Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions
TL;DR: A team’s ability to give and receive critical feedback allows the company to learn and adapt. Intentionally developing this ability requires an understanding of how to give AND receive feedback.
Foundation
Whenever I advise new founders on the most important, foundational elements of building a great company, I focus on three things:
- Build trust
- Develop a hunger for critical feedback
- Codify your vision and values
I hope to cover vision and values at some point, but if you just focus on building trust in your team and fostering an environment that craves and appreciates critical feedback, you will end up somewhere interesting. Trust and feedback are your company’s immune system and a good immune system will let you adapt and survive. A few weeks ago I described a model for unpacking trust. In this piece, I want to focus on critical feedback.
One of the most effective de-risking strategies for founders is to embed a love for critical feedback into your DNA from inception. The faster you give loving, critical feedback to your co-founders and early employees, the faster they build muscle-memory around its benefits.
The positive critical feedback loop
I clearly remember the first time I heard the phrase, “feedback is the breakfast of champions.” I have subsequently heard variations of this phrase from many sources, but the first was from Professor Joel Petersons at Stanford. It’s a simple phrase that can be quickly forgotten as a flippant truism or cherished as a lifelong mantra. If you want to grow, you must embrace critical feedback.
Once a team has enough internal trust to openly give and receive critical feedback, everything accelerates. Your signal-to-noise ratio improves, allowing you to allocate resources effectively. Problems and blockers surface quickly and are solved, instead of being avoided and snowballing. The team gets curious. The team learns faster. The team’s trust in each other grows. This cycle of building trust, leveraging that trust to give critical feedback, adjusting behavior, seeing results, and building more trust is a powerful cycle.
Each time an individual team member experiences this positive, ‘critical’ feedback loop, they level-up. I instituted “feedback is the breakfast of champions” as a core value at my last company and saw many individuals push themselves to do things they had never done before because (I hope) they felt that the team could provide ample, constructive feedback to ensure they had a bench of spotters. This allowed each team member to venture further outside their comfort zone and grow faster. The end result was an upgraded team that could accomplish more with less.
There is even a tertiary effect — as your team moves faster and each individual levels-up, your organization becomes a talent magnet. People seek out organizations that will challenge them to grow. There is no growth without a loving, positive critical feedback loop.
Giving feedback is a science
However, there is a right way and wrong way to deliver feedback. It starts with preparation. Good feedback is not ad hoc; it is carefully structured. Countless people much smarter than me have written volumes on how to give feedback. From trial and error, I try to remember four general rules.
Be Specific
Use concrete, recent examples in order to clearly separate the person from the behavior. You don’t want someone to think you are attacking their character or speaking in generalities. Describe how the behavior affects you. You want to explain the consequences of the behavior in a way that is not open to interpretation. No one can argue with how you feel. The structure follows a “when you did this, this is how I felt” or “this was the consequence.”
Be Timely
Feedback should be given as close as possible to the behavior. Imagine if your tennis coach withheld feedback until a ‘sit-down review’ instead of giving feedback in real-time during your lesson as you are hitting the ball. The ‘perfect time’ might never appear. It may require you to create that opportunity. Going out of your way to create that opportunity further demonstrates your care for the other person. If you don’t give feedback it quickly loses its effectiveness. If you wait weeks to say something minor (e.g. Sara tapping her pen on the table drives you crazy) people will think you’re petty. If the feedback is more serious, it makes the recipient feel embarrassed. Imagine you receive difficult feedback in your quarterly review. You will feel terrible. You will immediately start counting all the times you did that behavior and question why you were allowed to make a fool of yourself for so long.
Make it actionable
Clearly articulate the desired behavior so they know how to act upon the feedback. You don’t want to throw a grenade over the wall and leave. If you do not have a solution, work with the person to talk over options. The structure should provide a path forward. “If you did this instead, I think it would be more effective.” An example of bad feedback would be: “Jim, you are always late.” Even worse feedback would be to have Jim (who is now flustered) apologize and you retort with “don’t worry about it”. Better feedback would be: “Jim, when you are 20 minutes late to our meeting, it makes me feel disrespected and rushed. If this is a bad time of day or you’re slammed, we can change the meeting time but I at least need a heads up if you are running late so I can schedule accordingly. Also, do we really need this meeting? Can we accomplish this over email?”
Make it achievable
The desired behavior should be in that person’s control. If the desired behavior is not possible, the person cannot be held accountable. Everyone has experienced receiving feedback on something that was not within their control. It can be incredibly demoralizing.
Receiving feedback is an art
If you remember only one thing from this piece, remember that giving feedback is just as vulnerable as receiving feedback.
When someone goes out of their way to give critical feedback it shows that they care enough about you to make themselves uncomfortable for your benefit. If someone says “Gaetano, I really need to talk to you about something that has been bothering me,” I drop what I’m doing and take it very seriously. People do not like bothering other people and they generally do not like giving feedback. Make yourself present. Give them the respect of your non-defensive attention.
I know it’s hard. Feedback hurts. Even the most competent, senior performers do not like receiving critical feedback — they might like it the least. From an emotional standpoint, I hate receiving critical feedback, but from an intellectual perspective, I cherish and appreciate it. It makes me think that the person giving feedback is on the ‘continuously-improving-Gaetano’ team. If they are giving good feedback, that means they are prepared! They thought about this. They are giving you a gift that costs them stress.
Everyone deals with receiving feedback differently. Try to understand your physical and psychological markers so you can improve how you receive feedback. The more times you receive critical feedback, the more control you will feel. If you only receive it once a year during your review, you will forever have a flight or fight reaction and devolve into your reptilian brain.
For example, when I receive feedback, I always (ALWAYS) go into a vulnerable, flooded emotional state. I have learned to not respond at the moment. I may ask clarifying questions, but I try to spend at least a few hours digesting the information before reacting. A good night’s sleep does wonders for perspective. However, I also make sure to thank the person for giving me the feedback immediately. Nothing accelerates the virtuous cycle of feedback faster than positive reinforcement from the feedback recipient to the feedback giver. Imagine if everyone who ever critiqued someone for their betterment was met with gratitude? People would receive more feedback and be closer to reaching their potential.
Trust comes first
I have two caveats. Firstly, if someone gives you unspecific, late, unactionable, or unachievable feedback, ask them for clarification and maybe even politely give them feedback on how to give you feedback effectively. Secondly, unless there is mutual trust between the giver and receiver, the feedback will fall on deaf ears.
When feedback is given by someone you trust, you trust that it is coming from a place of care not malice. Feedback from someone you don’t trust could be an insult or a character attack or a power play. To give someone feedback requires confrontation and a willingness to shine light in a dark corner that, more often than not, most others would not dare to go. You must trust that the giver has positive intent to benefit you.
The exchange of feedback from someone you trust creates a powerful connection. The giver values your long-term relationship more than the short-term discomfort of the feedback process. If they are willing to stick their neck out to say something critical, then all of a sudden, you can trust that their default state of respect for you is even more truthful. In short, you trust that what they tell you, feedback or otherwise, are their real thoughts vs. lip service.
Finally, as an employee…
When you receive feedback that is not specific, timely, actionable or achievable, call it out. Probe until you get to the actual nugget of actionable information. Feedback is the single best way to accelerate your growth. How often do you receive good feedback? Once a year? Once a quarter? If you are not receiving consistent feedback from ‘official channels,’ find people to give you feedback (without becoming a burden). Once you receive feedback, thank them. People want to be on your side and want to help you succeed. Create a team of people that make you better.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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