Second Practice: Developing Your Comfort Level with Feedback

For more con­text on this post­ing, please see:

The Prac­tice of Leadership
Eight Lead­er­ship Practices
First Prac­tice: Know­ing Your Lead­er­ship Edge
Third Prac­tice: Car­ing for Self
Fourth Prac­tice: Lead­er­ship and Influence
Fifth Prac­tice: Dis­cussing Undiscussables
Sixth Prac­tice: On Collaborating
Sev­enth Prac­tice: Per­son­al Integrity
Eighth Prac­tice: Spir­i­tu­al Perspective

I believe we are real­ly, deeply con­fused about “feed­back.” In some orga­ni­za­tion­al sys­tems it just means “neg­a­tive feed­back.” At its worst, feed­back becomes a kind of blud­geon rep­re­sent­ing back­ground thoughts, feel­ings, and atti­tudes toward a per­son that are sud­den­ly brought to light in a tense con­fronta­tion. It can stand for pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions that are now “pre­sent­ed” to some­one who may or may not have been aware of the ten­sions around them.

As lead­ers, we vast­ly com­pound this prob­lem when we fan­ta­size that there is a way to share such neg­a­tive­ly framed infor­ma­tion with­out cre­at­ing defen­sive­ness — so that oth­ers “get it” with­out caus­ing too much pain to them or too much guilt for us.

This is as true for up-the-sys­tem feed­back to for­mal lead­ers of orga­ni­za­tions, as it is with peers and with down-the-hier­ar­chy feed­back, such as per­for­mance appraisals. We vac­il­late, one moment too hard, one moment too weak, and at the end of the day, no mat­ter how we han­dled it, it can feel like a dump. Why is this?

I don’t believe it is because we are bad peo­ple or “unac­count­able,” are tyrants or wimps. I believe it has much more to do with how well we have con­vinced our­selves as a cul­ture that it is pos­si­ble to talk about prob­lems with­out talk­ing about peo­ple and rela­tion­ships, with­out talk­ing about us. We are faced with a major illu­sion embed­ded in Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ments. And this has left us with a prim­i­tive cul­ture when it comes to human con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing the per­son and involv­ing our rela­tion­ships. Under such con­di­tions, it is no won­der that there is often so much con­flict, ten­sion, and pain asso­ci­at­ed with feed­back. It eas­i­ly becomes a bat­tle in which our mutu­al blind spots fight it out over who among us has the great­est lev­el of unconsciousness.

There is a poem by Bill Stafford called A Rit­u­al to Read to Each Oth­er. The first verse, which has become the cre­do of my life and work, goes like this:

If you don’t know the kind of per­son I am
and I don’t know the kind of per­son you are
a pat­tern that oth­ers made may pre­vail in the world
and fol­low­ing the wrong god home we may miss our star.

Bill Stafford is say­ing there is anoth­er way to see things. Sup­pose feed­back, instead of being a gru­el­ing effort to change oth­er peo­ple, became an entry point to talk­ing about all the things that real­ly mat­ter to us as peo­ple. Sup­pose it became a vital tool in a com­mon quest to find a shared and com­mon star, and a way to avoid the fol­lies of false gods. Then feed­back might come to have a true and liv­ing pur­pose — which is to include oth­ers, col­lab­o­rate with them, share in their world and invite them into con­nec­tion with our own. And with the ulti­mate inten­tion of learn­ing how to talk about every­thing, includ­ing ourselves.

There is so much trag­ic, unspo­ken, emo­tion­al car­nage going on out there. Sup­pose, for exam­ple, that I am a senior man­ag­er in an impor­tant, fast-paced, inno­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion, and I work for some­one who I respect but who has cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly around issues of lead­er­ship “style.” I hear sto­ries from well-mean­ing peers about how they have tried to bring up this or that piece of feed­back or a pos­si­ble change, only to be dis­missed, crit­i­cized or feel a sense of lost per­son­al cred­i­bil­i­ty. If I am that man­ag­er and I see that I can­not talk open­ly with the leader about that per­son­’s style then I may well end up feel­ing com­pro­mised in my abil­i­ty to talk about many things, cer­tain­ly includ­ing my own needs, feel­ings, per­spec­tives, and cre­ative (smart, risky) ideas. If I begin to believe that my voice might touch into the inse­cu­ri­ties of the leader, no mat­ter how found­ed or unfound­ed those inse­cu­ri­ties are, I learn to keep qui­et. The threat of tweak­ing the blind spot of some­one with more pow­er col­ors how I choose to behave — which is most often to become a small­er me.

