Corrective feedback

The Best Feedback Usually Tastes Terrible

There’s an old saying, “The best medicine usually tastes terrible”. The best feedback usually tastes terrible also. 

It’s wonderful to give and receive praise. Most managers do not praise their people frequently enough. I’ve certainly been guilty of that.

It’s much harder to give and receive corrective feedback. But you need to make this practice a regular habit if you want to foster a high-performance team. 

Some people call it “constructive feedback”. Others use weasel words and call it something like “feed-forward”.

Let’s not beat around the bush, and let’s state the obvious. We are judging and critiquing someone else’s performance, with the goal of encouraging them to make a course correction. Hence I prefer the term “corrective feedback”.

And similar to the best medicine, it usually tastes terrible (at the time).

One time I was told by my CEO, “Stephen, you often come across as grumpy and frustrated in our company meetings. You infect the team with your pissed-off attitude and it lowers the team’s morale. Even if things are not going great, you need to be more positive and lift our people up. Frankly, I expect more from you as a leader.”

Ouch. That stung.

Another time, I received some 360-degree feedback. Here’s a summary. 

“Stephen, when you arrive at work in the morning you barely say hello to people. You just launch into a barrage of questions about work. Where are we at with this project? What’s happening with that project?  You push the team to get things done, but people feel like you don’t care about them as human beings.”

Ouch. That stung too.

Each time I received corrective feedback, I was wise enough not to make excuses or try to justify myself.

I listened, then summoned the grace to thank the person who delivered the message. I tried not to show it on the outside, but on the inside, I probably sulked for the rest of the day.

But each time, after sleeping on it overnight, I’d wake up the next morning and realize the corrective feedback was a gift. I needed to hear this information and address these blind spots if I wanted to be a better manager.

My role at the time was COO, and my nickname at work was “The Executionator”. I took pride in driving accountability for performance and executing on the company priorities. But the tradeoff of my driving behavior was that I burned people out, and I was not much fun to be around.

Without being consciously aware, I was running things like a boot camp. I did a poor job of demonstrating that I cared about the personal well-being of the team. 

Fortunately, the CEO believed in my potential. I engaged an executive coach who helped me improve my management skills and behaviors.

Two mantras I learned from the coach remain with me to this day:

“Choose the attitude you want to infect people with when you walk in the door” 
“Spend 2 minutes longer than you normally would, and ask 2 more questions than you normally would” 

I would repeat these 2 mantras as I walked into the office at the start of each workday, reminding myself to bring positive energy, and to ask questions about people’s personal lives and how they were feeling, before discussing any work. This had a profound impact on how I showed up and helped me be more effective as a manager.  

Years later, I get to sit on the other side of the table and provide coaching services to my clients. My experience has been that 80% of leaders have the opposite challenge. They are strong at taking care of people’s well-being, but relatively weaker at driving accountability.  

I’ve always liked this quote from Nick Saban, an American football coach, considered to be among the greatest coaches in football history. “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want the coach to tell them the truth.” 

In addition to 1-on-1 executive coaching, a practice that many client leadership teams benefit from is a “Peer Feedback Session” each quarter, typically done after we conduct the Quarterly Strategic Review planning session.

I create a safe environment and a structured format whereby each person receives praise from their colleagues about their “superpower behaviors”, followed by corrective feedback about their “kryptonite behaviors”.

Superpower behavior = what you do that strengthens or accelerates team performance
Kryptonite behavior = what you do that weakens or slows down team performance

The recipient can ask questions for clarification, or ask for examples. But no debating. No defending. No blaming. No justifying. Just listen with intent to understand, and then say,

“Thank you for letting me know. Is there more?”  

At the end of the peer feedback session, each person commits to one behavior they would like to improve in the coming quarter, with the team’s support. We check in each month to see how they are progressing, and at the end of the quarter, we grade each person on the improvement they have made. Then we repeat the process. 

I hope you have people in your life who are willing to give you corrective feedback. The “best medicine” might taste terrible in the moment, but if my experience is anything to go by, you will be a better person for swallowing it.

***

Until next time…
Stephen