"What we've got here is failure to communicate" - Cool Hand Luke 1

Recently, during a teams meeting, I wrote a genuine compliment to a team in a group chat. Later, I was messaged privately that something I said could be interpreted as offensive.

I was confused - and curious.

I don't want to unintentionally offend anyone. It's important to me that my writing communicates my intent.

The private message did not specify what comment was being referred to, how it might be offensive, and what action could be taken in the future to avoid the issue.

I was frustrated by my inability to act on feedback about something I deeply care about.

I began to analyze the situation. What might be a better way to give feedback? How can I avoid a similar mistakes in my own feedback? How might I better respond next time?

Feedback Philosophy

Why give feedback?

The purpose of feedback is to change behavior. Feedback is given in reaction to an outcome, to change behavior to lead to a different future outcome.

In short, change outcomes by giving feedback to change behavior.

Persuasion

A key part of feedback is persuasion. You need to persuade the other person that the feedback is something they should act on.

If you can't persuade the person, your feedback isn't useful. You are wasting your time and theirs.

You must be careful giving feedback.

Poorly done, feedback can hurt your relationship with the person you are giving feedback to, cause them a lot of distress, and make them less open to feedback from you in the future.

Feedback Methods

Research shows that feedback works best the sooner it is given 2. Give well thought-out feedback, as soon as possible, ideally the same day.

I find the following two feedback methods are generally effective:

Problem Solve Together

Start a conversation. The goal of the conversation is to figure out what actions to take in the future.

"I'd like us to reflect on X and see if there is something we can learn to improve how we do things..."

This approach might work well for ambiguous problems, but it's likely to be a longer conversation. You should be sure this feedback is worth the effort.

This method doesn't tell people what to do; instead, it empowers them to reflect, and invites them develop their own solutions.

This method works well because people don't like being told what to do, and are more open to ideas they come up with themselves.

Steps

  1. Common Understanding
  2. Shared Vision
  3. Actions

Common Understanding

Create a common understanding of what occurred.

"I observed..."

Start with non-judgemental observation. Get the facts. Explain what you observed. Build a common understanding of what occurred. Ask questions, have everyone explain their perspective.

You might discover you have a misunderstanding, and now your feedback isn't relevant.

Shared Vision

Create a shared vision of better outcome.

"What outcome would be better?"

Ask questions to figure out what specific outcome would have been better.

Actions

Create actions to achieve the better outcome.

"What could we do next time to lead to the better outcome?."

Work together to figure out what specific actions to take next time.

Request Specific Action

A direct method for less ambiguity. Most feedback should fall into this category.

Write out a short paragraph containing the following.

  • Observation - what specific behavior or outcome was observed, describe this without bias.
  • Request - What specific action?
  • Context - Why take this action?
  • Method - How to specifically take this action?

Observation

The observation should be something obvious with little room for interpretation: you took this observable action, or this thing happened. For example, you said you didn't read the book before coming to book club.

Request

The request should be some specific simple action they can directly take. For example, please read the book before coming to book club.

Context

The context is an explanation of why they should undertake the specific request. For example, reading the book beforehand will help you better participate in discussions and have more fun.

Method

The method is a description of the specific steps to accomplish the request.

  1. Cool Hand Luke on Wikipedia ↩

  2. McKeachie, Wilbert J., and Marilla Svinicki. McKeachie's teaching tips. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2013. ↩