The Most Valuable Business Resource In The World?… FEEDBACK

What makes any business successful?

I believe at least part of the answer is feedback.

As it turns out:

When managers receive insights into their strengths from employees, there’s almost a 10% increase in profit. Moreover, real-time feedback from managers leads to an 80% increase in engagement in their work (HBR, Blanchard cs, 2015).

It’s therefore not surprising, that Netflix — one of the most successful streaming services in the world — revealed feedback to be the key strategy behind its rapid growth in the last 10 years, increasing its revenue from 1.36 billion to 25 billion (Statista 2017).

In the words of the founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings:

“Frequent honest and straightforward feedback exponentially magnifies the speed and effectiveness of your team.”

But why has feedback an effect like this?

It all starts with a work environment that stimulates Psychological Safety…

Psychological Safety

“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”

— Amy Admonson

In other words, Psychological Safety is a mental state in which team members feel safe to be vulnerable in front of each other — and therefore each member can be completely honest about what they believe to be true.

And sometimes (or often), the truth is that a mistake was made by them or others.

But, When people are comfortable making mistakes, they can actually admit it to themselves and others when it happens and learn from them. Consequently, teams will more likely openly share and test new ideas that can be criticized or have a risk of failure.

This implementation and testing of new ideas (and learning from the failures) will eventually lead to more innovation and better decision-making.

“If we aren’t hearing from people, we may be missing out on a game-changing idea that could become a part of a new product or a new service. Or we might miss an early warning of a threat in the market that someone saw but felt unable to bring the bad news to their boss.”

— Michael Boykin

The cool part is: Once a team adopts the mindset of being comfortable making mistakes, this creates a reinforcing feedback loop.

Making, admitting, and learning from mistakes creates the experiential proof that it pays to be honest and vulnerable, and builds confidence. And an increase in confidence will make it easier to admit mistakes more openly.

From this line of reasoning, it’s, no surprise that when Google conducted a 200+ interview experiment with over 180 teams, Psychological Safety turned out to be the nr. 1 predictor of team success.

Important to realize though is that success on a team level is the result of growth on the individual level…

The Growth Mindset

Once a team gradually shifts towards being more comfortable with making mistakes and learning from failure, there’s a fundamental shift in mindset taking place within each team member:

The adoption of a Growth Mindset.

The Growth Mindset is a term named by Carol Dweck, professor of Psychology at Stanford University, which she popularized through her book “Mindset — The New Psychology Of Success”.

The Growth Mindset supports the idea that you can learn, change and grow at any age within every aspect of your life. The assumption is that intelligence, wisdom, and skill can be cultivated through sustained effort and are not merely determined by genetics.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dweck also defines the Growth Mindset counterpart: The Fixed Mindset.

People with a Fixed Mindset believe that a person’s abilities are set in stone from birth. You are, by nature, either born intelligent and talented, average, or stupid and incompetent (bluntly said) — and will stay that way for the rest of your life.

Within the context of work, we could say a team member learns to go from:

• Seeing obstacles as annoying problems, to → seeing obstacles as valuable challenges.
• Perceiving failures as disasters revealing incompetence, to → Perceiving failures as opportunities to grow.
• Being concerned to be judged and proving themselves to others, to → Being concerned with improving themselves.

If you believe that problems and failures are opportunities for growth, it’s much easier to openly share and receive feedback.

But, how to start with feedback?

How To Ask For Feedback

To give you an example: I work at MOYU, and within my team, we’ve made it a habit to proactively ask for feedback every quarter based on the following questions:

• What are 1–3 things I could improve on?
• What are 1–3 things you think I’m doing particularly well?

Such questions have allowed me not only to see the things I can improve on more clearly but also showed me where my strengths lie.

Other ways to start asking for feedback are these questions inspired by Roland Grootenboer (People operations at Google), which are more project and development specific:

Project:

• How did you think I did on project X this week?
• What could I have done to have more impact?

Goals and Development:

• We discussed that I should work on my presentation skills, how do you think I’m doing?
• Who at this company do you think I could learn a lot from?

