Floricane LLC

What Feedback Tells Us

It's one of the least-loved words in the English language, at least if you work in a corporate business environment where you know you're going to get a kick in the stomach when someone approaches and asks, "Can I give you some feedback?"

In 2006, I attended a week-long workshop in Cape Cod with two of the gurus of group dynamics -- Charlie and Edie Seashore. The Seashores were in the thick of the original T-Group work that originated in Bethel, Maine, after World War II. In the decades since, they've been hugely influential in the world of social psychology and group dynamics.

The very first words I captured during the workshop speak volumes about how we might begin to think differently about the notion -- and value -- of feedback:

Feedback tells you more about the sender, than it does about the receiver.

I feel certain that Charlie said this, because later in the session I captured a second important notion of feedback, and what it might mean to us. I'll use Charlie and myself in the example:

When Charlie is giving John feedback, there is no John. There is only the John in Charlie.

When John is giving feedback to Charlie, there is no Charlie. There is only the Charlie in John.

And I wrapped up the week the way I started it -- with a memorable quote about feedback:

Feedback is the weakest way to change a person's behavior. Changing my behavior is the strongest way to change another person's behavior.

What all of this tells me is not that feedback is useless, or should be avoided, or makes no sense. Feedback is an important way of helping others see two things -- what we value, and what we perceive of them. But it is a terrible mechanism for compelling change in others.

Because I pay attention to things I value most, my feedback to others is almost always rooted in what I find valuable or important. When people create space for others in a group to open up and share, I appreciate it -- and I tell them how much I appreciate it. I usually leave myself out of it, actually. I tell them how much value I perceived it added to the group. When leaders become so task-driven and action-oriented that they risk leaving the group out of the conversation or decision-making process, it pushes my inclusion button in the other direction -- and I let them know it.

What I have learned from years of teaching classes on feedback, providing feedback to others and receiving more feedback than I ever could have asked to receive is simple -- when I feel compelled to provide someone with feedback, step back.

Step back and ask what the feedback I want to provide says about me -- and what I value or find important in the situation at hand. Step back and reflect on my version of the person I am planning to provide with feedback -- what is my story of them, and how does it color or inform my feedback? Step back and ask what I could do differently to create the change I apparently want someone else to create.

None of this is a red light in the feedback loop. At best, it is a cautionary yellow light -- a call to look both ways before proceeding through the feedback intersection, and to give the right-of-way when necessary.

Layoffs and Morale

One of the most important areas of focus for organizations over the next 18-24 months will be on employee morale and engagement.

There will be few organizations who manage to emerge unscathed from the economic teetering we're experience -- resources are shrinking everywhere. There is less money. There are fewer people.

Those employees who manage to hang into their jobs -- because they are talented, or indispensable, or manage to fly under the radar -- will work less effectively if organizations don't step into the breach with the right sort of support.

Richmond BizSense has a look at a recent study that analyzes post-layoff productivity. Is it any wonder that the productivity numbers drop after a significant emotional event -- not to mention the lack of clarity that suddenly emerges around roles and responsibilities, and the future?

Mark Murphy, chairman of Leadership IQ, said in a statement, “There is a great myth that, following a layoff, the surviving employees will be so grateful that they still have a job that they’ll work harder and be more productive.

“The opposite is usually true.”

Good leaders will step up and work with their teams to restore trust, provide clarity, realign roles and adjust the workload. This short-term work will net long-term gains.

The Failure of Leadership in the Economic Unravelling

Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post writes convincingly of the failure of leadership -- moral and economic -- that has led the world to the brink of economic calamity:

What capsized the economy was not a perfect storm but a widespread failure of business leadership -- a failure that is only compounded when executives refuse to take responsibility for their misjudgments and apologize. General Motors took an important step this week with a full-page mea culpa in an industry publication. But until many bankers and dealmakers come clean, my guess is that the growing anger and resentment of ordinary Americans is likely to hamper any government effort to deal with the crisis.