It’s about this complex or maybe even chaotic domain where there is no clear objective truth where someone can understand exactly what’s going on in terms of cause and effect.
Mon-Chaio: Agreed. I think they actually even mentioned in the article that there are very, what they would call very discreet and small opportunity cases like the screwdriver case that you mentioned, right? Or like, Hey, don’t put your hand on the stove. It’ll burn you. That’s pretty clearly an objective truth.
Andy: Yeah.
Mon-Chaio: Now whether somebody, whether somebody needed to be told that maybe I, I think people do, right? People don’t come into this world fully formed or whatnot. They do need to be told that at times, but yes, they would say that there are very small subsets of problems and we could use the Cynefin framework or not for where that type of feedback fits.
But the majority of the time it is within a more complex domain, and yet we’re still using this idea of that we have objective truth in order to give feedback.
Andy: the, the feedback fallacy. That we’re using a framework of feedback that does not work for the things that we’re giving feedback on.
Mon-Chaio: and interestingly enough, when we were talking prior to the show about how I would give this playacting feedback, the initial thing that we landed on was too much of the simple domain, right? I think it was something like, you’re not enunciating your words. I think that is something that is not part of the complex domain, and so probably is closer to objective truth.
I think you can even quantify enunciation in some ways. And so we wanted to really move to something that was more in the complex domain about not being able to think clearly enough to take disparate points and put them together,
Andy: Yeah. Which fits very well with leadership and tech leadership. I think to bring this back to our audience, I think understanding that difference of what domain are you giving feedback in is really important, especially in the tech leadership because we are so often dealing with some things that are absolutely clear how to write a grep command line for getting where the string is, that’s case insensitive in a file that’s very clear.
You can give people that objective truth feedback. There is a excellence, there is a correct answer to what the command line should look like. But then if you take that same approach and you talk to a senior engineer or you talk to an engineering manager to give them feedback about the way that they’re interacting with their team,
if you say objectively true, You are burning bridges.
Now here’s the thing that may seem like it’s objectively true. You’ll experience it for yourself as objectively true, but others may have different views. And so part of the feedback giving is to work through that. And that’s one of the things they get to is about those different ways of providing that kind of information.
And one of the things they would say is also don’t focus on that negative, focus on a positive,
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: focus on a thing that’s going well, rather than something that’s going terribly.
Mon-Chaio: Maybe we can talk just a tadd more about objective truth. It sounds like we are mostly in agreement that in the complex domain there are very few objective truths, and so presenting your feedback as objective truth is problematic. Probably not just because it’s quote unquote untrue, but also being so explicit about it often makes the feedback receiver feel uncomfortable.
Because they’re like, well, I don’t know that I necessarily agree with that. Or, you know, Joe over there told me that he really thought I did think very clearly, or something of that nature. So I do think that we do tend to agree that in the complex domain objectives, truths are difficult to come by, what does that mean for us then?
Does that mean since there is no objective truth, we shouldn’t try to portray what we see as true? And what does that mean about starting the feedback, starting to give feedback to the feedback receiver? Do we not give feedback at all then?
Andy: I think you give feedback.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: article actually says, give feedback.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm. Yes, it does.
Andy: It’s to focus on what they did. So focus on something you saw them do
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: specifically. They suggest actually doing it immediately. So when I read this, I connected it for myself back to non-violent communication which is that you say an observation, Mon-Chaio, I saw you nod your head and then you go from there.
Which is a truth that we can agree or disagree on. It gives us something to talk about. Because quite often I think what we end up trying to portray as truth is already a judgment. It’s already an interpretation of the situation. Burning Bridges is the one that I used earlier.
That’s an interpretation of the situation. It’s not an observation.
Mon-Chaio: That’s right. I think the other thing for me is also, while I do agree with what you said and what they said in the article, I do think often in the article I feel like their method of giving feedback ends up being a little bit too vague for my taste. A lot of it is asking questions of the person, how did you see this situation?
And then we’ll talk about, you know, the leaning in, the strengths of the past, present, future stuff that they talk about a little bit later. I think for me though, while there is no objectives truth, there is still data that that person perhaps needs to know and needs to know strongly. And so while. You’ve burned bridges might not be an objective truth. I think it is still important for the feedback receiver to hear something like, Hey, I asked six people and five people mentioned they feel like you often burn bridges. I think that’s still valuable data. And so while that might not be objective, truth is still a very strong data point that I feel does need to be communicated, and I don’t know that the authors of this article would necessarily say that you want to communicate that sort of information.
