In a recent FS (Farnam Street) Brain Food newsletter Shane Parrish shared the below except from his book Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results:
“Too often, the people we ask for feedback are nice but not kind. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable. A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it’s uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they’re worried about hurting our feelings. No wonder we think other people will be interested in our excuses.”
It struck me when I read it that the mistake we often make when asking for feedback on our training, is asking ‘nice people’ instead of ‘kind people’. I used to try to be nice when giving feedback. Maybe it is a result of my getting older, but now, I strive to be kind, and give honest feedforward in a professional, constructive, and actionable manner. Is it always perceived as kind? No. Is that within my control? No. I control the delivery, which is critically important, but I do not control how it is received.
You might be thinking that the word ‘feedforward’ in the previous paragraph is a typo. It is not. If you have been to one of my presentations where we discuss debriefings, you are familiar with the term ‘Feedforward’ as it one of my three keys to effective debriefings. The other two are Ask More – Tell Less and Be Learning Focused (instead of blame focused). Feedback is about what you could have or should have done differently. Feedforward is about what you could do differently in the future to improve performance. I believe the purpose of a debriefing is to learn from past experience, to improve future performance. None of us have a time machine to go back and get a do over so focusing on what we could have or should have done is of little value. Hence the focus on future performance. Having said that, feedback is the more common term and as such I will use it in this post.
Two other tips on asking for feedback come from Adam Grant:
- Ask for feedback on a specific element of the presentation or class such as, “I am working on my opening and closing and would love some feedback on how I could improve those two aspects of the presentation.” Or “I am working on audience engagement and would appreciate your thoughts on a couple of ways I could get people more actively involved in the presentation.”
- Ask for feedback on a scale of 1 to 10 and then ask for specific feedback on what you could do to move it closer to a 10. That might be something like, “How would you rate the presentation on a scale of 1 to 10, and what would be a couple of specific recommendations on what I could do in the future to move it closer to a 10?”
The reason Adam Grant recommends these strategies is that asking someone to give you feedback on your entire presentation can be too vague and too broad. As a result, you often get vague and broad answers. This is one of the reasons I have adopted the below four debriefing questions from Gareth Lock:
- What is one thing you (or we as a team) did well?
- Why was that successful for you / us?
- What is one thing you (or we as a team) need to improve on?
- How will you / we accomplish that?
Feedback / Feedforward can be helpful for us to grow and improve. If you are going to ask for feedback however, you need to be willing to listen without getting defensive, absorb what you are being told and simply say “Thank you. I appreciate it.”. Take the feedback professionally, not personally. This is about your craft, not you as a person. You can certainly ask follow-up questions if you are interested in more detail or to get a deeper insight into their thoughts and observations. Just make sure you are asking the questions out of genuine curiosity. Following the feedback, you then need to spend time in reflection to decide if you are going to apply the feedback or not. Just because you get feedback does not mean you need to act on it. Be aware, however, that if you make a habit of ignoring feedback when you ask for it, people will stop providing it.
Take care.
Brian Willis
Winning Mind Training – Providing practical training to law enforcement professionals in the areas of instructor development, Performance Enhancement Imagery, leadership and mindset.
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