Lead­ers who claim not to have such blind spots are dan­ger­ous. They tend to cre­ate worlds around them that shore up this illu­sion, insu­lat­ing them­selves from the truth. They wound their fol­low­ers and yet do not under­stand why they are not get­ting what they want from oth­er people.

Oh my friends, we have been set up for this dynam­ic by the sci­ence of Amer­i­can busi­ness man­age­ment and our indi­vid­u­al­ist tra­di­tions. I find it ter­ri­bly iron­ic that where peo­ple are con­nect­ing and try­ing to con­nect with great gen­uine­ness is here on the net. And along with that gen­uine­ness, I have also come across so much anger, self-crit­i­cism, bit­ter­ness, and blame. When we move into the top­ic of feed­back, we eas­i­ly become com­pet­ing tribes (own­ers ver­sus cus­tomers, pow­er­less ver­sus pow­er­ful, indi­vid­u­al­ists ver­sus com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed, peo­ple who “get it,” peo­ple who don’t). Splin­ter­ing ver­sus con­nect­ing across the ten­sion points.

So let me voice this premise — opposed as it is to all the fine human rela­tions train­ing you may have received: If I feel that I can­not talk to you about you, direct­ly, and if I can­not talk about about me, direct­ly, then there can be no real “us,” no “our star.” Under such con­di­tions, the domain of our rela­tion­ship may nar­row to allow only a slim pas­sage of com­pet­ing ideas whose cred­i­bil­i­ty depends on avoid­ing what is most sen­si­tive and undis­cuss­able — which is you, which is me. And right here we begin the awful dance of becom­ing polit­i­cal­ly smart and inter­per­son­al­ly unre­al. We learn to com­mu­ni­cate around each oth­er, not with each oth­er. Inevitably we talk in the back­ground about the very things that should be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. We talk about oth­ers to oth­ers we believe are safe with­out ever talk­ing to the those who can do some­thing about the problem.

So many exam­ples flood me. A sim­ple one: I talked with a man­ag­er last year who told me the head of her orga­ni­za­tion held week­ly four-hour staff meet­ings. They were not con­ver­sa­tions; they were mono­logues. Every­one was bored and rest­less but no one was will­ing to talk with the admin­is­tra­tor because he might “take it per­son­al­ly” and retal­i­ate. Not being able to talk to him about him meant wast­ing huge amount of time and mon­ey. But that was­n’t the worst casu­al­ty. The real casu­al­ties were the souls of those who had learned to sur­vive in such an unre­al community.

So how do we begin to break down these walls that we have built from our “over-sen­si­tive insensitivities?”

Here are the “nots:” Not with anger mas­querad­ing as “truth” about anoth­er per­son. Or with shout­ing. Or with tact tan­ta­mount to say­ing noth­ing. Not with con­dem­na­tion of oth­ers or self. Not with clever ridicule in the back­ground. Not any of this stuff that serves to release frus­tra­tion, fear and judg­ment in emo­tion­al­ly dis­hon­est ways, no mat­ter how well that plays to the pri­vate and sym­pa­thet­ic crowd that meets in the park­ing lot — or over the net. And NOT from the place of our own cov­er-ups of the real hurt that we may tru­ly feel.

We change all this through the prac­tice of tak­ing gen­uine, real-time inter­per­son­al risks with oth­er liv­ing human beings, whether or not we are par­tic­u­lar­ly good at it and whether or not we are par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful. We take the risks any­way — as a mat­ter of life, growth, and integri­ty. We take the risks to open up, share per­spec­tives, do our best to con­vey from a place of pos­i­tive inten­tions our obser­va­tions and stay right there, even if there is a reaction.

I’m not talk­ing at this moment about a prac­tice for polit­i­cal or group action to change an insti­tu­tion (although I believe the prin­ci­ples are much the same). I’m talk­ing here about per­son­al action. And that can only hap­pen effec­tive­ly if I myself am okay with get­ting the feed­back that might come back my way in the process. If I can’t receive any, than I’m per­son­al­ly in trou­ble — and so is society.

