People struggle with real feedback
Feedback is absolutely critical for the growth and development of teams, culture, and individuals. Without feedback, we stagnate and maintain a status quo that doesn’t help companies move forward.
However, feedback is also a difficult to navigate two way street full of cobblestones and unexpected obstacles. On the receiving end, people often struggle because they’re not sure what to do with the flurry of information that comes their way.
Conversely, people on the giving end don’t often say what they mean or intend because they don’t have the motivation or skill needed to navigate the social awkwardness and discomfort that happens both during and after the process.
This social dynamic changes when the feedback becomes anonymous. In this case, the discomfort felt by the giver is removed and shifted to the person on the receiving end, which isn’t entirely fair.
To demonstrate, I’m going to share three examples of unformed, anonymous feedback and try to unpack each of these to help people understand more about anonymous feedback that can appear in a corporate environment.
In 2018, I gave an Agile workshop to a group of 200 people from one company. The examples below are real examples of comments that were submitted at the end of this event.
Actionable Feedback
Actionable feedback is meant to influence future behaviours and improve the quality of work. When giving actionable feedback, the giver realizes that there is an opportunity for improvement and learning. The receiver of the feedback understands that the intent is learning and improvement.
This is an example of anonymous actionable feedback that came from the event survey:
A bit of a longer ‘classroom’ presentation would have been valuable. With examples of how this mindset can be applied everywhere. I thought we could have skipped one of the phases of the activity and gotten some time back at the end of the day.
The differentiator between effective feedback and non-effective feedback is the actionable element. So, when giving feedback ask: have I given the receiver a potential solution or opened the conversation for discussion about solutions.
Radical Candor
Radical candor is expressing your opinion as is without a filter. The best radical candor has no emotion and is delivered to a person face to face. That said, radical candor frequently appears in anonymous communication forums because little effort is needed to navigate the social implications of giving this type of feedback.
Here is an example of one piece of radical candor from the same event survey:
I didn’t get the part where we had to shop for other projects. I thought theory would be mixed throughout the day, from my point of view it was fully a game of playing the little startup.
Culture plays heavily into this type of feedback. In 2012, I worked with a Swedish programmer who is an absolute master at delivering radical candor. As a Canadian, it was a hard experience but at the same time it was a period of immense, rapid, unfiltered learning.
Often, radical candor does not feel good to receive but it does come from a place of honesty and frankness. The differentiator for candor is intent. There is no harmful intent on the part of the giver… just honesty.
It’s important for the giver to understand that it takes emotional maturity and experience to find the feedback in radical candor (and that not everyone can do this). Turn candor into feedback by making suggestions on how to be better so it can be actionable.
For the receiver, understand that receiving this type of feedback takes us out of our comfort zone. And, it’s ok for you to say: I don’t feel safe receiving and processing this right now. It’s within the receiver’s right to set boundaries, especially when the feedback is anonymous.
Personal Attacks
A personal attack comes from a place of anger with the intent to harm. It can be an act of aggression towards a person, their role, their gender, their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, their family situation, etc.
Here’s an example of a personal attack that came from the same event survey:
Seem like a show from the Agile coach to validate their job.
This is not valuable because it does not make anyone awesome (including the person who made the comment) and it does not create psychological safety for the person on the receiving end.
This particular example is a shortened version of a longer, deeply complex comment. The intent of the commenter wasn’t to give workshop feedback because similar, escalating personal comments appeared in other places.
If personal attacks are allowed to continue in a company and grow unchallenged, it creates a culture of micro-aggressions, blame, and fear.
In 2016, I delivered the findings from a process evaluation to a group of people who were so beaten down by passive-aggression and micro-aggressions that they were completely silent for the entire presentation… and asked absolutely no questions at the end. It was uncomfortable.
This company had a constant stream of employees quitting, had not innovated in decades, and they had not delivered software in years. Yep. They had not delivered code in years! The only thing that kept them alive was that they had no competitors and their service was critical to their customers.
This is an extreme example but no company starts out wanting a culture of fear… it happens silently and gradually over time because people do not feel safe enough to express their thoughts and themselves.
Why is any of this important?
Beyond the obvious cultural and peopling implications, most companies have some flavour of regular performance reviews or assessments that encourage individuals to evaluate each other. If correctly implemented, this is necessary for the growth, health, resilience, and continuous improvement of any team and organization.
However, delivering successful feedback is hard because the way people give and receive this feedback has a lot to do with their comfort with themselves and their relationship with the world around them.
Further, recent studies indicate that humans are wired to react defensively when unsolicited feedback is given, which can damage a working relationship. This is especially true when feedback comes via the popular “feedback sandwich” approach, which really only eases the conscious of the giver while at the same time diminishes the intelligence of the receiver.
Non-Negotiables
I have four non-negotiables that I use when giving feedback and I’ll use these in all delivery methods (e.g. anonymous comment, face to face): safety, respect, transparency, and well-timed.
Safety is a prerequisite. If safety is not well established and understood, I will not deliver feedback… period. If a person feels unsafe, there is absolutely no point in continuing because the receiver’s amygdala has already hijacked the conversation.
This leads to the second non-negotiable: timing. Timing is key so the recipient can derive value from what it is that you are telling them. This requires being able to read people to find or build an opening into the conversation. And, contrary to the popular belief that feedback needs to be immediate, you may need to take the time needed to build safety into the relationship before proceeding.
Next, in the moment, be both transparent and respectful in the speed and manner of delivery, meaning there’s no beating around the bush. I personally get annoyed when people give long-winded analogies about unrelated things when trying to tell you something… and then leave it to you to try and figure out what they’re trying to say. Just give me the message, please!
Using all of the non-negotiables above, I once told a CEO that it was time for him to reconsider his position within his own company. He’d become so unhappy in his position that he was subconsciously punishing the people around him… and destroying the very company that he’d worked hard to build!
He received the feedback well and after 24-hours of contemplation, he started planning his own exit from the company to pursue what he considered to be his true dream: to do theatre on Broadway.
My objective in giving feedback is always, how can I help this person be awesome! This requires the ability to step away from ego, to bring empathy into a conversation, and to see a person’s career path as a journey on which you are only a brief guide.
