Week 44 Day 6: How You Give and Receive Feedback

Most leaders think they give good feedback. Most team members think they receive insufficient or unclear feedback. This gap is one of the most consistent findings in organizational research. The problem is rarely malice -- it is that giving effective feedback is uncomfortable, and most leaders default to the comfortable version (vague, positive, non-specific) rather than the useful version (clear, honest, specific).

Here is how to document your feedback style and make it actionable. Giving feedback -- document your tendencies: how long do you typically wait between observing something that needs feedback and delivering it? (Same day, same week, next one-on-one, or performance review -- each delay reduces the feedback's impact.) Do you tend toward positive feedback, constructive feedback, or balanced? Most leaders skew positive because positive feedback is comfortable to deliver. If you skew positive, your team may not have an accurate picture of their development areas. How specific is your feedback? 'Great job on the presentation' is useless because the person does not know what was great or how to replicate it. 'Your presentation was effective because you opened with the customer impact (which got the executives' attention), structured the data to support a clear recommendation, and addressed the two most likely objections before they were raised' is specific and replicable. Document your feedback patterns honestly and commit to the improvements you intend to make. Receiving feedback -- document your reactions: how do you initially respond when someone gives you constructive feedback? Most leaders experience a defensive reaction (denial, justification, deflection) even when they intellectually know that feedback is valuable. Documenting your reaction pattern helps you manage it. Example: 'My initial reaction to constructive feedback is to explain why I made the choice I made. This feels like engagement but is actually defensiveness -- I am justifying rather than listening. I am working on saying "Thank you, I will think about that" as my first response, and then actually thinking about it before responding substantively. The 24-hour rule: I do not respond to feedback until I have sat with it for at least a day, because my first response is almost always more defensive than my considered response.' Feedback norms for the team: based on your self-assessment, establish feedback norms that the team can follow. Example: 'I want feedback to be direct and specific. Tell me what you observed, what impact it had, and what you think I should do differently. I commit to not punishing feedback -- if you notice me reacting defensively, call it out. I would rather feel momentarily uncomfortable receiving feedback than miss important information about my leadership.'

The leader-team feedback gap is documented by Zenger and Folkman (2014) in their analysis of 360-degree feedback data from over 50,000 leaders: they found that leaders rated their own feedback-giving effectiveness an average of 22% higher than their direct reports rated it, with the largest gap in 'timeliness' (leaders believed they gave timely feedback; direct reports reported receiving it weeks or months late) and 'specificity' (leaders believed they were specific; direct reports reported receiving vague, general feedback). Research by Kluger and DeNisi (1996) in their meta-analysis of 131 feedback studies found that one-third of all feedback interventions actually decreased performance, and that feedback effectiveness was moderated by specificity (specific feedback improved performance; vague feedback did not), timing (immediate feedback improved performance; delayed feedback had reduced or no effect), and threat level (feedback that was perceived as threatening to self-esteem decreased performance; feedback that was task-focused and non-threatening improved it). The documented defensive response pattern is consistent with what Stone, Patton, and Heen (2010) call 'feedback triggers' in 'Thanks for the Feedback' -- their research identifies three triggers that cause defensive reactions: truth triggers (disagreeing with the content), relationship triggers (dismissing the feedback because of who is giving it), and identity triggers (the feedback threatens the recipient's self-concept). Documenting one's typical trigger pattern allows for cognitive preparation that reduces the trigger intensity, implementing what psychologists call 'anticipatory coping' (Folkman and Lazarus, 1985) -- preparing for a stressor before it occurs reduces the stress response when it arrives.