Andy: I am, I’m actually, I actually disagree. I think they would, I, I think that in their article, it’s not clear how you do it.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: Yeah, but I think they would, and the reason I think that they would is because talking about that past, present, future, or present past future, let’s bring that in really fast because I think it’s important for, this is how you do it.
So they said, I would portray it as a coaching session. something is happening you ask them first to reflect on the past or sorry, first reflect on the
present. About what’s working for them right now.
So the burning bridges is that you’re probably noticing something’s not working on that team. People aren’t
communicating. So you’d ask them you’d probably start out by asking them what’s, what is working on this team for you? And they’d say, oh, well, we really get on on the tickets. We we are, we’re picking them up and we’re getting them done quickly.
Great. There’s probably a problem, which is we’re not talking
to each other. We’re doing the tickets, but we’re not talking to each other. So what, what is working for them in the, talking to each other? Oh, well, we will talk to each other on pull requests. We’ll do that back and forth on the comments and the pull requests , and that’s fine.
Okay. In the past when you had problems, when people wouldn’t talk to you what worked, and maybe they’d say, actually, I’ve never found anything that works. This seems to happen to me a lot. You are like, okay. And that’s, this is a key point. They said, now you can bring in your experience, so at this point you can bring in.
Things that, you know, things that have come up for you and what you’ve done in the past. So in the past when I when I said something that caused a, a rift in a relationship, what I did was I thought about what I’d said and I wrote it down and I reflected on that. And I tried to see their side , of their reaction.
And then I, went and I spoke to them to see if I could confirm or deny or understand better their approach, something like that. So now you have that ability to give them some more techniques, tactics,
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andy: And then you have the future. And that’s the question. So now what do you know you need to do? What do you already have that will work in this situation that you’re in?
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: And now they’ve heard not only I had a reflection on their past and a reflection on their present, they’ve heard your experience. And now you’re trying to help them find the motivation to get out there and do that thing. I think their approach did allow for a bit of that negative feedback, a bit of bringing in some of that information.
So I, think it does show up in there. , do you agree or do you think that I might’ve left something out? I, you had the thing about five people out of six said this. I didn’t really bring that in and I’m not sure if I needed to
Mon-Chaio: I think we could talk a little bit more about this later because I think it actually does fit well into the second part. So we’ve talked about objective truth, but I think now we’re starting to get more, as we bring up present, past future,
we’re starting to get into their second criticism. The source of knowledge or theory of learning that they bring up this idea that as you mentioned earlier, people are just empty vessels. And you have to fill them with knowledge that they didn’t already have in order to make them better. And without you filling their vessel, their vessel would not be filled, or not necessarily you, but without somebody filling their vessel, it’s not filled.
And so you have to give them information, right?
Andy: Yeah. I have to admit, I, my take on it was, this was, for me, they’re the weakest part of the paper. And part of it was that I became distrustful when I saw them starting to bring in neuroscience in the way that neurons f form.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: I felt like they were blinding me with science and I did not want to trust them anymore.
Mon-Chaio: Hmm.
Andy: But also because I don’t think they gave me a good answer to, but if someone simply has the wrong behavior or has behaviors that are creating a bad situation, well, I might need to give them a different tactic and
have them practice it.
Mon-Chaio: Yeah, no, absolutely. Let’s I think we’ll step up and say we, we did a good example of how they would say we did things wrong, right? I told Andy, here’s what you should do. You should read the articles carefully. You should take bullet points, you should summarize, you refer to it often, right?
This was me trying to fill his knowledge vessel, which was empty of those facts. He obviously didn’t know them because if he did know them, why would he still exhibit this behavior? The authors would say again, that, that’s incorrect. And that we often already have things within ourselves that we know on how to change our behavior.
And so the feedback givers should be eliciting those strengths. Focusing on those strengths and getting them to lean into those strengths in order to correct that behavior. And in the present, past future example, you saw what the what the article authors are suggesting that we first ask about the present, but then we move to the past and say, you know, what have you done well in the past, which has helped you overcome these things?
What are the strengths that are already in your vessel? And I do think that that’s a little bit challenging for me because like you I agree. While it’s not really up to us to always contribute and fill somebody’s vessel, we’ve all met the person that didn’t know they have to change. To your example of when was a time when we didn’t communicate, I’ve certainly had people say things such as, I feel like we’ve always communicated well.
Andy: Mm.