(Check out his super helpful Notion feedback organizer template!)

Still, asking for feedback is easy. Receiving feedback, on the other hand, is a totally different skill. As it is our natural human inclination to feel anxiety when receiving criticism, we often then become defensive and find excuses to protect our egos.

Therefore, when you receive feedback, it’s crucial to consider the criticism with an open mind and ask yourself: “How can I show appreciation for this feedback?” After all, you should realize the feedback provider just gave you an opportunity for growth.

Finally, you can either accept or discard the feedback. You’re required to listen and consider the feedback, but you have to by no means follow through on it. It may just be that the criticism is unfounded.

How to give Feedback

A great framework to follow when giving feedback is the 2x2 matrix called “Radical Candor” by former-executive at Google and Apple Kim Scott.

On one axis of the matrix, she placed Care Personally — which can be called the “to give a damn” axis, as the feedback must be given with positive intent.

Giving feedback isn’t allowed just to get some frustration off your chest, intentionally hurt the other person, or further your political agenda.

The other axis, Challenge Directly, can also be called the “willing to piss people off” axis. For many people, saying anything short of positive feels impolite.

However, in the words of John Stuart Mill:

“The source of everything respectable in man, either as an intellectual or as a moral being, is that his errors are corrigible. The whole strength and value of human judgment depends on the one property that it can be set right when it is wrong.”

So don’t be silent or vague when someone is doing a bad job or their work isn’t good enough. It’s your obligation and in their best interest to be honest and upfront.

Still, it’s not only about knowing how to give constructive criticism but (maybe just as important) also about how to provide positive feedback. Praise must be sincere and specific all the same to help the feedback receiver discover their strengths besides their areas for growth.

“Radical candor is humble, it’s helpful, it’s immediate. It’s in-person/in private if it’s criticism, and in public if it’s praise–and it doesn’t personalize.”

— Kim Scott

All in all, here are two easy questions to ask yourself when giving feedback:

• Is it coming from the right place? — with the intent to help the recipient grow.
• Is it specific enough? — so the recipient knows what to do differently (or what to keep doing).

To dive into the specifics, Lepaya (a professional upskilling company) provides a useful 5-step method on how to give 1 on 1 criticism in conversation.

1. Ask for permission: Brain scans show that unsolicited feedback creates the same reaction as physical pain. First, ask. It will soften the blow.
2. Explain exactly what you observed: Offer a concrete observation to ground the feedback. Use objective language and be specific.
3. Check for understanding of the other. Pause and ask if he/she agrees with what you observed. Be open to alternative views, as there may be relevant facts you’re unaware of.
4. Articulate its effect on you: Bring yourself and your feelings into the conversation. This allows the receiver of the feedback to better understand why they should change or at least consider the input.
5. Name what to keep and what to change: Have a concrete action in mind so the feedback receiver has a clear path to improvement.

Now, knowing how to give and ask for feedback is great…

But how to start cultivating a work environment that stimulates Psychological Safety, eventually leading to a culture where giving and receiving feedback is the norm?

How To Create A Feedback Culture

If you’re trying to create a feedback culture within your organization, stop by giving feedback to others, and instead start by ASKING for feedback.

Especially when this is done by individuals in higher executive and managerial positions, this makes for a great example for the rest of the organization.

It allows for the idea to manifest that it’s okay to be vulnerable about your shortcomings — which is a great leadership quality.

By normalizing vulnerability, you allow people to express their true opinions, thoughts, and feelings without the interpersonal risk of being seen as incompetent or unqualified for the job.

Still, no matter what your role and place in the hierarchy of your organization, the most important of all is that you take ownership.

Ownership in starting to ask for feedback.

That will help inspire others to do the same and is a first step to influencing the internal culture.

“We excel only when people who know us and care about us tell us what they experience and what they feel, and in particular when they see something within us that really works.”

— Marcus Buckingham

Special Thanks To:

Roland Grooteboer — for developing this awesome feedback notion template

Sven Prevoo — for inspiring me to write this blog post after attending his Lepaya feedback webinar