“Nobody told me it was a bad idea,” my friend told me after shutting down his startup. “They all smiled and encouraged me, you included!” — uh oh, I had not been honest with my friend. Maybe I missed the holes, but more likely than not, I just didn’t want to risk telling him what I was really thinking. Sigh.
We all want to be supportive of our friends, and when they show us their babies, we all scramble to tell them how cute they are. Truly, we’re not going to tell them their baby is ugly, right? Who would do such a thing!? But that’s exactly what most people are actually looking for (OK, maybe not with their actual babies.) It can hurt, and it might put a dent in the friendship for awhile. And it’s hard. You actually have to come up with strong critical feedback, instead of just nodding and saying yes to whatever ill-formed idea|half-thoughts|crap your friend is feeding you.
There’s also another more subtle thing going on here: we all want to be right about the winners. If you say yes to every idea that you come across (mind you, with nothing at stake, so nothing to lose really), you look like a genius for that one-in-a-hundred idea that made it. Nobody will remember the rest. “I called Twitter when nobody got it!” However, if you say no to every idea, you look seriously stupid when that unlikely crazy guaranteed-to-fail idea suddenly became the next $4.6 billion acquisition. Let’s all play it safe and just nod. Got it? Good.
We have lots of intellect floating around, and people with different expertise and experiences. Collectively we can create magic, but only if we spend the energy to think about the ideas people share with us, and then provide feedback in a critical manner. Sometimes that means coming across as an asshole — in fact, because you’re pointing at the scars in the baby’s face, you will more likely than not sound like an asshole, but as long as you’re putting the thinking cap on and being honest, it’s a good thing for everyone. Remember: being perceived as an asshole is in the eye of the beholder, if you worry too much about not looking like one to anyone, you will never speak your mind.
My co-founder and good friend Dave Feldman recently wrote about this same topic, for a different perspective check out Brutal Honesty Doesn’t Work. Although his approach is from the opposite direction (and we argue about this all the time in the office) I think we’re trying to get the same idea across.
Next time someone asks you for feedback on their idea, listen, think hard, and be honest. But don’t be mean about it.