Mon-Chaio: I can’t think of a time when we didn’t communicate. Okay. Well, but you weren’t talking during X, Y, and Z, but, we had pull requests. Don’t you think that it would’ve been better if you talked there? Well, yeah, but that’s kind of a waste of time because we have pull requests. So I think there’s absolutely times where I feel, yeah, they do need some filling of the vessel and you cannot just completely lean into strengths and you can’t completely just use this reflection method to convince them or to encourage them to push forward on their strengths.
What do you think
Andy: I agree. I think someone can’t have a strength in something that they’ve never encountered before. For instance, first time I was a manager, I had never had to talk to someone about their salary. That was a thing. In fact, it was discouraged ever talking to anyone about their salary. So I had no model to work from about how to talk to someone about here’s your salary, this is why you have it, this is why we’re changing it by this amount.
Yeah, I was an empty vessel in that case. I did need some guidance.
Mon-Chaio: As I was reading this paper, I felt very uncomfortable about that portion of it. And so I did some more reading and I did find this article, which will link on our show notes called Does Performance Improve Following Multi-Source Feedback. And one of the big conclusions that they draw from these studies is that the best way for a person to change is for that person to feel uncomfortable.
I think that also we talk about, or I talk about this a lot on the podcast, it’s nice when studies fit your gut feelings and you get to reinforce each other, right?
Andy: Confirmation bias feels good.
Mon-Chaio: ah, yes, yes. Let me drink a nice glass of confirmation bias. But I think we’ve all felt this in the past where, you know, to get you out of your rutt, you kind of have to have an external force push you, make you feel uncomfortable.
And one problem I have with these authors idea of consistently need his strengths is when you don’t bring up weaknesses, I don’t feel like it makes that person uncomfortable. And if you’re continually saying you have everything within you, just lean into the things you have within you. I’m not here to fill your vessel.
I think that’s missing a big portion of what makes feedback useful.
Andy: To me it just misses out on what it takes to learn. A couple things that I, I really like around thinking about learning. And one is that learning is horrible. A friend of mine, Jeffrey Frederick, loves saying learning is horrible, be because of this. He often asks people, and I’ll do this to you. So tell me, what does it feel like to be wrong,
Mon-Chaio: It feels bad. I don’t like to be wrong.
Andy: right? What does it, how does it feel to be right?
Mon-Chaio: Oh, it feels great. I feel very superior. Smug.
Andy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the thing is that when you are wrong it feels the exact same as being right. What you described is when you find out that you’re wrong.
Mon-Chaio: Right.
Andy: And so this is the thing, is that without that external information that someone had they, they took an action that caused a consequence that they didn’t intend or that their actions are a unskilled until they can get that feedback, there is a sense of like, it will feel the same to them because they don’t know yet that they’re wrong.
And I think that a large portion of learning is that finding out that you’re wrong and it will be uncomfortable.
Mon-Chaio: I agree with that. It’s interesting if I reflect on it. For me personally, I don’t feel uncomfortable finding out I’m wrong in private. I quite like that, in fact. But I do not like finding out I’m wrong in public. I haven’t really thought deeply about this. I just thought about this now. Maybe there’s something here with regard to learning or with regard to feedback as well.
Andy: Yeah, their theory of source of truth. I think we agree with their theory of learning. I think we’re both saying like, no, this doesn’t jive. And other research also says that this is, what they’re saying is not really how people learn.
Mon-Chaio: I agree. I do think that, and this is something I’ve started applying. This was actually the first thing when I read the article the first time that I took away from it. You know how you read and you take away a little bit more every time. But the first tactic I took away from it, I actually really do like, and there’s this, it’s that concept of tell people about your experience.
Andy: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
Mon-Chaio: Instead of telling them what they should do, especially in, to your point, the Cynefin complex domains or chaotic domains.
Andy: Because you can’t tell them what to do. You can’t tell them what to do. You can tell them techniques that have worked for you and they can try to replicate.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It’s funny, I have this really strong manager that I mentor. She’s great. I love her. And one of the things she told me is that she was very, very uncomfortable in those types of conversations with me because she just wanted me to tell her how to solve her problem. That’s why she was coming to me, for me to tell her how to solve her problem.
And when I gave her frameworks and things I tried in the past, she didn’t feel like that was concrete enough for her. The funny thing is we had her and her husband and her kids over for dinner just last week and she’s mentioning that, yeah, now she’s doing the same thing with her directs as she grows.
