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Feedback Revolution: -From Water Cooler Conversations To Annual Reviews -- HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK!
For years Peter McLaughlin has taken his business clients to sports practices -- not to watch the teams. but to watch, listen, and learn from the coaches giving feedback to their players. As Peter says in the "There's energy in the air and every bit is freighted with feedback. Feedback is constant and continuous, Feedback is the norm. Feedback is the environment." That's just one of the many important messages in Peter Mclaughlin's Feedback Revolution. Peter draws upon real-world examples of effective sports, the habits of great leaders, and, surprisingly, Reality TV. (If you think about it, the best reality TV shows are built on platforms of performance followed by feedback. Ratings go through the roof -- and everyone but businesses and organizations are paying attention.) Changing that lack of attention to feedback into an enthusiasm for effective, candid, timely, positive feedback is why Peter has written this book. With more than twenty years of consulting and giving keynote speeches to every kind of company from Apple to Polo/Ralph Lauren, from IBM and Deloitte Consulting to Insurance and Financial Services firms, Peter knows first-hand that feedback up and down the management chain is the "Elephant in the room" of corporate culture. The revolution of the title is the change of mindset about feedback from negative, narrow and fearful to positive, broadening and motivating; from anxiety and stress to anticipation and optimism. Drawing upon business experience, as well as deep study in fields including neuroscience and Positive Psychology, generational and media studies and more, Peter has created a thorough handbook for revolutionizing your approach to giving and receiving feedback, and dramatically energizing your business teams as you do. Among the book's • A Feedback Self-Assessment -- how well do you do when it comes to giving and receiving feedback? • Hundreds of practical, hands-on and ready-to-be-used pieces of every chapter includes a section called Tips, Tools, & Tactics which are exactly what they sound like. • How to make feedback a constant presence, because unlike fine wine, feedback doesn't age well. Lessons in how to give and receive "feedback on the fly" as well as in more formal feedback and performance review sessions. • A breakthrough chapter examining the differences in how feedback is given and received by different crucial knowledge for today's multi-generational workplace. • As the chapter on how to ask for feedback shows, "How'm I doing?" may be the most important question a manager can ask! • The role of how giving feedback by email needs a different approach than feedback delivered in person or by phone. ("The Gettysburg Address made a great speech, but would have been a lousy email.") • Lessons in how to ensure that the giver of feedback is in a positive emotional state even when the feedback includes negatives. "Always put on your own oxygen mask first." (Get into the right emotional state before trying to help others.) • The role of environment in feedback -- from feng shui to blood sugar levels, Feedback Revolution shows you how to achieve maximum impact with your feedback. • Overcoming feedback how transforming your approach to feedback will also transform annual performance reviews from anxiety-producing obligations into lively and welcomed examinations of where your business and your team are headed, as well as where you have been. As Tom Peters says "feedback is not for amateurs...it is a skill to be studied, practiced and mastered." Feedback Revolution is the essential guide to the most necessary, and the most overlooked or avoided, aspect of business communications today.
- GenresBusiness
286 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
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May 23, 2017
Picked this book up the day before REAL since the programme emphasises high-quality feedback so much, though this book doesn't have the observation versus impact framework, but focuses more on the methods of delivering feedback (mood, place, norms etc). Still, it would be one of those books that might just transform the workplace if everyone read it (and thus speaks a common language).
___
Feedback is information that is shared with another person for the distinct purpose of improving results or relationships. Effective feedback is not venting, shaming, or giving in to excuses.
Athletes at every level rely on their coach to see what they themselves cannot: performance in context.
Reality TV shows are feedback writ large, broadcast for all to see. Tyra Banks in America’s Next Model is the
model feedback giver, Trump in the Apprentice, not so.
Feedback improves business relationships. Effective, consistent feedback enables people to communicate more clearly and cogently on all levels. As a result, they learn more about each other.
Positive psychology focuses on what could go right. Throughout history, the positive qualities and virtues are:
-Wisdom and knowledge
-Courage
-Humility
-Justice
-Temperance
-Transcendence
When delivering tough feedback, pick a time and place where you are emotionally calm, ensure bad news are delivered face to face, and spend time preparing both content and context.
Remember the intention of delivering tough feedback is that you want your report/friend to improve their performance, AND you want them to be energized so they will want to improve. To this end aim to ensure a 3-1 ratio of positive to negative feedback pointers.
“Approval is a greater motivator than disapproval, but we have to disapprove on occasion when we correct. It’s necessary. I make corrections only after I have proved to the individual that I highly value him. If they know we care for them, our correction won’t be seen as judgmental. I also try never to make it personal.” – John Wooden, UCLA coach
Managers must have communications from their direct reports, no matter how much the direct report dislikes the process – that is why they’re called reports.
