Forensic Feedback
About saying the hard things that really help. Or, what a speaking seminar can teach us about developmental culture.
Feedback is the mirror of truth we need to grow. In any matter, we need to see where we stand in order to know where to go. That was one of the results the previous article pointed at. Still, giving good feedback is not a very common skill.
Indeed, in the systems we live and operate in — ranging from our personal surroundings to our work — our positioning on the range of competence for any skill is often implicit. We learn what we are good at only by quiet comparison to others. This way of discovering one’s strength and weaknesses, however, is slow and largely subjective. Biased by the selective behaviour of our brain. We only see what we want to see. By giving and receiving honest feedback, we can tremendously speed up the learning process.
When you hear “feedback” you might think about the average presentation in school and about the things that we said afterwards. In this setting, we’ve been told that having notes is a bad idea, that one should speak loud and clear, that one should face the audience and smile. And, not surprisingly, that is the feedback we give. We focus on symptoms, and we give advice. Both of which is dangerous.
Over the course of the last two years I had the chance to first participate and later assist in a handful of speaking seminars. They were led by an seemingly neutral, unpretentious teacher, Dirk Schuka, but had about them a very intriguing vibe and feel. At the core of these seminars was a culture of feedback that very much resonates with the ideas of developmental cultures. Essentially, these seminars were pop-up developmental cultures, fusing a group of 30 strangers into a very powerful learning instrument for every single participant. Hence, I believe, the methods employed there provide a very clear guidelines for the feedback culture in developmental organizations.
While these events were called “public speaking seminars”, the last thing one would learn is tips on how to speak right. There was hardly any clear advice in the form of “dos and dont’s”. Instead, the time was used to build trust, become mindful and to give proper feedback.
In the following, I will dive into the key learnings and methods employed. For more on the underlying philosophy consult the (german) website of Dirk or listen to our (german) podcast with him.
Building Trust in a group of strangers
It’s Friday, around lunch time on a cold December day and slowly one by one, a group of 30 students assembles in the seminar room. There are chairs set up in a circle, but no one’s interacting yet. People are insecure, avoiding eyes, a bit shy. For they don’t know anyone, nor do they know what to expect. And so, in silence akin to that in an elevator full of strangers, they sit around uncomfortably and wait for the session to begin. During the next three days, these students work together in a way, that is new to them. They leave their comfort zones on a regular basis, they learn to trust each other and start to form a very cohesive and interactive group.
The way Dirk achieves this trust is by pushing the participants to the limits of their comfort zone early on. And by doing so as a group, no one can avoid it. No one is excluded, not the trainer, not the assistants, everybody makes themselves vulnerable. Specifically, the exercises employed are about the extremes of using your voice and body. For example, one task is to say one neutral sentence in a myriad of different emotions. It’s a lot like acting practice and most people become uneasy acting in front of others. Another task is to experiment, in silence, with the variety of movements you can perform with our body. And suddenly you have a room full of grown-ups moving around a room in silence in a mixture of dance, theater and tai-chi.
What does that have to do with speaking, you might ask. And in fact, the question is posed frequently. It’s important that it is posed, because without trust in the process, no learning can happen. So here’s the answer.
Learning to be mindful of your body and perception
By going into our body and testing the extremes we inevitably become more aware of what we do. Dirk tells the participants to focus on their center and their breath during the exercises. It helps to become aware of what specific gestures and emotions feel like. Where is tension when I act angry? What happens to my neck if I act nervous?
On the second morning, when participants come in all fresh and relaxed, the seminar often starts with a warm-up that looks a lot like a pre-workout warm up, but with deliberate mindfulness. The idea is to tune everyone in to the practice and it is essential for the feedback work to fulfill its purpose. For how are we supposed to give and receive feedback if we are not aware of the things that happen within us? After all, we can only actively deal with what we are aware of; and we can only give as feedback what we have perceived in the first place.
Thus, an essential prerequisite to a lively feedback culture is mindfulness.
But what does feedback for someone have to do with my feelings?
Feedback is not about you, or me, but about us — our connection
Even in the case of a presentation, good feedback is not only about the person standing up there talking. Good feedback incorporates the connection between the person and the audience. If there is one thing I learned about communication it’s this: it takes two to tango.