But it is uncomfortable and I think it can be uncomfortable for feedback receivers, especially those that are looking for an answer to be told by the feedback giver, look, I don’t have an answer for you. Here are some of the things that have worked for me in the past given the situations that were similar to yours, but it is not your situation and I’m not living in your situation and I can’t really tell you what to do.
Andy: Yeah. And I’m not you, I know you will not behave the same way as I do. But I can tell you the way that I think about it. I can tell you the, the actions that I’ve tried to take in the past. I can tell you the way that I’ve assessed situations,
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: can’t say that that’s gonna be the what, right way of doing it.
The next time something happens.
Mon-Chaio: Well, and on a small tangent, I think this is a challenge that most leaders face, which is they have their own toolbox of things that worked for them. And often the default to that as the only way to do things. So when somebody comes and says, I’m having trouble collaborating, you reach into your toolbox of ways that you collaborate and you present them to them and you say, Hey, here, here’s how to do it.
And you coach them, and you coach them. And when it’s not working for that person, often companies, organizations, and leaders default to, well, that person just can’t improve. They don’t have the skills necessary. They can’t learn versus going out and saying, Hey, do I have other tools I can give them? Things that might not work for me.
Maybe, you know, maybe they’re not a very verbal person, maybe they’re more visual, or maybe, you know, they’re more auditory. Or maybe they like to do their thinking late at night and come back instead of do it in real time. But I feel like most leaders, and I fall into this pattern at times too, we don’t think about that, right?
We start to short circuit and say, well, I’ve given them, you know, three types of feedback around this and three different strategies, and they haven’t worked it out. So, something must be wrong with that person.
Andy: I would say that that actually that is, A useful interpretation of what this article has brought up. I don’t know if it’s the way that they would talk about it, I think hearing you say that, I think this might be a, useful way for me to think about it, which is early on in the article, they talked about there’s this self-centered nature of feedback self-centered in terms of me as the feedback giver I’m being self-centered.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: And I think the thing here is in that thinking about, well, my techniques, my tactics, my past, I’m being very self-centered in thinking that that is what you need to have to learn.
Mon-Chaio: Right.
Andy: I think one of the things that I would get at is as long as I can acknowledge that , this is what mine was, this is what worked for me, this is what I gravitate towards, and I’m offering it to you, it’s no longer. Self-centered in The sense of like blind to the other person. It’s self-centered in the sense of like, I recognize that I only have my own experience, my own knowledge, and, but I can offer it to you. And I think that’s a useful way of thinking about the trying to fill an empty vessel. It’s trying to maybe augment an empty vessel with what I can offer, not empty vessel. It’s trying to augment a vessel with what I can offer.
Mon-Chaio: Uhhuh. I like that way of thinking as well. Maybe we should move on to just given time constraints. Move on to their theory of excellence.
Andy: Which I think we were already getting to because our theory of, our way of thinking about excellence, , they talk about it as there is this ideal form. It sounded very platonic to me, like Plato’s shadows on a cave wall and all of that.
Mon-Chaio: Exactly. Their ideal chair or whatever, right?
Andy: We have the ideal forms , in terms of managers and basically what they say is, look, , those don’t exist.
And I think I agree with them for the most part, especially with that Cynefin framework of like,
things are so complicated. Things are so complex that no, I cannot say that you absolutely have to look like this person. You have to look like Ray Dalio or else you’re a terrible manager. But I think there is a thing in there and may, I don’t know if you’ll agree with this Mon-Chaio, which is that we will always be measuring someone on our own yardstick.
It’s once again, it’s self-centered. We’re going to be measuring them off of the way we would do this or the way we would want to see ourselves doing it. I would say once again, as long as we’re honest about that and kind of couch it in that language of what I would want to see, what I would try to do,
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: I think it removes a lot of the issues.
Do you?
Mon-Chaio: I think it does. It’s inevitable. You cannot remove your own biases. Even thinking deeply about this and thinking about, well, I have these biases. Let me try to remove them. Let me try to remove them. You’re always gonna have your own biases. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with them that there is no ideal excellence.
I think, again, in this small, in, in the more discreet areas or in the simplistic domains, there can be, right? I think we all agree with that. But I think even in more complex domains, I think it’s dangerous to say that there’s no standard of excellence. I think what brings it in question to my mind immediately is, well, what do we do about performance review and promotions and stuff like that, right?
For many companies, promotion being, being held to a standard of excellence, which is well-defined and written out. And when you hit those points, that’s when you’re promoted. So are we saying we cannot do that anymore? I think that’s a too big of a discussion to have here. So I think that there’s some challenges there for me with theory of excellence, but I do like a couple things that they said around that.
