Why Most People Won't Improve At Giving Feedback
Originally published on Forbes.
Over the last 15 years, I have led hundreds of workshops to equip managers and leaders at all levels with the skills to have more effective feedback conversations. In my experience working with these leaders, I find that most feedback conversations either don’t happen or don’t happen well . While the frameworks I share in these workshops provide a useful structure with which to prepare for and conduct even the most difficult conversation, they are only half of the equation in getting leaders to step up when it comes to giving improvement feedback. Most leaders won’t improve at giving feedback for the sole reason that they do not address the adaptive component required for their own behavior change — that is, they don’t tend to address the limiting mindsets, beliefs and assumptions that cause them to avoid having difficult feedback conversations in the first place.
In the book, Immunity to Change, Harvard professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey make the distinction between technical change, which is essentially the “how to” component of acquiring new skills, or adding new information to one’s current way of thinking (i.e., most training solutions), and adaptive change — which is expanding or shifting one’s way of thinking altogether and involves greater transformation. The technical piece is still important and can yield some quick wins, but long-term, sustainable change requires us to address the adaptive part of the equation.
According to a Zenger/Folkman survey, 92% of respondents agreed that “Negative (redirecting) feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.” So, if improvement feedback is so valuable, what gets in the way of us giving it? It’s an important question — one that I pose in all of my workshops. There are many answers that leaders give. Most boil down to one central reason: avoidance of conflict. If we 'double-click' on this avoidance of conflict, it includes several underlying fears — fear of damaging the relationship, fear of being misunderstood, fear of encountering a defensive reaction, fear of being seen as a jerk, and so on. While these may seem like legitimate concerns, it is the potential feedback provider’s underlying competing commitment to protecting herself from these feared potential outcomes (and the assumed dire consequences that lay beyond these dreaded potential outcomes) that keeps her from giving difficult feedback — Kegan and Lahey identify this as our psychological immune system at work. They liken it to “one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake” — and you go nowhere (but meanwhile, a lot of energy is being spent in the system).
These competing commitments are kept in place by what Kegan and Lahey refer to as “Big Assumptions” — limiting, and often unexamined, beliefs about what must be true about ourselves and how the world works. Examples of big assumptions in a feedback context may include, “If I am misunderstood, I wouldn’t be able to clarify and correct the misunderstanding,” or “If the other person gets defensive, I wouldn’t be able to handle the situation,” or “If I give direct feedback, I’d damage the relationship and wouldn’t be able to repair it,” or “If others thought I was a jerk, no one would want to work with me and I’d be marginalized.” These assumptions might seem irrational — but they feel quite real to the individual who holds them, whether these assumptions are conscious or not.
Making real, sustainable change in any behavior, such as giving improvement feedback effectively or stepping into difficult conversations, first requires us to step back and look at our assumptions, rather than through them. Gaining this initial distance allows us to operate from a place of greater choice, rather than defaulting into old behaviors (i.e., avoiding feedback or other difficult conversations to protect ourselves from our worst fears coming true).
Another way to start to release oneself from the grip of these limiting assumptions is to craft some safe tests that don’t risk re-truing the assumptions. These initial tests are not aimed at changing behavior initially, but are intended to collect data about the validity of our assumptions. Examples of some safe tests or experiments may include asking others about difficult feedback they’ve gotten at various points in their careers that have made a real difference to them, or asking others about times where difficult feedback conversations have actually improved the relationship, as opposed to harming it.
As an executive coach, I give feedback for a living — yet, when it comes to my own feedback conversations, they can still be difficult or stressful, so I empathize with the concerns highlighted by the leaders in my workshops. The technical frameworks are extremely helpful to prepare a thoughtful feedback message and can give leaders greater confidence going into a feedback conversation. However, no matter how hard the conversation might be, what allows me to lean into and engage fully in these difficult feedback conversations is having a mindset that the feedback will not only help the other person, but also even build trust and result in a better working relationship. Until leaders challenge and overturn their own limiting mindsets, assumptions and beliefs around feedback, they will not materially improve in this crucial leadership competency, to their own detriment, as well as those of their teams and their organizations.