SOME FEEDBACK ON FEEDBACK

What makes feedback safe enough to accept?

It is interesting how many euphemisms there are around giving feedback to other people. Constructive feedback. Developmental feedback. Growth feedback. I've heard it called a number of things. Giving developmental feedback sounds more respectable than giving criticism. But criticism is what we mean. Indeed, that's exactly why we euphemise it.

My experience of criticism is this. It triggers at some level a fight / flight response. That's what it does in me, anyway. I'm a mature recipient, and I can even appreciate that the intention of the giver might be deeply honourable. Yet even small criticisms bring back a Proustian rush of the stern parent or the schoolroom. I can feel it happening, even if I can supress its overt display. In fact, at a microbiological level, I doubt I can supress it. The fight/flight response means largely one thing. There will be a resistance to what is said.

I was in an environment recently where the idea was, it was "safe" to give and receive feedback. Yet the same rushes occurred. So, presumably, within me, at least, I was just pretending that it was safe.

I notice, too, that in group settings, there can be a rush to give feedback. We can't wait to get our six penn'orth in.

How, then, to construct a safe feedback environment - one which raises awareness, yet avoids the fight / flight response which will create resistance to learning?

In the past, I have worked with the skill of noticing. I noticed this. I noticed that. I noticed that when you started speaking you raised your left hand. I noticed you burped mid way through. I noticed that your input took 47 minutes.

Noticing is factual. It is not that in noticing we notice something good or bad. That isn't noticing. It is judging. It is criticism or praise. Noticing is exact and behavioural without judgement. But, in a group, it's a hard thing to get to, a hard skill to employ, and needs strict supervision to get there. It's as though judgement is a group dynamics lodestone.

What of praise? That, too, gets euphemised, as though, especially in "professional" settings, we are embarrassed to admit to it. But I find, in myself, my inner child drinks it. And I've rarely found anyone I have given it to appear to resist. Sure, there have been verbal responses reclaiming modesty. But I have never felt it hasn't gone in.

Recently, on a course, an acquaintance referred to how we deal with children stumbling as they learn to walk. We pick them up, dust them down, praise them, and let them try again, praising each attempt. The course was full of feedback.

If one way of bringing safety to feedback is the art or science of noticing, maybe another is to limit feedback only to praise. I sense most managers, trainers and leaders would find this challenging indeed. But I'm not at all sure it wouldn't be their people's best growth medium.