I do think that generally studying failure and doing the reverse cannot lead you to excellence. That’s what they said. I think that’s often true.
Andy: Yeah.
Mon-Chaio: I think too often we try to, we try to believe that’s true even though it’s not. The thing that comes to mind immediately is incident review, for example.
Andy: Mm.
Mon-Chaio: So much of incident review is learning, and I think for many organizations that I’ve been a part of, they do a great job of the learning part. They inevitably go out to the, okay, well how can we prevent this from happening in the future? And oftentimes when that question is asked, It tends to be this, well, we study the failure
Andy: We write more tests.
Mon-Chaio: and so now let’s just, do the opposite of that and this will no longer happen in the future because now we’ve achieved excellence and holding a bar as to, oh, well how many times did this particular type of issue reappear you know, data loss for example, or data loss in this particular table, or this particular message queue.
And I think that’s, that’s a little bit dangerous. I don’t know that I have a strong opinion on that because I do think you need to continue to improve and how do you improve if you’re not measuring yourself and setting goals for yourself and whatnot. But I do generally agree that studying failure is not the way to get to excellence,
or, sorry.
Studying, studying failure and doing the reverse
is not the way to get to excellence,
Andy: We’ve kind of gone through their theories. I think we’ve already talked through a few tactics they gave, they gave some tactics as well about the language as well as the present, past, future thing that we’ve already talked about. I want to go over their language a little bit because I, I found that very interesting.
In the article they give , rather than say this, try this instead.
Mon-Chaio: Right
Andy: it’s one of those things where I think if you haven’t done much training in communication styles or, or use of language, it will look like that’s, it’s just the same thing. And I’ll say, it isn’t. It actually really matters.
The way that you phrase something and the way that you phrase it will change the way that you think about it. So I, I think that these are very interesting changes that they make , and good changes. So one is they say, instead of just telling someone good job, they suggest saying, here are three things that really worked for me. What was going through your mind when you did them? You’re saying a a little bit more specific, it worked for you. You’re saying it’s something about you not universally that was good. So you’re kind of removing a little bit of that judgment from it.
And you’re being curious to help them reflect on what were they doing when, when that happened, what were they thinking about? What were they trying to accomplish? By shining the spotlight on that you are not only being curious and learning a bit about them, but also , they’re reinforcing to themselves what did they actually do?
Because in so many cases, it’s unconscious until someone asks us to think about it.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I agree with you. I think the language is really important. And I think that they’re, they have a table in this article that says, instead of this, try this. I think for, for most of it, I tend to agree with them. So I think that is absolutely a tactic.
Again, we’ll link the article in the show notes. I think that table right at the end is a great tactic for people to maybe even act as a shortcut, right? Paste up on your monitor or your wall and catch yourself when you’re trying to say something on the left side and try to say something on the right
Andy: Mm-hmm.
Mon-Chaio: What are some other tactics that we can talk about? I think for me this idea of instead of telling them what they should do, telling them what you did or might do in a similar circumstance, I think is again, a tactic I use a lot. It was the first one I used when reading this article. But I believe very strongly in that tactic.
Andy: I do that a lot as well. I think it’s, very useful. I think it does a lot of things, and one as well as a, a part of being a leader is it makes you human and approachable. Especially if you give it where it’s, it didn’t always go well.
Sometimes those are good stories and people can learn from that.
But also it gives an insight into , your way of thinking, which helps people to understand , how to interact with you.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm.
Andy: I have another one that I really like, which is called The Perfection Game.
And the idea of the perfection game is to stay on the positives. But it’s also to recognize as the feedback giver, the limitations of your feedback. So here’s the rules of the perfection game. I will do something, some performance, and then Mon-Chaio you as the feedback giver. You give me a score from one to 10.
Now the meaning of that score is that the feedback you’re going to give me will make my performance, if I was to take that on board in your mind so much better. So if you give me a score of one it means that you believe that your observations, if I took them on board, would get me 10 times better. If you gave me a five, it would get me twice as good. If you gave me, a nine, it would give me like a slightly better one, 10th better. Then you get to say what you liked about my performance, what you liked about what I did, then you say, and this is kind of very scripted to be a 10 I would want, and then you give me what you would want to see to make me a 10.
And if you can’t think of anything, you have to give me a 10 because you have no idea how to make it better. And I think that’s a very humbling thing for the feedback giver to realize that they may not have liked it, but they had to find something they did like, and then they have to tell me they can’t make it any better.