Should an over-65 employee’s age begin to affect their ability to perform a job or fulfill responsibilities, your feedback should be honest and at the same time delicate – can you find another function the employee can fulfill? The challenge is to maintain the employee’s self-respect – and value to the company, without jeopardizing the business or, far more importantly, the employee’s safety and health.
Small talk before a meeting puts the ‘reptilian brain’ at ease, diminishes the effects of the ‘fight-or-flight response’, and opens participants up to say more of what they’re really thinking.
When writing paper communication, ask yourself: “What’s the emotional tone I want the reader to be in after reading what I’ve written?”
Email is good for follow-up and follow-through messages, building upon a foundation established in face-to-face, phone or paper feedback. Plus, it leaves a ‘trail’ of commentary and response.
Effective business feedback is never faceless.
Craft your subject lines carefully, making sure that they communicate only as much as they need to ensure that the mail attracts the desired attention.
Remember that anytime there is a request for an unexpected conversation, the direct report’s antennae – or paranoia - will go on alert. Don’t forget to close the email with a positive sign-off, to allay potential fears.
PAUSE BEFORE SENDING.
Your emails, like all of your feedback, should leave the recipient in a positive state, engaged and energized, emotionally excited about the prospects that lie ahead.
Texts are good for quick bursts of information, acknowledgments and confirmations, changes in schedule and other agenda items, quick bursts of enthusiasm and encouragement, brief updates and follow-throughs.
Take feedback seriously, not personally.
“What I want is an audience. Nothing sounds the same when there isn’t anyone to hear it and find fault with it.” – Abraham Lincoln
Conversational pitfalls: Anything that brings open, productive, constructive conversation to an abrupt halt. Includes defensiveness, apathy, and not being comfortable with silence. Silence allows messages to sink in, ideas to be processed, and thoughts to be composed. Preempting your silences as time to think will allay potential fears that one has said something wrong.
“A manager first and foremost must control their own energy, and secondly is responsible for orchestrating the energies of the people around him. ”-Peter Drucker
___
Feedback is information that is shared with another person for the distinct purpose of improving results or relationships. Effective feedback is not venting, shaming, or giving in to excuses.
Athletes at every level rely on their coach to see what they themselves cannot: performance in context.
Reality TV shows are feedback writ large, broadcast for all to see. Tyra Banks in America’s Next Model is the
model feedback giver, Trump in the Apprentice, not so.
Feedback improves business relationships. Effective, consistent feedback enables people to communicate more clearly and cogently on all levels. As a result, they learn more about each other.
Positive psychology focuses on what could go right. Throughout history, the positive qualities and virtues are:
-Wisdom and knowledge
-Courage
-Humility
-Justice
-Temperance
-Transcendence
When delivering tough feedback, pick a time and place where you are emotionally calm, ensure bad news are delivered face to face, and spend time preparing both content and context.
Remember the intention of delivering tough feedback is that you want your report/friend to improve their performance, AND you want them to be energized so they will want to improve. To this end aim to ensure a 3-1 ratio of positive to negative feedback pointers.
“Approval is a greater motivator than disapproval, but we have to disapprove on occasion when we correct. It’s necessary. I make corrections only after I have proved to the individual that I highly value him. If they know we care for them, our correction won’t be seen as judgmental. I also try never to make it personal.” – John Wooden, UCLA coach
Managers must have communications from their direct reports, no matter how much the direct report dislikes the process – that is why they’re called reports.
Should an over-65 employee’s age begin to affect their ability to perform a job or fulfill responsibilities, your feedback should be honest and at the same time delicate – can you find another function the employee can fulfill? The challenge is to maintain the employee’s self-respect – and value to the company, without jeopardizing the business or, far more importantly, the employee’s safety and health.
Small talk before a meeting puts the ‘reptilian brain’ at ease, diminishes the effects of the ‘fight-or-flight response’, and opens participants up to say more of what they’re really thinking.
When writing paper communication, ask yourself: “What’s the emotional tone I want the reader to be in after reading what I’ve written?”
Email is good for follow-up and follow-through messages, building upon a foundation established in face-to-face, phone or paper feedback. Plus, it leaves a ‘trail’ of commentary and response.
Effective business feedback is never faceless.
Craft your subject lines carefully, making sure that they communicate only as much as they need to ensure that the mail attracts the desired attention.
Remember that anytime there is a request for an unexpected conversation, the direct report’s antennae – or paranoia - will go on alert. Don’t forget to close the email with a positive sign-off, to allay potential fears.
PAUSE BEFORE SENDING.
Your emails, like all of your feedback, should leave the recipient in a positive state, engaged and energized, emotionally excited about the prospects that lie ahead.
Texts are good for quick bursts of information, acknowledgments and confirmations, changes in schedule and other agenda items, quick bursts of enthusiasm and encouragement, brief updates and follow-throughs.
Take feedback seriously, not personally.
