Truly Great Feedback Hurts

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The biggest problem we have with giving feedback is that we believe it involves passing judgment on people. In other words that we have to tell them they are  not doing well enough, or not doing it right. These are judgments, and I don’t know about you, but if someone judges me I tend to defend  myself. After all I am my own worst critic and I spend a lot of time judging myself, so I don’t need others to judge me. What I do need is feedback – information. And that is all feedback is – information. It should be factual and evidence based. The best example I can give is the video replay that any athlete would watch with their coach after a game or match. Video replay contains no judgment – it is simply a factual rerun of what happened – of what the athlete actually did and what happened  as a result. The great thing about feedback is that when it’s given well, it’s often all we need. When we get high quality feedback as to what we did and what the result was, we know what to do to correct things next time. 

We simply have to give our feedback honestly and with as much care (in the proper sense of that word of ’caring’ for the other person) as possible; not sanitizing it or sugar-coating it as this leaves people unclear. 

They have to feel it, otherwise it won’t register and is therefore not available for them as valuable data for them to really consider.

How many people do you know who’ve had the same feedback for years and yet do nothing about it, or worse seem to wear it as some sort of badge of honour?  

I believe it should always be owned personally. If I have heard something about you from someone else, my best course of action is to relay it to you from my own observation – to own it myself. Now I don’t subscribe to blatant dishonesty, and would  always encourage others to pass their  feedback themselves, and after passing my own observations I will often find a way of encouraging  a conversation between the two parties. The problem is that passing on someone else’s feedback  is fraught  with danger if the other person decides to deny the information. And there is something of an abdication in my view if I am passing on feedback that I don’t own. 

Another pitfall of feedback  is to wait for ‘the right time’ to give it, especially to wait for an appraisal which may be weeks or months after the incident. It is also difficult  to ‘call someone  in’ to receive feedback – you know the sort of meeting that we all dread; lose sleep over, put off if we can and then end up ‘getting through’ rather than giving real value to the other person. Have the courage to stop the world and give feedback in the moment – when replaying the tape for someone  is going to be undeniable.

Telling someone  how you experience them is useful  as it can give an indication of how they might be impacting others as well. But be wary of being definitive. The ‘fact’ that the other person’s particular behaviour makes you feel uncomfortable or nervous or intimidated or excited or inspired, may say more  about you than it does about them.

The great gift of the coach giving feedback  is more than just a piece of information about that moment or that incident however. The real added value is to help the person identify their patterns (their habits), whether sabotage or success. We all have sabotage patterns – things that we do to ourselves to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - and we all have success patterns  – things that we habitually do that work for us and always put us in positions of influence and power. When as coaches we help others to see these, they can control the bad ones and play up the good, thereby instantly raising their performance.

Having said that we need to be wary of our judgments and be very non-judgmental in order to coach people, we do need to make judgments about what the other person needs from us along the way. Maybe they need confidence and courage? We can give that through our feedback. Maybe they need some humility? Again, we can give that. If we are sincere in our approbations, we can tell people that they have what it takes. We can tell them they are good, great, wonderful, beautiful, talented, courageous, creative etc. We can TELL them we believe in them and that they will find a way through. After all at times, if we don’t believe in them – who will?