Mon-Chaio: The other thing that’s humbling for the feedback giver here is how much you can actually affect somebody when you start to really think about it. Can I make them five x better? Can I make them 10 x better? Especially in things around the complex or chaotic domains. And as you get into more of those, the more senior leadership you get to, a lot of it is just improvements around the edges, right?
Andy: of the scores are gonna be nine or 10.
Mon-Chaio: right? And it’s really interesting, again it’s not time to talk about this here, but when we think about how we talk about improving people and how we talk about promoting people and then we start to think about, well, does our feedback really move them that much? They’re already nine-tenths of the way there. Is it really so problematic that we need to be talking about that one-tenth feedback all the time? It is funny. I like the perfection game a lot. My nine year old daughter uses it better than we do now.
Uh, just the other night, just the other night, she made an omelet for my wife and she was like, well, what would you give it, mom?
And my and my wife said, oh, I’d give it nine out 10, you know, and here’s what I liked about it. And my wife stopped there and my daughter said, okay, but what would make it a 10 out of 10?
Andy: And did she have anything to say?
Mon-Chaio: She absolutely did.
She
Andy: okay. Because I, I’ve, I’ve seen, I’ve seen interactions like that go where, oh, it’s a nine out of 10. I liked this. I actually can’t think of anything to make it a 10, so I’m sorry. It’s a 10.
Mon-Chaio: Yeah. I do think that that thinking like making sure to think through and forcing people to think through it really does get to the meat of the issue especially around these numeric scores, which we’re not gonna touch into these Likert scale stuff the HR software stuff. We’re, we’re long as it is.
So I, I would say the last topic just we’ve mentioned it many times that I really like is the present past future thing. We don’t need to talk a bunch about it right at the end of the article if you read it. And we also gave an example of it right early on about how to do it. I think that’s another great tactic.
But I think one thing that I do want to touch on right here at the end is there is a fundamental thinking shift in my mind when you start to give feedback in this way. And the shift is around speed of change. And this gets back into the perfection game about how much can you influence change and at what speed can you influence it. So much of the time, we feel like we hire leaders, and when they mentor people, their job is to fill that vessel, right? That empty vessel of specific things that that person can do as quickly as possible so that person can grow as quickly as possible, right? I’ve been at companies where people expect to get promoted every year or two years, and whenever they go in for mentorship, they’re like, what parts of my empty vessel can you fill and how fast can you fill it?
Just tell me, tell me, tell me, and then I get promoted,
and we have on our Trello board of possible topics for future episodes, what the right way to design a promotion process is. But I think that’s a really interesting thing to think about and to discuss. For me, the thing that over the last five or 10 years that I’ve really gotten in touch with is around using feedback, not as a way of promoting people, but as a way of growing people.
And you might say, well, that’s exactly the same. The places which they need to grow are the places, things that they’re gonna get them promoted.
Andy: No, it’s not. It’s not.
Mon-Chaio: but it’s absolutely not. Promotion to me is a business outcome. You promote people because higher level people have more leverage those those higher level people add more to the business in terms of value and, and you know, revenue, they’re able to do more, so on and so forth. But I really do believe that promotion is about the growth of the individual. Not thinking about filling their empty vessel as fast as possible also means that the rate of change, which you can see might be slower, but I think the change is actually more high leverage than just simply saying, just do exactly what I did as many times as you can.
Andy: I want them to be a better person have a better life.
And if I can help them on that, and if that means that, then they’ll get that promotion, that’s great. But if them. Learning that extra skill, doing that thing that gets them the promotion causes them to be unhappy. Well, I don’t want to do that.
Mon-Chaio: Mm-hmm. And what they say is that that actually does also, you know, hit more strongly for business outcomes as well, which I can see happier people drive more business outcomes. But the rate of change I think is probably slower than what most people are used to. And I think people have to come to terms with that.
Andy: Yeah. So I think we’ve now gone over the whole article, our thoughts on connections to other concepts Cynefin, NVC, promotions, perfection game anything else? Anything else we want to leave our listeners with?
Mon-Chaio: I don’t think so.
Andy: All right. So I think then we just need to leave them with our plea and thanks, our plea for feedback and suggestions for things that they want to hear about. We have many ideas, but we wanna make sure that we’re covering the things that they’re interested in for filling their empty vessels. And thanks for listening. So
Till next time, be kind and stay curious.
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