Accordingly, good feedback ought to incorporate that element of connection. Let’s say the person giving the presentation seems nervous and shaky. Then, as feedback you can say exactly that: “You seem nervous and you speak too fast”. But that isn’t feedback, it’s an accusation. The only person who knows if the speaker is nervous, is the speaker herself. In the seminars we had a 3-part feedback structure that takes away the edge and helps us to say the difficult things without accusations:
- What I See — I see that you speak fast and that your hands are shaking. It’s important here to stay as objective as possible. Don’t say: you speak too fast; Say: In my perception, you speak very fast.
- What it does to me — It makes me uneasy listening to you and it’s harder to follow your thoughts. Only here the subjective part comes in, but it is clearly labeled as such.
- What is does to my perception of you — I get the feeling that you are nervous and that makes you appear less competent to me. Again, clearly communicated subjectivity.
If you’re familiar with the concept of non-violent communication from Marshall Rosenberg you might notice the similarities here. Feedback, in the way shown here, is about voicing your own feelings in order for the other person to orient themselves.
While it might seem like a technical nuance to split the feedback up this way, it makes a major difference. If you say “You speak too fast, you nervous wreck”, it’ll lead to resentment and blockage. The receiver might well just ignore it and say “well that might be your opinion, but I don’t care”. If, however, you say how you feel about it, it becomes an unquestionable truth. What the receiver makes out of it, is up to them, but you’ve stated what is true for you in a clear and inoffensive way.
Once that is done, the task is to create a common understanding. In the seminars, we (the assistants) achieve that by asking the recipient of feedback, whether he can relate to it. It doesn’t help to get feedback about speaking fast if you yourself don’t believe that is the case.
Look for the deeper cause, not the symptoms — Interconnection
On the first occasion, our feedback is often about symptoms, about the things we see and what they do to us. The key to learning from the seminars is to see the bigger picture and not the single symptoms.
An example: If someone speaks with a soft voice and they receive the feedback that it is hard to understand them, then an obvious solution is to “just speak up a bit”. There is, however, often a deeper reason that someone has a soft voice. It might be that the person is shy in general and not very confident in their own message. Instead of “just speaking up” it might help to work on their confidence in another way. For instance by experimenting with a wider stance, an open chest and retracted shoulders. A helpful tool could be to visualize the attitude of military general when practicing a presentation. I tell you from experience, it is hard to stand in such a way and still speaking softly; Try it yourself!
There is often something underlying the symptom and there are just as often better ways to tackle it than treating the symptoms.
Feedback in the arena
All the above was about public speaking, a scenario where we are at least somewhat accustomed to feedback. But the simple fact of sharing our experiences and learning from them together can and should be applied everywhere in an organization and even in our private lives.
It is, however, also true that feedback becomes harder the more you are involved in the object of discussion. It’s one thing to give feedback about a presentation you heard, it’s a different thing to evaluate a conversation you were part of yourself. The higher your stakes and your emotional attachment, the harder it is to step back and give honest feedback. But just because it is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle notes that in successful cultures, feedback is split into two parts. First, asking if feedback is wanted and two, having a learning focused two-way conversation. That is to say, it is about getting common understanding.
What helps is “The Groove”, we talked about in the previous article. Namely, a repeatable, clearly demarcated set of practices, i.e. meetings for the purpose of feedback. When it is clear that every Friday it is time to voice the feedback about how things went during the week, no one is surprised if critique comes up.
Going from here
Now that we’ve discussed elements of a developmental culture and looked more closely at the feedback process, we have a solid foundation for good organizational collaboration. But, there is one more thing, that is the most important of all: taking action.
Feedback, and that is the takeaway of the article, can help us navigate whatever realm we operate in. More precisely, feedback is the radar, but we still need to steer the vessel. Thus another article will be about our experience working on weaknesses. About exercises and thought models to actually tackle the things that are hard for us.
That being said, I hope you were able to take something new from this article. Maybe it was the need for mindfulness or the structure of good feedback, if it initiated a new thought, please feel free to let me know and/or start a discussion.
Take-Aways
- Feedback requires the safety to voice it.
- Feedback requires mindfulness for your feelings and how they manifest.
- Feedback is always subjective, but wording can help to take the edge.
- Feedback is about coming to a common understanding and learning from it.
- Feedback is a search for the root cause, not the symptoms.
- Feedback is the mirror we need to orient ourselves in the landscape of growth.