“What I want is an audience. Nothing sounds the same when there isn’t anyone to hear it and find fault with it.” – Abraham Lincoln
Conversational pitfalls: Anything that brings open, productive, constructive conversation to an abrupt halt. Includes defensiveness, apathy, and not being comfortable with silence. Silence allows messages to sink in, ideas to be processed, and thoughts to be composed. Preempting your silences as time to think will allay potential fears that one has said something wrong.
“A manager first and foremost must control their own energy, and secondly is responsible for orchestrating the energies of the people around him. ”-Peter Drucker
August 12, 2016
Improving our self and others with a feedback that requires no pills
Although this is a book that I partially read (mostly the first half part of the book) a year ago, it still provided me with enough information to make an analysis about it.
Revolution feedback discusses how to give proper feedback. This reminds me of Chapter 8 by Charles Duhigg's book "The Power of Habit" which it tries to illustrate just how one way to give some input that can be inconsistent to the receiver can be accepted instead of rejected if presented in a certain way, such as the sandwich effect. There was one joke in one of my organization classes where all cultures could be classified accepting feedback in 3 ways: sandwich, meat (an illustration close to that is how this book describes the style of Steve Jobs in response to feedback), or just only giving bread (cultures that give little to no change within feedback). I took a glimpse on the rest of the half of the book that discusses the variety of feedback you have to give to others by several factors, such as what generation the people are born in, so I am sure the book provides context to fill most use cases of providing feedback to others.
Feedback whole point is to change or influence the habits of others. Two important points which I have taken from this book is that you have to give feedback continuously in small chunks. You have to read how much possible of that feedback the recipient can digest. All plans require things to be done in small steps. Feedback that does not reflect reality, such as snapping about it, is not effective. The book Executive Paradox by David G Jensen shows how we should both balance being empowering while at the same time commanding with people. The second point is for the feedback to be presented as part of their personal growth instead as a dead end. It is also important that we should also be humble and admit our own mistakes, as our feedback may not be one that we should hold on in the end. The attitude and how we follow after we give feedback is important. For more about that, you can read the book Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed.
Although the second half of the book gives enough use cases to dive in through the journey on providing appropriate feedback to others depending on each use case (age, medium, etc), it is also worthwhile for individuals to have a framework on understanding others instead of only within a limited set of use cases. Understanding others is completely different to giving feedback to others. It is more like interrogating and figure out their own perspective worldviews and norms they live and "how do they express them in their own language". Without understanding their worldview, we may misinterpret our worldview as their worldview too and use words that do not align to the recipient to what we expect. Artificial intelligence tackles currently the problem by the use of Natural Processing Language (NLP). There are many technical books that discusses about that. A good book for the human reader that can start with is Clean Language by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees. Combine both books and you get the best dose on improving your skill on providing great feedback to others. An astounding book nonetheless.
Although this is a book that I partially read (mostly the first half part of the book) a year ago, it still provided me with enough information to make an analysis about it.
Revolution feedback discusses how to give proper feedback. This reminds me of Chapter 8 by Charles Duhigg's book "The Power of Habit" which it tries to illustrate just how one way to give some input that can be inconsistent to the receiver can be accepted instead of rejected if presented in a certain way, such as the sandwich effect. There was one joke in one of my organization classes where all cultures could be classified accepting feedback in 3 ways: sandwich, meat (an illustration close to that is how this book describes the style of Steve Jobs in response to feedback), or just only giving bread (cultures that give little to no change within feedback). I took a glimpse on the rest of the half of the book that discusses the variety of feedback you have to give to others by several factors, such as what generation the people are born in, so I am sure the book provides context to fill most use cases of providing feedback to others.
Feedback whole point is to change or influence the habits of others. Two important points which I have taken from this book is that you have to give feedback continuously in small chunks. You have to read how much possible of that feedback the recipient can digest. All plans require things to be done in small steps. Feedback that does not reflect reality, such as snapping about it, is not effective. The book Executive Paradox by David G Jensen shows how we should both balance being empowering while at the same time commanding with people. The second point is for the feedback to be presented as part of their personal growth instead as a dead end. It is also important that we should also be humble and admit our own mistakes, as our feedback may not be one that we should hold on in the end. The attitude and how we follow after we give feedback is important. For more about that, you can read the book Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed.
Although the second half of the book gives enough use cases to dive in through the journey on providing appropriate feedback to others depending on each use case (age, medium, etc), it is also worthwhile for individuals to have a framework on understanding others instead of only within a limited set of use cases. Understanding others is completely different to giving feedback to others. It is more like interrogating and figure out their own perspective worldviews and norms they live and "how do they express them in their own language". Without understanding their worldview, we may misinterpret our worldview as their worldview too and use words that do not align to the recipient to what we expect. Artificial intelligence tackles currently the problem by the use of Natural Processing Language (NLP). There are many technical books that discusses about that. A good book for the human reader that can start with is Clean Language by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees. Combine both books and you get the best dose on improving your skill on providing great feedback to others. An astounding book nonetheless.
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