Week 7, 2020
Better Feedback: Yardsticks, Experiences, and Takeaways
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, that means sharing three steps towards better feedback.
Why am I writing about this? Imagine you’ve just finished an important client presentation in which your colleague delivered a less than stellar performance. You need to say something. But you hesitate. You’re not sure how they’ll react. You consider your options; you consider not saying anything. But that’s worse! And then…
You get the idea. It’s hard to provide feedback. And it’s even harder to provide good feedback. But there’s a trick that you can use to make it a bit easier.
Let’s dig in.
Yardsticks
Let’s imagine you found your colleague’s presentation to be a bit all over the place. You suspect they didn’t prepare well. But for now, you leave that off to one side. Instead, you focus on establishing common ground. You need a yardstick that you can both agree on — such as what a “good” presentation looks like. And as it turns out, you both agree that good presentations are clear, concise, and easy to follow.
Experiences
Having agreed on the standard, you now share your experience of your colleague’s presentation. You are not passing judgment. You are simply explaining that you perceived the presentation as being unclear and difficult to follow. And then you invite your colleague to do the same. His or her experience might be radically different from yours. And that's OK. You are just sharing experiences at this point.
Takeaways
Now comes the hard part: discuss with your colleague why your respective experiences might have differed from the agreed-upon standard. And remember, it’s not a question of whether your experiences differed. It clearly did to one of you. And that’s enough. The question now is what to do about it (if anything) and how to avoid the same thing from happening again in the future.
Providing feedback is hard. But a process does help simplify things a fair bit. And remember: focus on the situation, not the person. You are not adversaries. The situation is the adversary.
These tips and others from an interview with Jeff Hunter, CEO of Talentism, on the ever-impressive Knowledge Project podcast. You’ll find the relevant segment at the 47-min mark.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time, stay calm.