So the prac­tice of devel­op­ing com­fort with feed­back begins with my own efforts to be in com­mu­ni­ty, to be okay receiv­ing infor­ma­tion about me, not just giv­ing it out about you. If we can begin to prac­tice ask­ing for it and learn how to help oth­ers open to shar­ing it with us — not as some one-time pro­gram but as an eth­ic of our work as lead­ers, then I believe we can start learn­ing what is impor­tant to know about in the way we offer our own feed­back to others.

One les­son is this: They, who­ev­er they are, will nev­er go first. We must go first.

This is essen­tial and it also cre­ates a dilem­ma — because in Amer­i­can soci­ety some peo­ple are at a much greater dis­ad­van­tage than oth­ers in the process. For exam­ple, peo­ple of col­or, or sin­gle moms who need their jobs more than us (rel­a­tive­ly) wealthy folks who can trade com­pa­nies fair­ly eas­i­ly, or gay/lesbian peo­ple, or any­one from any group that has suf­fered tra­di­tion­al forms of Amer­i­can dis­crim­i­na­tion. For some peo­ple, no mat­ter what their back­ground, active­ly invit­ing feed­back will be fine. For some, espe­cial­ly white males, it might even be a way to come out of invis­i­ble, unspo­ken lev­els of priv­i­lege. But for oth­ers, it is dan­ger­ous because of the prej­u­dices that may be applied. The risks are sim­ply too high.

Do you believe this? I encour­age and invite you to get more information.

And the same is true, struc­tural­ly, any time some peo­ple have more and some peo­ple have less pow­er. I don’t believe it is the pow­er itself, but the dif­fer­ences in pow­er, that cor­rode rela­tion­ships; that cre­ate cycles of mistrust.

So I would say it is up to us with the pow­er to open the door. What is trick­i­est is how eas­i­ly we focus on our own pain and the places of our pow­er­less­ness, rather than in the places we have more pow­er than oth­ers do.

Some of the hard­est and best feed­back I have ever received was a cou­ple of years ago from a mul­ti­cul­tur­al audi­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madis­on’s Lead­er­ship Insti­tute. (Sor­ry, but I could­n’t find a direct link). A few peo­ple thought that my pre­sen­ta­tion points con­firmed that I was one more typ­i­cal white, mid­dle-class, mid­dle-aged man who “had­n’t done his work” on diver­si­ty issues. I strug­gled with this feed­back might­i­ly. I just hurt like hell because I did­n’t feel like I was seen for my inten­tions. But it sure sen­si­tized me to how I might be com­ing across and how much pain I could cause with­out even know­ing it. And I thought to myself, how on earth will we ever over­come the diver­si­ty divides in our orga­ni­za­tions, in our neigh­bor­hoods, in this coun­try and around the world unless some­body — some­body per­ceived to have more pow­er — is will­ing to begin learn­ing how to receive feed­back just like this? And if it’s going to be a two-way street, great, but some­body still has to go first — and then we can begin to talk.

I was helped great­ly in the process by a car­ing men­tor who took the time to notice the pain I was in, who helped me sort out why I received the feed­back I did. I will love for the rest of my life the gift Seema Kapani gave me. And it is pre­cise­ly this love that has changed the way I see both giv­ing and receiv­ing feed­back. In our prim­i­tive rela­tion­ships, we must learn to deal with the raw — which more than any­thing means deal­ing with our hurt. If you ask me, I’d say hurt is one of the strongest emo­tions in the world. But when I know how to deal with my own expe­ri­ence of hurt effec­tive­ly — with­out cov­er-ups or “numb­ing out” — then I can begin to become effec­tive in offer­ing feed­back to oth­ers. Not because I can elim­i­nate the pain I might feel or might cause, but because I can know who I am when I want to talk with some­one else about them­selves. I can help hold the space for both of us. I can receive as much as give (in fact, I may not be able to tell the dif­fer­ence between the two). I do not have to either win or lose the exchange. I do not have to run away from it. I can stay right here, engaged with some­one I don’t yet ful­ly under­stand. And if I’m any good at it at all, then what might come across is that same lev­el of care for anoth­er per­son I received one evening, late, from my men­tor, Seema.